Is NYC a Good City for Dating as a Single Man?

Yes. For a single man who is willing to meet women in person, New York is one of the best cities in the world for dating. It is the most populous city in the United States, and census figures count about 86 adult men for every 100 adult women. A park, a coffee shop or a bar is almost always a short walk away. The city is hard on men who wait to be noticed and generous to men who start talking.

So whether you typed "is NYC good for dating", "is New York good for dating" or "how is New York for dating", the honest answer is the same. The city is good. How good depends on what you do in it.

a dating coach has lived in New York for long stretches and calls it "my number one city in the world for game". His reasons are practical ones.

First, the supply of new people never runs out. If a conversation goes badly, you will almost certainly never see her again, and the city forgets it by the next block. That makes every awkward moment cheap, which is exactly what a man learning needs.

Second, a lot of New Yorkers are new to the city. They moved for a job or school, they do not have decades of old friends around them, and many are actively trying to meet people. A woman sitting in a park on a Saturday afternoon has come out to be around others. As coach puts it, if someone wanted to be left alone, "they'd be at home in their apartment."

Adult women outnumber adult men in New York, according to census figures for the city. In a city this large, that gap means a lot of women.

The ratio alone will not get you a date. It does mean the raw arithmetic favors you more than in many places, and that a single man is rarely short of women to meet. What he is usually short of is the habit of walking over.

Most cities are good for one kind of meeting and weak for the other. New York is strong at both.

By day, My favorite places are the parks. He names Washington Square Park, Bryant Park, Madison Square Park and Union Square as good spots, with the best one changing over time. Coffee shops and bookstores work too, and an instant date is easy because there is always somewhere to sit within a couple of blocks.

At night, the range is wide. Ordinary bars with no line and no bouncer are full of young professionals out after work. Exclusive clubs are harder to get into and full of very attractive women. In between sit the semi-exclusive places with a selective door and a better ratio inside. Bars here also stay open late, which gives you more time to meet someone.

New York is not easy, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.

• It is expensive. Rent, drinks and dinners add up fast, so cheap date ideas matter.
• People move fast. On the sidewalk, plenty of women are rushing with headphones in, and those approaches are harder.
• The standard is high. There are many well-dressed, successful men in the city, so a man who has let his clothes or his fitness slide stands out for the wrong reasons.
• Winter is long. Daytime meeting slows down in the cold months, and nights out carry more of the load.

For most men who put themselves out there, yes. You can meet a woman at an art gallery opening on a Thursday and walk her to a wine bar ten minutes later. There is always somewhere new to take her, and the variety of people you meet is hard to match anywhere else.

It stops being fun when the whole dating life lives on a phone. coach calls New York the best city for online dating he knows, and he still says "you should consider it a bonus round" rather than the main plan.

In New York, where you live shapes your dating life. It is easy to get a woman to come into Manhattan and much harder to get her to travel out to a far borough. My advice is to live in Manhattan below about 60th Street, or in Williamsburg, even if that means a smaller place or a roommate. Being near good bars and a park helps too.

The city gives you the setting. It does not teach you what to say, how to read her, or how to leave gracefully when she is not interested. That comes from reps with honest feedback.

Cold Approach runs its Bootcamp in New York and Miami only. Each training day is two four-hour blocks in the field, with daygame and night game mixed to suit you. Group is three consecutive days with no more than three students per coach, and Private is one, two or three days fully 1-on-1. There is no skill floor, so a man who has never approached a stranger in this city is exactly who it is for.