Lincoln wants to set you up with his single friend Gowtham.
“He’s an easy person to talk to,” Lincoln says earnestly. “After a nasty breakup, he picked me up, drove me to Ocean Beach, and listened to me for four hours just pouring my heart out.”
Lincoln is giving this testimonial in front of a crowd of around 100 locals at “Date My Friend,” part of a regular series. The audience approves, waving paper hearts attached to popsicle sticks for Gowtham — a 5-foot-10, 34-year-old homeowner and hardware engineer with a max bench of 195 pounds. These vitals are neatly itemized on the screen behind him as he sits on a stool, blushing.
At Date My Friend, hosted by the team behind the hyperlocal publication Lower Haight Local (opens in new tab), San Franciscans pitch their single friends with a slide deck in five minutes or less. The premise is simple: Instead of algorithmic matching, finding love is outsourced to those willing to stand up and insist, publicly, that someone is worth the trouble.
“People are pissed at the apps,” says Joel Reske, the event’s organizer. He describes dating sites as highly mediated: “You only see what a person wants you to see.” Bars, by contrast, offer the opposite problem — too little structure, too much guesswork. Date My Friend occupies a narrow middle ground: enough formality to permit romance without crowding out spontaneity. The stakes feel high — the friend must be willing to stake their reputation on vouching for this person, and the single must be willing to get exposed to a crowd of strangers onstage. But many brave souls say that to find love, it’s worth it.
Date My Friend has sold out four times. The January event, hosted at arts collective The Faight and focused on singles over 30, drew such demand that it was split into two nights; both had waitlists topping 150.
“Age? 32. But more importantly — Spotify age? 25,” a man named John quips while presenting his single friend Bella, a venture capitalist focused on food and agriculture tech who lives in NoPa.
“Relationship with parents? Can confirm: not weird!”
Over two hours, including a brief intermission, friends give ringing endorsements for 15 singles: an ER doctor who offers unsolicited tax advice, an EDM enthusiast who goes to therapy, and a Juilliard grad who drives a matte red Tesla. Endorphins are contagious, jokes land safely, and sincere moments are met with audible empathy.
“If it’s not a funny presentation, it’s a heartfelt one,” says Annalise Wulf, another of the event’s organizers. In a few cases, the presenters’ affection for their friends runs so deep, it’s easy to suspect they might have secretly fallen for them.
Andrew, presenting Matthew, opens with a disclaimer. “First thing to know: We both work in education, so all the VCs in the area — you can mentally cross us out right now.” (Translation: they might not be a good investment if you’re looking for earning potential.)
On the next slide are Matthew’s hobbies: writing, talking about Michigan, wine, and international affairs and diplomacy.
“He’s a writer,” Andrew says. “Well, he wrote a book but never published it. So, I don’t know — says something about his finishing potential.”
The audience roars. Do some of these people moonlight as standup comics? Turns out, yes, one does: Robbie, who’s presenting Sarah.
“She will sing karaoke, and this is a threat!” he warns before showing us Sarah’s “husband mood board” with photos of Timothée Chalamet and Nick Wilde, the fox in “Zootopia.”
On his final slide, large, bold text flashes just long enough to register: “VERY RICH FAMILY.”
“Let’s just say your wedding will be provided for,” he eggs on. “DM her today!”
Links to apply to pitch a friend or to purchase tickets — ranging from $15 to $25 — can be found on Date My Friend’s Instagram (opens in new tab). Reske and his team accept applicants on a first-come, first-served basis, not on technical merit. Most presentations skew more “PowerPoint-literate” than “McKinsey consultant.” Thirty minutes and two glasses of wine were all it took for Robbie to put together his pitch on Sarah.
In a dating culture defined by the sense that the right person is just out of frame, a physical room of finite options feels like a relief. Other DIY methods — from TikTok shoutouts (opens in new tab) to reviving the singles table at weddings (opens in new tab) — are also on the rise.
Every single who gets pitched is employed, well-rounded, and a great cook — according to their friends. Two women in the audience lament that Date My Friend isn’t hosted in the Marina, where they live and where, they assume, all the men in the room would be straight. Reske — known in his neighborhood as a community builder who hosts line-dancing lessons in his garage every Sunday — says he’s more than happy to help anyone get their own event off the ground.
After the final pitch, the singles disperse into the crowd with the same buzz as “The Bachelor” on a group date. Gowtham says he’s been single for three years, and his pitch — plus the professional photographs included in his slides — were a Christmas gift from Lincoln.
People chat up the pitchers too, some of whom shamelessly plug their own romantic availability. “A lot of presenters get dates afterward,” says Wulf. “It says so much about who you are when you’re up there talking about your friend.”
Each single goes home with a “mailbox” filled with notes slipped in throughout the night. Think Valentine’s Day in elementary school, minus the rule that everyone must be included.
One woman who’d been pitched by her sister posted a recap on TikTok (opens in new tab). In the comments, someone speculated, “Date My Friend feels like a single people humiliation ritual.”
Then again, “it’s better than Hinge.”
The next Date My Friend (opens in new tab), in collaboration with NightLife at California Academy of Sciences, is Feb. 12.
