Any single person in NYC (or anywhere else for that matter) will tell you the hardest thing is meeting people. Usually after getting dolled up for a night out with the hope of finally meeting that special someone you step into the bar just to realize its the same scene as always. Turns out to be just a sea of faces, never knowing who is actually available, who's looking for a one night stand etc...As a result many of us turn to online dating. Being a graduate student I can't justify spending the little money I have on a dating site so I've tried OkCupid. I will admit I have had a few dates that have turned out ok, take last weeks post for example. A majority of the time however, you end up with someone who most likely was really good at using photoshop based on their pictures vs the real thing and/or conversation is usually forced while both of you hope to make each other that special someone, when most likely they're not. That is if you make it to a date after sorting through a mass of creepers and their "hey baby" messages. Having a couple of these experiences I was turned off of online dating it was time to just go back to the real world and hope to serendipitously meet someone. That was until my friend J told me about a new site called Grouper.
The concept of Grouper seems strange at first. You sign up by giving them your name, email and then link it to your Facebook profile. Once in the "social club" as they call it, you receive an invite for a date. You're given a choice of pretty much any weeknight for the date. Grouper will then set up a reservation at a nice bar somewhere in the city. For 20$ you get this set up as well as a free round of drinks during the date. After selecting your date you select 2 wing women for the date. The three of you then go and meet another guy and his 2 friends at the bar. According to the site they claim to match the two Grouper clients based on Facebook profiles in order to get a good match of personalities within the group, who knows if this is really true. J, A, B and I all decided to give it a try and I was the first selected for the date. Turns out Grouper may be onto something.
Since only three people can go A, B and I went on the first Grouper. The location was a nice tequileria down by Ludlow called Viktor and Spoils. A nice selection by Grouper since I love a good margarita. (and the bar did not disappoint with their watermelon margarita!) Being a Wednesday night it also wasn't very crowded or loud making conversation easier. Running a little late we arrived after the guys. We were sitting in the back of the bar with a whole booth area to ourselves which was great. From past experience I've learned normally within the first 5 minutes you can tell how a date is going to go. These boys definitely passed the 5 minute test. Upon sitting down we did the usual introductions, names, jobs, where were from etc. Turns out it was their first Grouper experience as well so we were all in the same boat. What was great though was they seemed just as excited about it as we were. Everyone seemed to get along and embrace the situation of trying something new. The guys were energetic, sarcastic and outgoing which was a great match for A, B and I so we avoided having lots of awkward silences. Whats great was there was no pressure. There was no specific couple being set up, it was just a group of people seeing if they get along. The pressure of forcing something was gone and you could relax and have fun, if a match comes out of that then great and if not you still get a fun night out. We ended up staying for a little over 3 hours and I honestly haven't had that much fun in a while just laughing and talking and meeting new people. I enjoyed a nice watermelon margarita to start which tasted pretty much like tequila with a hint of watermelon (no complaints with that!) followed by the Anejo Smash which tasted a lot like a mojito but with tequila. After a while it seemed like just a group of friends getting together to hang out. I dont know if any matches were made but we all seemed to be open to hang out again so even new friends is a great thing to get out of any evening. Even if that doesn't happen it at least at night Hump Day treat.
For now I give you a thumbs up Grouper. It will be interesting to see if we try it again how the groups differ. We may have gotten lucky this time with a good set of guys. These seemed like genuinely nice guys just looking to get out and meet people and I'm excited to see if there are more out there. The site actually claims to not be an online dating site at all so even if its just for new friends, Grouper helps make this big city a little more manageable and what more can you ask for from an online "social club".
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Saturday, April 21, 2012
The Tighten Method
After enduring countless years of winter lasting at least until April, this year New York has surprised us all by giving us an early spring! Flowers have been blooming, the sun is shining and people are emerging from their winter hibernation. There could not be a happier time in the city. However with this nice weather comes the looming threat of shorts, tank tops.....and BIKINIS! In the never ending battle of having to face wearing a two piece this summer, as well as prep for my upcoming half marathon, I decided to try mixing up my workouts for some fun. To do this I thought I would give kickboxing a try. My friend J and I signed up through the Urban Girl Squad last Saturday to take one of these classes at an Equinox gym here in the city. Urban Girl Squad works to organize events in the city for women as a chance to meet and get to know each other. Seemed like a Saturday afternoon kickboxing class would be fun. It was brutal. To add to the hour of endless punching and kicking a punching bag while holding weighted gloves I had the added bonus of fighting off the previous night's hangover (my own fault I guess). Luckily after an hour of some serious sweating we were rewarded with a lovely goody bag from the gym including a pass for a free 3 day trial membership. While we were tired, the workout felt great so we decided to go this weekend for 3 days straight and check out all the gym has to offer.
