It’s a Thursday night and a small crowd spills from a low-lit, white-walled bar onto Hackney Road, smoking Vogues and nursing Negronis. Inside, late-twenty-somethings in Issey Miyake and linen shirts exchange stories – and quite possibly phone numbers – as the speed-dating session wraps up. I’d agreed on a whim to join my friend for the night, arriving as a sceptic and leaving as something of a convert: 15 stimulating conversations later (and three admittedly less so), and I’d had a significantly better time than an equivalent stretch spent swiping on the apps, which my friend and I had both long sworn off.
The event – by Almost Lovers, which hosts multiple speed-dating events at bars across east London every month – is just one of a new wave of singles nights attempting to shake up the capital’s dating scene. In south London, there are La Monocle’s speed-dating pop-ups for the FLINTA+ community, inspired by the classic 1920s Parisian venue of the same name. Someone’s Type offers an air of exclusivity with its invite-only mixers around town. Lesbian bar La Camionera’s singles nights have become a regular Tuesday fixture in east London. Art Dating Club is one for the whimsically inclined, with sketch nights and poetry evenings featuring the likes of Jem Calder, author of contemporary romance novel I Want You To Be Happy. Gooce was set up to recreate an at-home dinner party atmosphere where “everyone happens to be single”, with ticketed supper clubs at restaurants across the city and a seating plan that rotates throughout the night. The list could go on.
Singles nights are nothing new, of course. The difference now is that these are sellout events – “women’s tickets usually within minutes”, says Almost Lovers founder Sophia (she keeps her surname a secret to protect her side hustle). “Men always seem to need a bit more convincing for whatever reason.” Guest lists are “semi-curated”, often relying on word-of-mouth, allowing the nights to maintain an air of cool that has generally been missing from your average mixer.
“I think what we’re seeing now with singles nights is what we saw with dating apps a few years ago,” says journalist and author Olivia Petter, 32, who launched Red Lips Dating last November with ticketed evenings at Ellie’s (the Kingsland Road home of the notorious £8 Martini). Women are invited to bring along a single male friend (or a single female on WLW nights), meaning “every man has been vetted” – which Petter believes adds a reassuring element. “At first, meeting on the apps was uncool,” she says. “Now it’s commonplace. And I think that’s what we’re getting to with singles nights. Everyone feels a little cringed out by the concept at the start, but I think there’s a real sense of camaraderie that quickly fills these rooms and dissipates that.”
Perhaps it’s no surprise that these events have taken off in the way they have: pushback to the apps has reached such extremes that some are swearing off dating altogether. “When I first moved to London I found the apps pretty draining,” Sophia says. “Conversations would fizzle out, I’d spend time chatting to someone only for there to be not much chemistry in person. Instead of investing weeks talking to someone online only to be disappointed when you finally meet, at these events you can get a genuine sense of lots of people in one night.”
Of course, they might be popular – but the real question is, are they successful? Petter says one guest recently met her date’s family; another told her she’d just said “I love you” to her match (it was reciprocated). And while I didn’t quite find love, I did come away with a second date.
This article originally appeared in the fifth issue of Broadsheet London's magazine.
