welcome to speed dating, the newest craze to sweep the san diego singles scene. milazzo is actually on several dates—six to be exact—and each is only six minutes long. if he wanted to, pete could be in and out of the bar in less than an hour, having spoken to half a dozen attractive, interesting and eligible women.
“it’s a time-saver,” he admits, “i could meet women in a regular bar, but not this many.”
speed dating, he professes, is “more of a sure thing.” he will know within a few minutes whether or not he is attracted to a girl, he says, and won’t have to spend the whole evening with someone he’s not interested in. “in order to meet this many women normally,” he explains, “i’d have to go on six or seven individual dates, and maybe four of five of those would be a total waste of time. here i can do it in one evening.” if he hits it off with one of his potential matches within the allotted six minutes, pete can always arrange a second date with her for another time. “i like the fact that i can meet six or seven women right away, and i can pick between them, and maybe date one that i really like,” he says. “it’s efficient.”
efficiency, it seems, may well be the main draw to the recent cultural phenomenon of speed dating. in a society where one-hour photo service, microwave dinners and 20-minute oil changes have become the norm, the notion of speed dating feeds the expectations of immediacy endemic to the 21st century. “the whole intention [of speed dating] is that you come out to meet somebody,” declares 38-year-old anthony, who now sits across from the blonde last seen talking to milazzo. “i used to race cars, and to use a metaphor from that, it’s like adding nitrous to your car. it makes it faster, it speeds it up. it’s cutting out all the crap and getting right to what you want.”
audrey kantorow, 26, the owner and manager of real personal speed dating, has no doubt that the recent rash of speed dating services is a response to the demands of a society made used to the pleasures of instantaneousness. “it’s definitely a fad,” she declares, “but if there wasn’t a market for this kind of thing, there wouldn’t be any product.”
kantorow, who runs her speed-dating service while holding down a full-time job and completing two master’s degrees online, moved to san diego after she graduated from college in maryland. with a background in sales and marketing and a love of the bar scene, kantorow—who is single herself—decided that founding real personal speed dating would be a perfect unification of the two. she is also, as it happens, the daughter of a couple who got engaged six weeks after they met and are still together 30 years later.
kantorow contends that she has a sizeable amount of competition in the speed-dating industry. touting her services as more individualized and personal than those of her competitors, she says she has a close relationship with every one of her clients. “when you call up, i’m the one who answers,” she says. “when you send me an e-mail, i’m the one who replies.”
still, with only 12 people at tonight’s real personal event, kantorow is in big competition with many other more prominent speed-dating companies, such as 8minutedating or hurrydate, many of whom boast 70 or 80 people at each event. and with such a sudden profusion of businesses all offering the same service, the amount of time allotted to each date becomes a veritable minefield of contention. “i think six minutes is the perfect amount of time,” declares kantorow, “because you have a guarantee that people are going to look at you in a way that they otherwise wouldn’t . they’re going to spend quality time with you and get to hear what you think. and, yes, i think you can have quality time in six minutes.”
andrew kiken is a man who disagrees. to him, it is the three extra minutes offered by his own speed dating service that make the difference. a few months ago, kiken’s mother told him that his brother had met a girlfriend through a speed-dating company in new york. his curiosity sparked, the 32-year-old bachelor decided to found san diego speed dating and two weeks later found himself hosting an event attended by 80 people. boasting a success rate of 70 percent, san diego speed dating offers between 10 and 12 dates in an evening, each lasting a whopping nine minutes. “i wanted to have more time than our competitors,” says kiken, “i think that’s important.”
kantorow and kiken were once business partners, before kantorow founded real personal, following a messy dispute with kiken over speed dating etiquette. “she wanted to spend $350 on business cards and do criminal background checks,” says kiken. “she also wanted the dates to be five minutes long. we parted ways.” though kantorow claims that she harbors no bad feelings towards her former colleague, kiken is not so diplomatic. “her events are going to fail,” he declares emphatically, “i guarantee it.”
kiken admits to participating in events hosted by rival speed-dating services, partly to get a feel for the competition, but predominantly to meet his own miss right. he is, it seems, a man who is not afraid to practice what he preaches. “i went to an 8minutedating event,” he recalls, “and it was weird when i told people what i did. i thought i might get kicked out for being part of the opposition. but restaurant owners go to other restaurants, bar owners go to other bars. and if our competitors want to come to one of our events, then they’re welcome to.”
in fact, going to as many speed dating events as possible, kiken declares, is the secret to founding your own success story, not only as an entrepreneur but also as a participant. “we just had a guy get a girlfriend from one of our events,” he says, “and he’d already been three times before. it’s kind of like trial and error, i guess.”