Our first day at the gym began at 6:30AM Thursday morning. Since kickboxing was so fun the first time we figured we'd give another class a try. The class was led by a different instructor this time and titled "cardio kickboxing" rather thank only kickboxing, but that can't make much of a difference right?....Wrong. Maybe because it was 6:30AM everything seemed harder, but this class required a lot more coordination than I had remembered. Instructions were being yelled at us of different combinations such as "jab, jab, duck, punch, jab, uppercut, kick, kick, kick etc" which were all to be done at a pretty fast tempo and for a good 5 minute interval. My heart rate was definitely up but half the time my limbs were flailing around trying to get my body to move as fast as he was saying. Needless to say it was certainly good at waking someone up. Thanks to our instructors demand for non girly push-ups though I can say I was feeling it the next day, and felt I totally deserved my egg and cheese bagel that morning.
For the second day we tried out the gym's facilities. Me on the treadmill and J on the elliptical we powered through another solid workout. As a reward for two days in a row of working out we chose a nice dinner of sushi and some very strong beers (by strong I'm talking 9% which post workout it pretty much doubled). In addition, as with any good dinner there must be desert, so we decided for the always delicious choice of brownies. After a tough workout though we couldn't just make any brownie....Thanks to Chef J these "reward brownies" included a layer of graham cracker crust, a layer of brownie, and a peanut butter swirl and crushed oreo topping. If you choose to make them at home really what it involves is looking in your cupboard and asking how much of this can I put into a brownie?
Finally the last day of our three-day trial had arrived. I chose to attend a different class led by our first kickboxing instructor. This time the class was titled "The Titan Method." Having "Titan" in the title should have been my first warning this was not going to be a nice early Saturday morning class. Instead it turned out to be probably one of the hardest classes I've ever taken, and I didn't even do all of the exercises the whole time. The class works in 5 minute intervals with 30 sec rest in between. Each 5 minutes is then broken into 5 different exercises you do for 1 minute each. Sounds ok......that is until you are doing burpies, crunches, push ups and many other forms or torture for a full minute each. I guess it works a lot like P90X with muscle confusion but to me it just brought back flashbacks of pre-season for high school swimming...not a good time.
While its been a painful three days its also been oddly invigorating, and while it was sad to leave Equinox (my gym heaven) it was fun while it lasted. Looks like its back to the Y and Central Park for now!
Our first day at the gym began at 6:30AM Thursday morning. Since kickboxing was so fun the first time we figured we'd give another class a try. The class was led by a different instructor this time and titled "cardio kickboxing" rather thank only kickboxing, but that can't make much of a difference right?....Wrong. Maybe because it was 6:30AM everything seemed harder, but this class required a lot more coordination than I had remembered. Instructions were being yelled at us of different combinations such as "jab, jab, duck, punch, jab, uppercut, kick, kick, kick etc" which were all to be done at a pretty fast tempo and for a good 5 minute interval. My heart rate was definitely up but half the time my limbs were flailing around trying to get my body to move as fast as he was saying. Needless to say it was certainly good at waking someone up. Thanks to our instructors demand for non girly push-ups though I can say I was feeling it the next day, and felt I totally deserved my egg and cheese bagel that morning.
For the second day we tried out the gym's facilities. Me on the treadmill and J on the elliptical we powered through another solid workout. As a reward for two days in a row of working out we chose a nice dinner of sushi and some very strong beers (by strong I'm talking 9% which post workout it pretty much doubled). In addition, as with any good dinner there must be desert, so we decided for the always delicious choice of brownies. After a tough workout though we couldn't just make any brownie....Thanks to Chef J these "reward brownies" included a layer of graham cracker crust, a layer of brownie, and a peanut butter swirl and crushed oreo topping. If you choose to make them at home really what it involves is looking in your cupboard and asking how much of this can I put into a brownie?
Finally the last day of our three-day trial had arrived. I chose to attend a different class led by our first kickboxing instructor. This time the class was titled "The Titan Method." Having "Titan" in the title should have been my first warning this was not going to be a nice early Saturday morning class. Instead it turned out to be probably one of the hardest classes I've ever taken, and I didn't even do all of the exercises the whole time. The class works in 5 minute intervals with 30 sec rest in between. Each 5 minutes is then broken into 5 different exercises you do for 1 minute each. Sounds ok......that is until you are doing burpies, crunches, push ups and many other forms or torture for a full minute each. I guess it works a lot like P90X with muscle confusion but to me it just brought back flashbacks of pre-season for high school swimming...not a good time.
While its been a painful three days its also been oddly invigorating, and while it was sad to leave Equinox (my gym heaven) it was fun while it lasted. Looks like its back to the Y and Central Park for now!
Friday, April 20, 2012
First post, first review!
