After a very well attended meetup in NYC, the Meetup Road Tour makes its way to San Francisco this weekend.
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| Sunday, August 26 | San Francisco |
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3pm — ??? Café Greco 423 Columbus Ave |
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Parking’s a pain in North Beach but, Brimful (bless her soul) pointed out a nearby parking garage for the folks driving in. Other places to find a spot include the many garages in Union Square and / or street parking in SOMA / Fin District. From there, it’s easy to walk / taxi / cable car it over. It ain’t that far.
Incorporating some cues / feedback from NYC, we’re going to experiment a bit with the format of the SF meetup…
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Desi Boyz in SF apparently need a lot of dating advice. That topic will surely come up… |
A few highlights –
- Location — SF’s meetup is going to be at a relatively good sized coffee house with a far more open layout
- Time — The meetup will be on a lazy Sunday afternoon; our contention for the space (if any) will more likely be against random North Beach tourists vs. focused, club-clad New Yorkers
- Nametags — I’ll be distributing ’em and you folks will decorate ’em with your RealNames and/or Handles ; a nametag in a coffee house isn’t quite the dorkbadge that one would be at an NYC bar.
- Intros — After badging in, we’ll announce the new folk’s presence and get ’em to toss up a tidbit or 2 of introductory trivia
- Discussion— Expect some focused discussion of the more fun, recent SM posts including the 1000commentMonster (there were few commentors who had, uh, interesting opinions on the SF scene that I’m hoping to meet). It shouldn’t be anything too intense, just scan the past couple of weeks of posts and hopefully a few will pique your interest enough to be Sepia literate…
Of course, above all we’ll just try to have fun with our fellow geeks-in-arms. And don’t worry, if the structure starts getting oppressive, we’ll quickly abandon it and resume old fashioned small talk. Desi’s know small talk.
How about shortlist some of the oddities of SF to put some of the hurdles in perspective:
-it’s a big little city (population of only 744,000)
-by virtue of its size, it has a big commuter population
-it’s the Wall Street of the West and the urban hub of Silicon Valley (males per 100 females)
-large gay population
…what else? I think the size of the city magnifies the factors that deviate from the norm (whether you are comparing SF to NYC or SF to California)
You hit the nail on the head — I’ve been wanting to say this ever since this discussion started. Never have I heard people say about a city “this is a great city for meeting guys” (or girls, but guys usually don’t complain about these things as much). Bottom line is that meeting someone you click with is hard, but rather than accept that reality, it is easier for people to say “this is a horrible city for meeting people.”
NVM,
dating culture! dating culture!
Ok I’ll stop now 🙂
And this applies to me how?
Ah, because now that I’m hitched, other people’s amours are cause for vicarious drama, of course!
My friend in LA says that :p He moved from Davis to LA and he looves it there (from a dating perspective) :p
See your response to pt #2. Go forth and teach your female underlings.
SF Girl, my best gay friend is thinking of moving out of SF because he feels exactly the opposite. The gay guys here, according to him, are too bitchy, cliquey, and looks-conscious. He always meets men but nothing lasts longer than a week or two. According to him, gay men in Atlanta are more sincere and less player-ish. It’s that southern gentleman thing, I suppose.
I meant the other way round… “he says its a great city for meeting women” 😀
SF is better than LA for gay guys, imo. It’s hard, though, b/c of the levels of racism in both SF/LA for desi queer guys, but also b/c of the voracious promiscuity.
Camille there are polls to that effect. Specifically I remember hearing on the radio that in a survey of singles in major cities, SF singles rated in the hardest place to meet people. I’m not surprised. In my time living in the city, when you go out to bars, people are very much in their own groups and not willing to mingle. On a side note, I was lucky enough to meet in person Mr. Vinod in a friend-of-friend-of-friend way and he is super nice and a good mingler, bummed I’m not making the meetup 😀
Secondly, as someone mentioned before, most of the desi men are in the penninsula or south bay. And for a bridge-and-tunnel girl like me, they are geographically undesireable. The desi men you do see in the FiDi are commuters, like me, and most of them are married software duhwelopers.
Frankly Indian parties are not my thing. I don’t need to be in a room full or tight-shirted-goateed-crown-and-coke drinking asshats, because theses are the type of guys those parties attract.
Ok, rant done!
How do the modifiers work here? of all your gay friends, he’s the best? or of all your friends, is he the best at being gay?
haha. reminds me of the chapelle skit, how would a gay KKK member act?
“Umm. yah hi, umm, we want you to like leave our town cuz being white is just fabulous and youre soo not”
HMF, in remembrance of that other post, mebbe SF sucks for dating because the men are so cheap! 😉
I just want to clarify that I am not saying that men here are BAD or UNDESIRABLE or UNDATEABLE (I have great single male friends, well most are not single anymore). I am just saying, I dont have a clue where to meet em. Maybe I do stay in my group when I go out and dont seem open (socially inept anyone?)