with a background in sales, kiken is quick to equate dating with pitching a hard sell. “it’s important to get your name out, to meet as many people as possible,” he says, “and the more effort you make at anything, the better result you’ll get. the more people you meet, the more places you go, the more things you do—then the more likely you are to meet that special person. but you have to make that effort first.”
to stephen kam, a 26-year-old graphic designer who is perfectly comfortable with his bachelorhood, andrew kiken’s statements are near travesty. “there is this driving thought nowadays that the meaning of life is somehow ensconced in the experience of falling and being in love,” he says, “and so suddenly there’s this great pressure to be doing so. and fast.”
speed dating, kam believes, is merely an extension of society’s unremitting obsession with instant gratification. “we seem to have this pervasive idea that if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing twice as fast” he says. “we already have instant coffee, so why not instant love?”
although kam has been curious enough to answer and even place several online personal ads, he is adamant that he would never go to a speed-dating event. “i think it would be a pretty pointless and masochistic event for me,” he says. “it takes me a while to establish enough of a comfort level with someone to actually open up to them. at best, i’d walk away with a few bare facts: whether or not my dates spoke english, whether they knew how to dress appropriately for an occasion and an idea of their general physical appeal.”
the whole concept of speed dating, says kam, seems tailored for people with a certain kind of personality—those who are able to talk comfortably with strangers, are good at reading body language and are able to put others at ease and establish a quick sense of intimacy.
“basically, politicians” he laughs.
to andrew kiken’s way of thinking, “dating is a numbers game.” he is adamant that the odds of finding a partner are upped with every speed-dating event attended. “if i’m single,” he says, “then it’s my fault, because i don’t go out enough. you need to do as much as you can to make yourself attractive to other people. if it’s not happening, then you need to try harder.” a single person’s social life, believes kiken, should be continually nurtured and polished. “i used to play soccer in college,” he explains, “but i had to train a whole summer to have that happen. i had to practice to do it. and that’s what you should do with your social life. the more people you meet, the more likely you are to meet someone you want to be with.”
kam disagrees entirely. dating will never be a game of numbers, he says, because of the sheer impracticality of such a statement. “the very act of applying a ‘logical’ process to such an ineffable goal just diminishes the possibilities of success,” he says. “for one thing, i think the act of searching for love makes us much more judgmental than we would normally be. we end up thinking things like, ‘oh well, they seem nice, but i can’t believe how badly they misspelled “individuality.’ there’s an implicit promise that true love really does exist, if you’ll only put forth the effort to seek it out. but the more fixated you become on meeting a match at an organized event, where you pay $30 and expect to get your money’s worth, the more disenchanted you’ll become.”
he pauses. “if someone finds their natural curiosity has turned to dogged determination to ‘find love or bust’, i think they might be better off spending their $30 on a chicken soup for the soul book.”
one thing that kam and kiken agree on, however, is the influence of the internet on the dating industry. “in the past, a person’s choice in romantic potentials was, out of practicality, restricted to a certain geographical or social locale,” says kam, “but now we suddenly realize that if there really is a mister or miss right somewhere, he or she could be anywhere in the world.” the internet, he adds, is in essence a worldwide market, perfect for hunting down that potential other half who may well be lurking anywhere from tulsa to tokyo.
“by their very nature,” he states, “internet personals support the initial premise—or promise—of soulmates. with so many people in the world, it seems that much more likely that one out of these trillions of people must be just the person for you. it can be a very seductive thought.”
kiken has met more than 60 women on the internet over a period of seven years. one of them claimed to be a model and even sent him a picture that seemed to confirm she was telling the truth. when it was time to meet face-to-face, however, kiken’s date was overweight and in a wheelchair. “she used to be a model,” he says, “and that really was her picture, but it was a very old one. she’d been in a car accident and gained a lot of weight since then, but she didn’t tell me that part. she just told me she was a model.”
although kiken concedes that it is possible to have a good conversation on the internet—one that presumably lasts more than nine minutes—he is resolute that the first thing people will ask is “got a picture?” san diego speed dating, he insists, is about more than aesthetic appearance. “every time you meet someone on the internet, you always have this hope that she’ll be exactly what you’re looking for,” he says, “but that hope rarely becomes a reality. people can deceive you so easily on the internet, but they can’t at speed-dating events. you can get a feeling for a person almost immediately face-to-face that you just can’t get on the computer.”
most people, he claims, come to speed dating events for the conversation. “if someone is good-looking, then that’s great for them, but they won’t get any more dates if they’re a terrible conversationalist,” he says.
speed-dater anthony agrees. “you learn that there are certain things you don’t want to say,” he says. “i try not to stick with the same old stuff. and you definitely don’t want to be ostentatious.”