Happy Friday! For my first entry I wanted to share a review for those looking for a new bar to try up here in the Upper East Side. As those who have lived in the upper 90's know the past year has shown some major improvements in the bar scene thanks to the owners of Earl's Beer and Cheese, ABV, Vinyl and Kaia. Each specializing in their own drink types, Earl's being the place for beer and ABV, Vinyl and Kaia all for wine, the one piece missing was a cocktail place. Well thanks to The Guthrie Inn we now have a cocktail place and it is conveniently located right next to Earl's. For those of us at Mt. Sinai this may be a reason to never leave "the bubble".
I'm going to preface this post by saying this venture was for a first date so I may be missing some details of the place as I was trying to not embarrass myself more than assess my surroundings. Walking into The Guthrie Inn it looks like a classy version of Earl's. My favorite deer wallpaper (the same one as in Parks and Rec intro!) is missing, and instead of a deer's head hanging on the wall you have a chandelier hanging from the ceiling. You are no longer cramped into long benches for tables but big booths and instead of a kitchen in the back there is additional seating in the form of large U shaped booth (may get tricky once it starts to get crowded).The original plan for the evening had been to go grab beers at Earl's since both of us agreed we were beer people, but as usual it was too busy. Upon approaching the bar we were handed a long list of cocktails ranging from classic drinks like Sidecars and Moscow Mules to some of their own concoctions like a "Stirred and Boozy". Being in the mood for beer still we chose to stick with their bottled beers. The only have 2 available being a cocktail place so it made our decision fairly easy. Being in date mode I can't remember the specific name of the beer but we started with their "farmers ale". Still being new and somewhat unheard of there was actually room to sit and so we grabbed the booth in the back. Luckily we were able to have the whole booth to ourselves the for the whole time. The lighting was a little dim (maybe a good thing for a date) and music slightly loud but overall it was a nice place to sit and talk for a while. Following the first round of beer we gave the other bottle a try, this one was a belgium ale that tasted a lot like a light version of Guinness, my favorite of the two and recommendation if you are going to drink the beer here. The date was going well up to this point so we decided to get one more round but this time venture into cocktails. I chose a moscow mule knowing it is one of my new favorite drinks and my date followed my lead and had one as well. I will definitely be returning for these! The drink only consists of three ingredients, ginger beer, vodka and lime juice but they are delish! I'm so glad there is finally a place close by to have a good Mule.
I've learned after three drinks its probably best to end a first date here so we ended the evening before too many cocktails were consumed, after all it was only Thursday. I must say though after looking at the menu I will definitely be returning here. Being across the street from me I have no excuse, but even those who do not live in the UES I recommend trekking up here to check it out. Ive added a link to the Time Out NY review as well.http://www.timeout.com/newyork/the-feed-blog/the-feed-first-look-the-guthrie-inn Cheers!
I'm going to preface this post by saying this venture was for a first date so I may be missing some details of the place as I was trying to not embarrass myself more than assess my surroundings. Walking into The Guthrie Inn it looks like a classy version of Earl's. My favorite deer wallpaper (the same one as in Parks and Rec intro!) is missing, and instead of a deer's head hanging on the wall you have a chandelier hanging from the ceiling. You are no longer cramped into long benches for tables but big booths and instead of a kitchen in the back there is additional seating in the form of large U shaped booth (may get tricky once it starts to get crowded).The original plan for the evening had been to go grab beers at Earl's since both of us agreed we were beer people, but as usual it was too busy. Upon approaching the bar we were handed a long list of cocktails ranging from classic drinks like Sidecars and Moscow Mules to some of their own concoctions like a "Stirred and Boozy". Being in the mood for beer still we chose to stick with their bottled beers. The only have 2 available being a cocktail place so it made our decision fairly easy. Being in date mode I can't remember the specific name of the beer but we started with their "farmers ale". Still being new and somewhat unheard of there was actually room to sit and so we grabbed the booth in the back. Luckily we were able to have the whole booth to ourselves the for the whole time. The lighting was a little dim (maybe a good thing for a date) and music slightly loud but overall it was a nice place to sit and talk for a while. Following the first round of beer we gave the other bottle a try, this one was a belgium ale that tasted a lot like a light version of Guinness, my favorite of the two and recommendation if you are going to drink the beer here. The date was going well up to this point so we decided to get one more round but this time venture into cocktails. I chose a moscow mule knowing it is one of my new favorite drinks and my date followed my lead and had one as well. I will definitely be returning for these! The drink only consists of three ingredients, ginger beer, vodka and lime juice but they are delish! I'm so glad there is finally a place close by to have a good Mule.
I've learned after three drinks its probably best to end a first date here so we ended the evening before too many cocktails were consumed, after all it was only Thursday. I must say though after looking at the menu I will definitely be returning here. Being across the street from me I have no excuse, but even those who do not live in the UES I recommend trekking up here to check it out. Ive added a link to the Time Out NY review as well.http://www.timeout.com/newyork/the-feed-blog/the-feed-first-look-the-guthrie-inn Cheers!
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