Please don’t throw tomatoes at me at the meetup 😮
Bingo.
NVM: NVM!
If there’s any place where guys are cheap (and justifiably so) it’s NYC.
Did y’all ever hear the one about the male bonobo’s that escaped the San Francisco zoo? They all got dates!
I kill me!
Yeah, with men.
Besides being humans closest animal relative or some crap like that (vague memory from the one anthro class I took in college), they are know for being extremely sexual and engaging in homosexual couplings.
All of the above. Really. He’s also incorrigible when it comes to trumpeting his preference for white guys, so SF may be a bit too motley for him, I’m afraid. I was being sarcastic about the southern gentleman thing, though it’s partially true; my fiance is one of those rare specimens.
Staying in and canoodling is more fun, anyhow.
SF Girl, the whole enterprise of “meeting” men is quite onerous. Bars usually render poor-quality dates, and our social circles tend to be claustrophobic and romantically stultifying. I think the best way to do it–kind of a cliche–is to simply try to get out more, i.e., take classes, do community service, get involved with projects you love and are passionate about. By multiplying the number of people you meet, you multiply your opportunities astronomically. It takes motivation, but it works every time, I hear. Even in places like SF. 🙂
And if all else fails, you can always try Craigslist. It’s easy to judge a person by the quality of their cock pics, no? 😉
funny, i could never make it to any of the NY meetups but now i find myself coming to SF for one…!
I know this is a general remark and not directed at me (sorry if I stirred up a sore topic, but looks like there’s no need to worry about discussion topics for the meetup), but just wanted to point out that I was simply expressing doubt about the sentiments which are at the other end of the spectrum: i.e. that it’s so absurdly easy for hetero men to meet women in SF that the absence of a bevy of beautiful babely admirers must indicate some major shortcomings. In my experience dating has been more difficult in my 10 years in the Bay Area (including SF) than in the DC area where I’m originally from.
Actually, I find meeting new people in general difficult in the Bay Area. There’s the über-casual factor mentioned before, where you you’re not even sure where you rate in terms of importance to someone relative to a cup of coffee they had three days ago. Then there’s the tendency for people to stick to tightly-knit groups of friends when they’re out socializing, leaving one to wonder how they got into those groups in the first place. Again, I’m perfectly aware of my less than average social abilities, but somehow things just seemed easier back on the East Coast.
buddhu, DC is a particularly friendly place, where it’s unusually easy to meet people for a big metropolitan area in the USA. Just pick a (major) political party and you have 1/2 a million new friends.
Yes, exactly! Glad it’s not just me.
We stand corrected? According to Forbes, “San Francisco-Oakland” is the number one city for singles.
But check out their methodology:
I don’t think SF is an affordable place to live if you are single.
How many women will deny that in every large city, a segment of the female population will doll themselves up, go out, get hit on/approached by 10-20 guys, reject them all, then come home and complain that “dating in this city is so hard”?
And according to them NYC is #2 so…what does that tell us? That the issue is with us and not with the cities!
damn got a wedding to go to. tell me there will be another? sadness.
Ha! They list “pro sports teams” under “culture”.
Hale no!
but neither is nyc
My point exactly. Their methodology is flawed. And they didn’t really poll people on the dating scene. It is mainly based on the number of singles. Hence they are actually supporting my argument it’s hard out there to find someone because all these people are single. SF has the most singles. Also, they based their methodology on the number on singles online. Hello, people are online because they aren’t meeting people face-to-face, because again it’s hard out there for a pimp.
I’m just sayin’…
Ditto. Perhaps we should conduct a highly informal mutineer study of how approachable people are at weddings? Mine is not is the Bay Area though, it’s in Dallas. So fellow Mutineers enjoy the meetup while I’m sweltering in heat under my 9-yards of GoodIndianGirl sari.
BIG out!
8 wondering that too? guess if no bloggers in LA or any locale someone else would have to pick up the slack. perhaps we should start? I’m in central OC. U?
This meetup sounds pretty interesting, since I will be visiting SF for the first time. Anyone know of any good restaurants, clubs, sites to visit. It would help immensely since I have never been on the west coast.
Maybe if you’re a Forbes-reading i-banker =P
HMF, I think your metric is ridiculous, and here’s why: just because someone hits on you does not mean they are dateable. What if they’re total tweakers? What if they’re completely inappropriate? What if they say something terribly offensive? I have a whole barrage of “oh my god I am traumatized from how X hit on me” stories.
Satya, on classes: “Mr. Right Does Not Take Classes“
Katie, what kinds of things do you like? SF has a lot of things for every personality type (in my opinion), so it helps to know what you’re interested in (e.g. museums, sightseeing, public concerts, shopping, cultural activities, parks).
