Best Bars in New York for Meeting Women Without Apps

The best bar in New York for meeting women is a busy one where you can still hear each other. Look in the Lower East Side, the East Village, the Meatpacking District and Williamsburg, and judge each room by how it is built, not by its name. Names turn over fast. The qualities that make a room easy to talk in do not.

Any list of specific bars would be out of date in a few months. New York venues open, close, change owners and change crowds quickly, and a bar that was great last spring can be empty by fall. A list also pushes you toward one trendy room, when the better plan is to know how to read any room.

So this article gives you the features that matter and the neighborhoods where rooms with those features are common.

It is busy but you can hear. A packed, deafening room means nobody can talk. An empty one has nobody to talk to. You want a room with energy and a volume level where a normal sentence reaches the person next to you.

There is space to stand and move. Bars with standing room, a long counter or an open floor let you step toward someone without crowding her. A room where everyone is locked into booths is harder.

Groups are mixed in size. Women out in twos and threes, and some alone, give you more openings than a room full of large parties.

The lighting lets you see her face. You need to read her expression to know whether she is open.

You can leave easily. A room with several exits and other places nearby lets you move on if the mood is wrong.

For a night on foot, these areas have many rooms close together, so you can bar hop without long walks:

• Lower East Side. Dense with bars of many sizes in a few blocks.
• East Village. Lots of small rooms, many of them casual.
• Meatpacking District. More polished spots, and a busier feel on weekends.
• Williamsburg. Plenty of bars across the river, with a different crowd from Manhattan.

Our New York Bootcamp article and the guide to where to approach women in New York City say more about these areas and about daytime options.

a dating coach sorts New York nightlife into three tiers, and the sort helps you choose where to start:

• General admission bars. Easy to enter, no planning. You can look in, move on if the room does not suit you, and try the next one.
• Semi-exclusive rooms. They may give a man alone some trouble at the door, which also keeps the mix inside better.
• High-end clubs. Hard to get into and built around tables, so there is less mingling.

For most men starting out, the first tier is the practical one. It costs nothing to walk in and nothing to walk out.

Go out later than you think. As the night goes on, the crowd thins, and the women still out are often no longer tied to friends who went home. Early in the evening, groups are tight and busy with each other.

Midweek can work well too. A woman who is out on a Tuesday has usually chosen to be there and has no plan beyond the evening, which makes a friendly hello easier to take.

You do not need an app to open the conversation. You need a normal sentence tied to what is around you.

• Ask about the drink, the music or the room: what she would recommend, or whether the place is always this busy.
• Keep your tone relaxed and your volume matched to the room.
• Read her reply. A full answer and a question back means keep going. A short answer and a glance away means thank her and move on.
• If it goes well, move toward a number or a plan before the night ends, and let a no be a no.

My view of the cost of a bad try applies in New York in particular: "If you talk to a girl and it doesn't go well, it will soon be forgotten. You'll probably never see her again."

A few things sink the night before it starts:

• Standing in a corner with your phone instead of moving through the room.
• Arriving too early and drinking while you wait for the room to fill.
• Approaching a woman who is clearly in the middle of a conversation or with a large party.
• Talking too long when she has shown she is done.

Choosing a room is easy. Walking into one and talking to a stranger is the hard part. A coach next to you removes the decision to hover and gives you feedback on each approach.

A Cold Approach Bootcamp in New York spends its training days in the field: two four-hour blocks, daygame by day and night game after dark, with the mix set to suit you. A coach picks the places for you. Group is three consecutive days with three students per coach, and Private is fully one on one for one, two or three days. There is no skill floor, and you leave with a written practice plan and access to the community Slack.

Find a busy room you can talk in, in a neighborhood with many options, go late enough for the crowd to thin, and open with something about the room.