Is Central Park a Good Place to Meet Women?

It is okay, but it is not the best choice. a dating coach says Central Park is "actually okay for game" and that a lot of the other New York parks are better, naming Washington Square, Bryant, Madison Square and Union Square. The reason is not that Central Park has fewer women. It has fewer women who are in the right spot for a conversation.

If you are visiting New York and Central Park is where you will be, you can still meet people there. You just need a different plan than you would use in a smaller park.

A small park puts everybody in view. You walk a loop, see who is sitting alone and make a choice. Central Park is so large that people spread out, and a lot of them are in motion. Some are running, some are cycling, some are walking a long route through the middle to get across town.

A woman in the middle of a run is not available for a conversation, and a woman cutting across the park on a mission is not either. My warning about the street also applies: many people are walking fast with headphones in, and those sets are harder to get. You spend more of the day walking and less of it talking.

The core idea from coach holds anywhere: "If someone's out in a park, they've come out to be among people." A woman in Central Park who is sitting on a bench, lying on a lawn or reading under a tree has come outside on purpose and has time.

That means your job is not to cover ground. It is to find the places where people stop:

• Benches and lawns where women are sitting, not passing.
• Spots near something to watch or do, such as a performer, a sports game or a cart.
• Anywhere people wait in line, such as a coffee cart or a cafe, where there is a natural reason to chat.

Stay there, and let the stopped ones come into view. Do not chase a woman who is walking fast.

New York summers are hot and humid, winters are chilly and damp, and spring and autumn are usually mild. Parks work best when people are outside, so Central Park is much better on a mild afternoon than on a cold weekday. In bad weather, go indoors. A cafe or a bookstore works for the same reason a park does, as long as the woman you pick looks relaxed.

Keep it simple and honest, as you would anywhere else. Stand a few feet away so she can see you and step back if she wants, and say hello at a normal volume.

"I saw you reading and wanted to say hi. I am Sam."

If she turns toward you, keep going and ask about what she is reading or what she is doing for the afternoon. If she answers briefly and looks back down, say "enjoy your book" and leave.

When you only have an hour, you will get more conversations in a smaller, busier park than in Central Park. coach names four in Manhattan that work well, and they are close enough to visit in one afternoon.

Central Park is a good place to start if you are already there, and a bad place to make a plan around.

In a city of this size, a bad conversation costs almost nothing. My point is that you have "an unlimited supply of strangers," and if a talk goes badly you will probably never see her again. Do not carry it into the next set.

The skill that matters is the same in every park: seeing the woman who has time and walking over without talking yourself out of it. On a Cold Approach Bootcamp, a coach stands next to you in the field and gives you feedback after every set. Each training day has two four-hour blocks, daygame and night game mixed to suit you, and no experience is required. The Bootcamp runs in Miami and New York.

For the full picture of how the program works in the city, read Dating Bootcamp in New York City.