Hey Camille–I never suggested that meeting people in classes is tantamount to meeting Mr. Right. It’s more that increasing the general pool of people you interact with (since I’m in agreement that people tend to coagulate in their incestuous social circles, without nary a thought about the “outside” world, so it’s best to take a one-on-one approach) leads to more opportunities to interact with potentially interesting people. I’m a board member of a prominent Asian American arts organization in San Francisco, and I’ve actually met (and hooked some of my single friends up with!) a plethora of dateable, progressive, community-oriented hawties through the work I do. Fo’ reals.
Preach it, girl. Quantity does not quality make. A lot of my female friends who quit the bar scene eons ago were more accustomed to meeting slimy, drunken Lotharios who wanted to bag them more than “date” them. I don’t think it’s necessarily because eligible suitors don’t populate bars and nightclubs; it’s just that it’s more difficult to form an estimable opinion about someone in an environment that’s so addled by distractions (noise, alcohol, etc.). And from my experience, it’s the drunken Lotharios who seem to have all the chutzpah. 🙂
BadIndianGirl, are you the same chick with the website (I vaguely recall an article on how to prevent auntie thighs)? Wondering.
I agree with you in principle, but let’s break it down:
Take say an average-looking 24 year old female living in a mid sized to big city, and perform an analysis over a single year. Let’s also be conservative, considering fri and sat “party” nights, we have 52*2 = 104 nights, lets say she only goes out 60% of them (which is pretty conservative if you ask me), so .60 * 104 = 60 times going out per year, now on average, lets say 10 approaches per night (let me know if this is too much?)
so we have 600 approaches in a year. You’re telling me one who rejects that many is being honest with herself by saying, “it’s so hard dating in this city”?
Honestly, I find the female vetting process for potential suitors much like a major studio’s vetting process for new films. They go though such a hurrendous screening process, rejecting all kinds of scripts.. but still manage to put out sh*tty movies!
it’s just that it’s more difficult to form an estimable opinion about someone in an environment that’s so addled by distractions (noise, alcohol, etc.). And from my experience, it’s the drunken Lotharios who seem to have all the chutzpah.
Well, the lotharios acquire that title by measure of how many they’ve “lotharios’ed” and since that “lothariosing” is done voluntarily with no coercion, you’ve answered your own question. If you want quality, then change the criteria by which you evaluate (you call it ‘chutspah’).
If you want quality, then change the criteria by which you evaluate (you call it ‘chutspah’).
Unless you agree that criteria is hardwired.
Satya, I didn’t mean to imply that you were arguing Mr. Right was in a class. Just wanted to let folks know that according to the NYT, trying to make yourself a better person (with the hopes of meeting someone also) may work better if you focus on criteria 1, not criteria 2 🙂 I think you’re totally right on when it comes to “super tight incestuous SF social circles.” I think it’s just hard to meet people in SF, but there are tons of great people. But you’re right, it’s a matter of getting out of one’s element as well, which, in an awesome city like SF, is more doable than not. Just takes a little extra legwork 🙂
Also, Satya, I hope you come to the SF meetup so you can hook up all these mutinous alterna-desi girls with the single hawties you mentioned 😉
Amen!
And, to be honest, I’m not really looking to pick up someone dateable in a bar. Maybe this is my personal bias, but if someone is sloppy drunk, slobbering (which I absolutely mean in a literal sense), or crazy hopped up and uses openers such as: “I had an ex-girlfriend named Camille once… she was crazy… I think she’s in jail now… But I think you should save my life and marry me, and we can go fuck right now.” NOT DO-ABLE, let alone dateable! HMF, when you get sleazy guys hitting on you all the time, it makes it less fun to go out, particularly to bars [which is a bummer, b/c I do like detoxing with my friends or going dancing]. It also makes it harder for all those decent, upstanding guys out there because a girl’s guard is totally going to be heightened.
By extension, I’m much more likely to be amenable to meeting someone at some place cultural/arts-y, or at an event, than at a bar/club. So maybe the trick is to be in places where you’re going to meet folks with similar interests, but not so similar that you end up in the same social circle of incestuousness.
But according to Satya’s argument, it’s the drunken lotharios that have all the success (or else they wouldn’t be lotharios).
This is doubtful. So you’re saying, lets say there was an establishment that only allowed women, served alcohol and played music so you could detox and dance without the fear of any “sleazy guys” approaching you, these would sell out? hogwash.
