I date a lot, and most of my dates go like this: Grab drinks and maybe some food, and figure it out on the fly from there. It’s been a recipe for some success for me (claims the single man). Of my dates in 2012, I enjoyed all but one.
Good, right? No! Turns out I’ve been doing it all wrong. Earlier today Buzzfeed’s Anna North posted charts from HowAboutWe, a dating site where users suggest an activity. The piece, “How to Date Anywhere in the Country,” details dating info from the site for individual American cities.
Oh, Philadelphia.
The No. 1 activity suggested on HowAboutWe is “How about we take advantage of Pay-What-You-Wish day at the Museum of Art.” How about we go on a date and I prove what a big cheapskate I am! Also, this is really, really limiting: Pay-what-you-wish day is only the first Sunday of every month. The number one suggested date of Philadelphians on this site is one that can only be done 12 times a year.
But even more fun are the top five activities suggested. Here’s the list
- Bowling
- Board games
- Dancing
- Tennis
QuizzoTrivia
Number four is my favorite. Who goes on tennis dates1? But as someone who dressed as Björn Borg for Halloween in 2011, you’d think I of all people would have been on a tennis date. Even better: I happened to date someone over the summer who played tennis twice a week right down the street. I should have known it wasn’t going to work out when she didn’t invite me to play.
A quick scan of all the cities shows Philadelphia was one of the few places where tennis cracked the top-5 in suggested dates. I’ve come up with a few alterations to the statue of William Penn the city should make to celebrate its place as the Tennis Date Capital of America.
1 “You do need two people,” an ex-girlfriend wrote to me over IM this morning, which makes sense. She also noted that Pittsburgh’s most popular date activity was board games. Detroit’s, too! In Cleveland dancing is No. 1, which makes me think Clevelanders court each other by dancing to rock ‘n’ roll at sock hops.
4 months ago
