I can say I’ve been on a triple-blind date. Can you?
Chances are probably not. Probably not unless you’ve applied and been accepted to Grouper; a social site that’s been around for a while but is now really picking up in popularity in the city. The concept is quite genius: sign up with two friends of the same sex and they match you with three friends of the opposite sex for you to go out with. Bottom line: if it sucks, at least you’re with your friends. They preach that they are not a dating site. Of course it isn’t! It’s a social site. Meant to get people out of their social circles and into new ones. And by ‘new ones’ I mean a date for Saturday night. I’m kidding. I mean, honestly other New Yorkers, when’s the last time you stepped outside your usual crew and spent time getting to know someone (that wasn’t necessarily a date)?
A friend of mine heard of Grouper through her co-worker who loves it and said, she’d do this every week! And after last night, I too drank the kool-aid and loved it. We signed up about a week ago and within a couple days we got the email: we’re in. We picked our date and time and Grouper took care of the rest. All we needed to do was show up.
Me and my girlfriends decided that dinner and pre-drinks was mandatory for this social experiment (as I’ve come to call it). We were excited. This was something none of us had never done before. Yea, we’ve gone out with people we’ve just met, one on one, but never in this format: blind. I’ve been on one blind date in my life. It was to my sophomore homecoming in high school. And it was awful. Beyond awful. Anyways, as we got closer to Polar Lounge, doubt started to set in a bit. Walking down Third Avenue in Gramercy park, we started noticing groups of 3 guys and realized that this might be the most awkward encounter we might ever experience. What if they were super old? Or… I’m going to stop right there because if I say anything else I was, I’ll sound super shallow. And I’m totes not.
We arrived at Polar lounge (fashionably late, obvi) and the first thing I noticed was there was absolutely no one in the bar. Except for three guys. We took a moment to get our bearings, calm ourselves, accept our reality and realize that bolting up the stairs was not an option when Pat came up to us and said “Are you guys here for Grouper?”
And that was the start of it. Early conversation teetered on the side of a job interview but after about 15 minutes, it was totally fine. It was better than fine - we were laughing and having a really good time. We discussed how many notes a triangle has (it’s one by the way. I know I was shocked too). We even did some Improv skits! Isn’t that so fun?! These guys, if I saw them at a bar I doubt I would have taken notice but sitting down, having a conversation, laughs, drinks… what else can you really ask for? We stayed there for a couple more hours as about 6 more people in total came into the bar so we thought we’d try a second spot: Spin. We stayed there for a drink and then decided it was time to call it a night… it was 1AM on a Wednesday!
We all exchanged numbers and more or less expressed we should hang out again but who knows if we were really just exchanging courtesies. Was there a love connection? Doubt it. Will I see these guys again? Who knows. Will I do Grouper again? Hell-to-the-YES!
