How Does Dating in NYC Compare With Other Big Cities?

New York beats each of them on the three things that matter most for meeting women in person. More people are out on foot, the bars stay open later, and people get home without a car. Philadelphia, Seattle, Toronto, San Diego and Dallas each have strengths, and a man can date well in any of them. None of them gives you as many chances in a single afternoon or night as New York.

Here is what New York has, then how each of the others stacks up against it.

• Size. New York counted about 8.8 million people at its last census. Toronto, the biggest of the others, has under three million. Philadelphia, San Diego and Dallas each have under two million, and Seattle has under a million.
• Hours. New York bars may serve until 4 a.m. Pennsylvania, Washington state, California and the big Texas cities stop at 2 a.m., and Ontario's last call is 1:45 a.m.
• No car. Most New Yorkers do not drive. a dating coach counts this as a big reason his nights there go well, because women arrive and leave separately from their friends instead of riding home in one car.
• The ratio. Census figures on Wikipedia give New York about 86 men for every 100 women aged 18 and over.

coach calls New York his number one city for learning to approach women. Volume is the reason. When you can talk to dozens of strangers in a day and never see most of them again, each attempt costs you very little.

Philadelphia is the most New York-like city on this list. Center City is compact and walkable, and Rittenhouse Square is the kind of park where people sit, read and linger, which is where coach says daytime approaching works best. It also sits under two hours from New York by train, so plenty of people know both cities well.

What it lacks is scale and late hours. Bars close at 2 a.m., and outside Center City and a few busy neighborhoods, foot traffic drops quickly. It is a good city to practice in. It is thinner on a weeknight.

Seattle's summers are dry and bright, and its parks and waterfront fill up on long evenings. Its fall and winter are long, gray and wet, and people stay in. Newcomers often describe Seattle locals as polite but hard to get to know, which makes the first few seconds of an approach matter more.

Bars close at 2 a.m. Seattle rewards a man who does most of his approaching in the warm months and puts the darker months into dates with women he already met.

coach puts Toronto, along with Montreal and Vancouver, on his list of good dating cities with one condition: summer only. In his words, "the winters are brutal," and in summer "Canadians really do come out and play."

Toronto has a dense downtown and a subway, so on a warm evening it plays like a smaller New York. Last call comes at 1:45 a.m., and for several months a year the streets and patios empty out.

Both are spread out, and most people drive. My point about driving cities is that women tend to arrive and leave with the friends who drove them, which makes it hard to extend a night or move to a second bar together. In New York, he says, a woman who is going home alone anyway can easily leave with you instead.

San Diego's weather is a real daytime asset. People are outside, at the beach and in the parks most of the year, and that gives you more relaxed moments to say hello than a cold city does. Dallas's nightlife runs in districts such as Uptown and Deep Ellum, so you pick a strip for the night and stay there. Both cities stop serving at 2 a.m.

A good city gives you more chances. It does not take them for you. A man in Dallas who approaches women every weekend will meet more of them than a man in Manhattan who stays with the friends he came out with.

The skills are the same everywhere. You walk over without a long hesitation and open with a simple line. You read whether she is interested, and when she is, you move the conversation toward a number or a date. Learn those in any city and they work in all of them.

If you live in one of these cities and want to train in person, Cold Approach runs its Bootcamp in New York and Miami only. A training day is two four-hour blocks in the field, approaching real women, daygame and night game mixed to suit you, with live coaching on every approach and feedback after every set. Group is three consecutive days with no more than three students per coach. Private is one, two or three days, fully 1-on-1, and longer programs are quoted on request. There is no skill floor, and you fly home with a written practice plan: what is working, what needs attention, and where to focus when you go out again.