In Five New York Minutes (Part 1)

I’ve been wanting to try speed dating since I started this blog. As something of a dating enthusiast, I can’t think of anything more up my alley than cramming twenty five-minute dates into one night. After all, when was the last time it took me more than five minutes to decide whether a guy was worth my while? My problem was, I didn’t want to try speed dating on my own, and it took some time to rangle up two girlfriends to go on this adventure with me. Lucy, Kathy and I bought a Living Social coupon to NY Minute Dating, then took approximately two months to decide on a time all of us could actually do it together. Single ladies are busy!

We chose a Friday night event, and we were pumped.  The day of, we got an email saying the location had changed, so we decided to meet at V Bar, which was nearby, for a couple drinks beforehand. Getting a little tipsy was a must. A few cucumber martinis later, we checked our email to confirm the location.

“Oh,” said Kathy. “I don’t know why I thought this bar was near here. We’re actually kind of far.”

Shit, we realized we were going to be those girls who were late for speed dating. 3Ten Lounge was at least a 15-minute walk away, and the event started in five minutes! We hopped in a cab, and ran through the door of the bar only a couple minutes late. It was empty. Was there a back room somewhere we weren’t seeing? Lucy desperately had to pee so she ran to the bathroom. That’s when Kathy and I had the same realization: we had looked at the original email’s location instead of the email with the change of venue. We were in the wrong bar. Now we were at least 20 minutes away from the actual location.

If there’s one thing I hate more than anything else, it’s being late. So I was stressing. I had images of 20 men and 17 women, patiently speed dating, and the three of us busting through the door, making a huge scene with our arrival. Was it even worth going anymore? Well, we certainly hadn’t held on to these Living Social deals for two months for nothing. We hopped into cab #2.

When we arrived at the bar, a good thirty minutes late, the event had clearly not even begun. Men and women in name tags were standing awkwardly around waiting. The women looked normal, the men on the other hand, all looked like some variation of a hot mess. A group in the corner was hunched over a table, speaking a language I didn’t recognize while eying the girls. And most were just standing solo, nursing drinks and acting uncomfortable. Thankful that I’d come with friends, I booked it to the bar and the three of us focused on the issue of “Law & Order: SVU” that was playing on the bar’s TVs. I was working on my second vodka soda when a woman with a clipboard announced it was time to begin. She told Lucy to stay put on a bar stool and moved Kathy and I to a booth on the other side of the room. We slid in. We were supposed to go on two separate dates in the same booth? Interesting… We were armed with pieces of paper and told to write down the names of every guy we met and circle the ones we liked.

Sitting so close we were actually touching, with four drinks each in our systems, and still coming down from our rush to get here, Kathy and I began to speed date. Check back on Wednesday for details on some of my more entertainig dates that night. Spoiler alert: I didn’t circle any names.

—Raz, 25, NYC