How Does Dating in NYC Compare With London?

They are closer than almost any other pair of cities you could compare. Each counted about 8.8 million people at its last census, and each is full of people who moved there for work. The big differences come at night: New York bars serve until 4 a.m. and the subway runs all night, while most of London's drinking winds down between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. If you want to approach women at night, New York gives you more hours. By day on the street, the two cities are much closer.

Below is how they compare on the things that decide a man's results: space, streets, bars and the trip home.

London's population at its last census was almost exactly New York's. The land is another story. Greater London covers about twice the area of New York City, so the same number of people is spread more thinly. More of your evening goes into travel between where you meet a woman, where she lives and where you live.

New York packs its people tight. a dating coach likes to point out that wherever you stand in the city, somewhere to sit down together, for coffee, a drink or a meal, is a short walk away. That makes it easy to take a woman somewhere right after you meet her, and it keeps a second date from turning into a long trip across town.

Both cities run on newcomers. Census figures cited on Wikipedia put London's foreign-born share at over a third. coach says New York's constant arrivals make its people more open to talking than people in cities where everyone grew up together, and the same logic holds in London. Many of the women you meet in either city arrived recently and are still building a life there.

Central London's busiest streets are full of people walking somewhere. coach describes the first program he ran in Leicester Square, where "everybody is walking through so it's all moving interactions." Stopping a woman who is walking takes good spacing and a confident voice. He admits that a few early blowouts that night left him hesitant to stop anyone, and he had to find a way around his own nerves.

New York has the same rushed sidewalks, with headphones and crowds, but it also has small, busy parks where women sit alone with time to spare. coach ranks Washington Square, Bryant, Madison Square and Union Square among his best daytime spots. London's parks are bigger and greener, and on a warm day they fill up the same way.

Weather tips the balance by season. London gets more gray, drizzly days when nobody lingers outside. New York gets colder winters but long, hot summers when the parks are full every evening.

London's going-out culture is built around the pub. After work, people stand outside with a drink in groups, often coworkers. That puts plenty of mixed groups in front of you, but a woman inside a tight circle of colleagues is harder to reach than one sitting at a bar.

Then there is the clock. Standard closing in England was 11 p.m., and although late licences now let some bars and clubs stay open as late as 3 a.m., the average last call in London still falls between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. New York bars serve until 4 a.m. My advice there is to stay late, because the women still out near closing have fewer friends pulling them home.

The legal drinking age changes the crowd too. It is 18 in the UK and 21 in the US, so a London bar on a Friday skews younger than its New York equivalent.

New York's subway runs around the clock. London's Night Tube runs on certain lines on Friday and Saturday nights only, and the rest of the week a late trip home means a night bus or a cab. When getting home is simple, a woman is freer to stay out, to move to a second bar with you, or to leave whenever she likes.

coach makes the point about New York directly: people there do not drive, so women often arrive and leave separately from their friends. London shares part of that, since few people drive into the center, but the earlier close and the longer distances work against it.

An American accent gets noticed in London, and a British one gets noticed in New York. Either can start a conversation. Neither keeps one going.

What gets results in both cities is the same: walk over before you talk yourself out of it, say something simple, read whether she wants to keep talking, and leave politely when she does not. My own London story shows where the trouble came from: a few minutes of hesitation that grew until it stopped him, in a city full of people walking past.

Cold Approach runs no Bootcamp in London. The Bootcamp runs in New York and Miami only, fully in the field, with daygame and night game mixed to suit you. A training day is two four-hour blocks with a coach giving live coaching on every approach and feedback after every set. Group is three consecutive days at a 3:1 student-to-coach ratio. Private is one, two or three days, fully 1-on-1, with longer programs quoted on request. There is no skill floor, and every student leaves with a written practice plan to take home, wherever home is.