The biggest hurdles to meeting other singles in urban areas is "seeing" and "getting seen."
You see, there's a whole lot going on in cities: a plethora of people, flashing lights, constant stimuli. In order to successfully get anything done, city-dwellers have to filter out some of the visual noise.
In my last 8 years of urban-living, I have learned that the key to getting through the day is to walk fast and keep my eyes tilted downwards. Falter just a bit on this and the next thing I know I'm buying stale candy bars from some big-eyed, baggy pants-wearing tween on the subway who not-so convincingly says it's a fundraiser for his basketball team.
On the flip side, not only is "not seeing" a survival skill, the ability to disappear in a crowd has some serious benefits too. Blend in and I can avoid catcalls from construction men, questions from tourists, and the accidental run-in with a more successful classmate from high school or college.So the big question is: if you're single living in a space where avoiding eye contact is a necessity, how do you ever meet new people?
Last weekend, I tried to practice seeing and getting seen by camping out at a coffee shop on Saturday and going solo to a progressive hip hop show on Sunday. The results?
The coffee shop had a conspicuous absence of twenty-somethings with the people cycling through the neighboring table alternating between prom-crazed teens and Slavic-speaking grandmas. On Sunday the age range was better, but I'm pretty sure I was the only one there who wasn't a friend of the bands.
Date count for March: 0
Photo credit: http://www.graffiti.org/nyc/newyork_112.html
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