Yes it does, because we see no incentive for staying decent and upstanding. The criteria must change.
wedding venue shopping got canceled on sunday so i may actually be able to make this…
HMF, whatevs. I know you’re already committed to the “men are the victims of society in all ways, especially dating” camp. Yes, I’ve been to female-only bars/events/clubs (lesbian and mixed orientation), and I do enjoy myself substantially more when compared to some of the evenings when I’m at a co-ed bar having really awful guys ruining my time with their sleaze. Just because this isn’t the scene where you live or among your social circle doesn’t mean that my experience doesn’t exist among women in my social circle in the Bay Area. And creepy guys DO make it less fun to go out. I almost wish I could capture the awful sinking feeling I get in my gut when someone won’t leave me alone, bottle it, and send it to you so you could feel a fraction of the annoyance and disappointment I feel when a usually “safe” place to hang out suddenly becomes affiliated with a jerk face. Just like this article describes, there’s a time, place, and manner in which it is ok to hit on someone without ruining their time.
not only do you get to sit back and reject/accept a large number of applicants, you get to complain about not having discretion on when they show up. boo-hoo.
reminds me of an old joke that’s been recycled on SM before…
q: what’s the diff between a sleazy pick up line from a creepy guy and a confident, fun, flirtatious opening gambit?
a: how tall is the dude?
Ok, maybe you guys think I’m being way too harsh and dismissing all those guys out there who are maybe a little socially inept, maybe not quite my type (by superficial/aesthetic metrics). For the record, I’m not talking about those guys when I’m talking about “sleazy” types. I am talking about seriously CRAZY guys. I’m talking about men who are so far on the outside of what is appropriate conversation that it’s vulgar. But whatever, I’m sure it is more comforting to blame it all on the superficiality or pickiness of women.
This is a total exaggeration, I believe men and women are human beings and should be treated equally. Every one of my stances comes from this belief. And Yes I do believe in dating there are certain privileges afforded to women, but that’s actually not even relevant here.
Events are different, and lesbo stuff doesn’t count, because all the hitting on would happen there. I think you kinda missed my point, there would never be an establishment “just for people to detox and dance” because no one would ever patronize them, no matter how much they say that’s all they want to do.
Besides, you mean there are no sleazy lesbos out there?
I don’t doubt they do, however two points:
but i don’t understand why certain men should even be considered in the first place. sometimes, it is specific to the guy – i.e. the pick-up line, or comments that he makes (one guy was trying to impress me with his ivy league wallpaper on his mobile – wtf?) or the entitlement attitude – e.g. i never say no in a rude way, but a total stranger demanding an explanation as to why i don’t want to go out with him is just not cool. but other times, it’s just about the mood that night – i want to have an uncomplicated evening with my friends without thinking about men in a romantic way – that’s my prerogative. on such nights, i have been known to have proper conversations with men, but end the night/conversation without asking for a number or making any remotely romantic suggestion – yet many men consider this a tease. it’s this atttude that i shouldn’t be free to express my own will – that somehow i should attempt something more than i want to, just because he wants to – that irks me.
HMF, I understand where you’re coming from (and I didn’t mean to hyperbolize your POV), and please refer to #95 for clarity on how I am using the term “creepy.” Surprisingly, I’m not as shallow as I sound. Also, there are sleazy lesbians, you’re right — I was just trying to think of moments when I’d been in non-coed social settings and whether or not that somehow effected my enjoyment level. I’m sure such establishments would not be able to stay above-ground, but I don’t think that the idea, in small amounts, is so off-base.
Also, I don’t really drink, so I’m not often “toxing” — I’m usually unwinding from a stressful day/week with people who I love and who love me. If I cannot relax at my favorite watering hole, then unfortunately my circle of options starts to narrow. I’m not averse to talking to or meeting new people when I go out with friends, regardless of whether or not I’m attracted to them. In general I would consider myself to be relatively extroverted, social, friendly, and open. I am, however, averse to talking to or meeting people who are hugely inappropriate, who make me feel highly uncomfortable, or who are so far gone that it becomes difficult to keep up any attempt at dialogue.
ak, right on 🙂
I’m talking about men who are so far on the outside of what is appropriate conversation that it’s vulgar.
Examples? If you only make the creepy or not decision after he opens his mouth thats different, most of my female friends usually make it upon sight. And then try and wiggle their way out of it when I say they’re making a looks based decision.
HMF, now I’m beginning to understand why you said people don’t like you. 😉 But maybe you’re handsome and scintillating in person, so that makes up for your bellicose posture?
About the drunken Lotharios. Let’s put it this way–it’s all a matter of numbers, right? Let’s say said drunken Lothario hits on, perhaps, 90 women in one night. Because he’s a creepazoid, 90 percent of those women will reject him. But the other 10 percent, for whatever reason, will be flattered, genuinely attracted to him, or too drunk to exercise judgment. So in one night, he’s managed to nab himself ten phone numbers. Way to go! What a playa! Man’s got some serious game!
NOT.
Again, quality over quantity. Just because he gets women by being a dick, doesn’t mean he’s “successful” with women.