anthony was in a band for 10 years, a lifestyle that afforded him the opportunity to meet plenty of women in his youth. “i lived a life that nobody can even fathom,” he recalls, shaking his head in disbelief. “i think i’ve had more than my fair share [of women]. that’s what i regret. i don’t know if we get an allotment, but i’m sure that i’m at my peak!” now in his late 30s, anthony doesn’t feel so comfortable going to bars and clubs to meet women. “i think that was ok when we were in our early 20s, but now people of my generation realize that we can’t do it anymore,” he acknowledges. “it’s a lot tougher. you have to find new ways to meet people.”
elise rollinson, event organizer for 8minutedating shares that opinion. “san diego has one of the youngest nightlife scenes around,” she says. “the median age seems to be about 22. a lot of bars are just complete meat markets.”
unlike kiken and kantorow, rollinson, 27, is not single. “i think it makes people at our events more relaxed to know i’m married,” she laughs, “there’s less of a feeling of competition.”
one of the main lures of speed dating, it seems, is the guarantee of control. “it’s a safe environment,” says kiken. “it’s a lot more structured than just going to a bar. you don’t know if people there are single, you don’t know if they’ll like you, and you don’t know if they’ll even talk to you.” he pauses and shrugs. “women just aren’t as nice as they used to be. you can quote me on that.”
the aspect of control, however, seems to extend even further than merely being part of a safe and structured environment; a speed dating event will guarantee you at least a six-minute audience with a person who otherwise might not look twice at you. “in a bar, you don’t know if anyone will talk to you,” says kiken, “but the women here will. i mean, they have to talk to you. for nine minutes, someone has to hear what you’ve got to say.”
kiken has a frequent propensity to rate people’s attractiveness on a scale of one to 10. most of san diego speed dating’s female clientele, he says, hover between a seven and a half and an eight. yet he denies that a speed-dating event is simply an arena that affords the client a quick ego boost. “yes, it’s flattering if someone wants to see you again after nine minutes,” he says, “but if a person is attractive, they generally already know it; they don’t need someone to tell them. i really do think people go to speed-dating events to look for other people, and not to be told they’re hot.”
however, he does admit that “having an attractive girlfriend or boyfriend kind of makes you feel good about yourself. everyone is looking for a good-looking partner.” kiken, in fact, rates himself as a six and a half but says wistfully, “if i was an eight, my social life would be much better.”
for kam, speed dating seems to be merely a gimmick that attempts to cash in on people’s fears of being alone. “if love is truly some mysterious, powerful realization of self, a cosmic puzzle, perhaps, where two pieces must find each other to make a whole,” he says, “then there’s a great temptation to conclude that life itself is about this search for completion. but it’s a completion that is only realized if we prove diligent, worthy, or fortunate enough.”
the outgrowth of this kind of underlying philosophy, he continues, is a society of people who very much feel a “need” to be in love, for the sake of their own completion. “i’ve met enough people,” he says, “who, while they’ll never admit it explicitly, are doing exactly this: looking for self-validation in someone else.”
as kam finishes his lunch at a local quizno’s, the phil collins version of the supremes song “you can’t hurry love” comes on the radio. the irony is not lost on him. “that’s exactly right,” he laughs, “you can’t hurry love. and you shouldn’t. when i look back at my previous relationships, some of my favorite moments weren’t the ‘now i have a girlfriend’ moments but the little discoveries and shared confidences along the way, as two people slowly opened themselves up to the possibilities of a relationship.”
he pauses and frowns. “do we really want to blast through that phase of falling in love? replace months of conversation with a true-false questionnaire?”
the song ends, and kam stands up to leave. “i won’t pretend to have all the answers,” he says, “but i do prefer thinking of love as a process of revelation, not an excavation.”
kiken, of course, disagrees. “i think you absolutely can hurry love,” he declares. “people think that things will just happen naturally, but they won’t. you have to try. you have to make things happen. if you’re really laid back about it, then you’ll probably end up single for the rest of your life, unless you’re very attractive. i think that people who participate in speed-dating events are doing the right thing. they’re single, but they’re doing something about it”
for the hundreds of single men and women in san diego, speed dating services may well be a handy tool in the ongoing battle to meet a viable mate. for audrey kantorow and andrew kiken, they are an exciting and enjoyable way to make a living. for paul milazzo, they are an efficient way to ensure a seat opposite a pretty blonde in a busy bar.
for stephen kam, however, they are a fascinating but improbable option. though he finds it significant that so many new avenues for finding love are making themselves available to upcoming generations, he will not be having any six- (or eight- or nine-) minute conversations anytime in the near future.
“speed-dating services and internet personals are an interesting phenomenon, and i’m sure my curiosity will get the best of me from time to time, as it already has,” he says. “but in the end, i think the only thing we can ever do is be the kind of person that we ourselves could love, and hope that eventually someone else notices.”
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