Are Singles Events in NYC Worth Going To?

Yes, singles events in NYC are worth going to now and then, as long as you treat them as one place to meet women and not the only one. A mixer or a singles night gives you a room where talking to strangers is expected, which makes the first hello easier. It also gives you a fixed crowd, a short evening and plenty of men standing by the wall, so you still have to walk up and say something.

The label covers several different nights, and they are not equally useful.

• Singles mixers. A bar or lounge books a room, sells tickets and lets people mingle. Sometimes there is an icebreaker game, sometimes just a drink ticket.
• Speed dating. Wikipedia describes it as a formal matchmaking process for meeting many potential partners in a very short time. In practice, it means timed rounds and a scorecard.
• Themed and in-person dating events. Nights for a certain age range, profession, faith or interest. They narrow the crowd, which helps if the theme fits you.
• Activity nights. Cooking classes, dance lessons, trivia and run clubs that market themselves to single people. The activity gives you something to do with your hands and something to talk about.

Some listings call themselves dating clubs. That usually means a membership group that hosts a series of these nights. Judge each one by its room, not its name.

The best thing about a singles night is that nobody wonders why you said hello. Every woman there came to meet someone, and that removes the doubt that stops a lot of men before they start.

These events also start early and end early. You can drop into one after work, warm up with a few easy conversations, and still have the rest of the night free for a bar or a rooftop. Used that way, a mixer is a pregame for your social energy.

And the women who show up tend to be open. They chose to spend an evening meeting new people, which is not true of everyone you pass on the street.

The limits are real, and New York men run into them fast.

• The ratio. Many singles nights draw more men than women. Each woman then has more choice than you do.
• The wallflowers. A lot of the men in the room are waiting to be approached. That is good news for you if you move, and bad news if you join them.
• The pool. You meet the thirty or forty people who bought a ticket that night. In a city of millions, that is a tiny slice.
• The pace. Some nights are so structured that you spend more time on icebreaker games than talking to anyone you like.

None of this makes the events bad. It makes them a narrow tool.

Show up in the first half hour. Early on, people stand in pairs and threes, and joining is easy. Later, groups close up.

Use the event as your opener. "How did you hear about this?" works on anyone, and "Have you been to one of these before?" works almost as well. Then say something about yourself. A man who only asks questions starts to sound like a survey.

Move around. Spending the whole evening beside one woman puts pressure on her and costs you every other conversation in the room. If one goes well, ask for her number or Instagram before you drift, and suggest a day to see her.

Leave your phone in your pocket. In a room full of strangers, the man scrolling by the bar looks like he would rather be somewhere else.

New York gives you plenty of places where women are open to a hello without a ticket. a dating coach names the city's parks as his favorite daytime spots: Washington Square, Bryant, Madison Square and Union Square. People go there to relax, and they are not rushing anywhere.

At night, he likes rooftops in warm weather, saying that "whenever it's warm out rooftops in New York are insane." The open air keeps the music lower, so you can actually hear each other.

He also points out why the city is friendly to strangers in general. Many people here are new in town and do not yet have entrenched social circles, so they are looking to meet people. A singles event is one room where that is true. The whole city is another.

The men who get the most from singles events are the ones who could have met the same women anywhere. The event just saves them a step. That is the skill worth building.

Cold Approach runs its Bootcamp in New York and Miami to train it in the field. Each training day is two four-hour blocks with a coach, with daygame and night game mixed to suit you, live coaching on every approach and feedback after each one. Group is three consecutive days with no more than three students per coach, and Private is 1-on-1 for one, two or three days.

There is no skill floor. A man who locks up at a mixer is exactly who the training is designed around. You leave with a written practice plan, and after that a singles night becomes one easy room among many.

Should I go to a singles event alone?

Yes, if you can. Alone, you talk to more people. With a friend, the two of you tend to stand together and talk to each other.

Are in-person dating events better than the apps?

They are different. An event gives you fewer people with more context. Plenty of men do both, and keep approaching women in ordinary places too.