Mitch Heffernan told Curious City that he has difficulty convincing gay men who live in the LGBTQ hubs of Boystown and Andersonville to meet him for a date in his "straight neighborhood," Bucktown. "It takes 30 second to go from one room to another," Elizabeth says.ĭaters we spoke with cited not only convenience as a reason for their reluctance to leave their neighborhoods for dates, but also a strong sense of Chicago neighborhood bias. Chris and Elizabeth are now married and live together in Edgewater.
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They laugh about it now, but Chris and Elizabeth say that the distance caused arguments early in their relationship, which stopped only after Elizabeth moved further into the city. To visit Elizabeth, Chris would make the two-hour trip from the Red Line to the Blue Line to the Harlem Stop to the bus. When Chris and Elizabeth Biddle first met, at a burlesque show, Chris was living near the lake in Edgewater and Elizabeth was living on the border of Norridge, on the far Northwest side. One Chicago couple told a story of overcoming the inter-neighborhood odds. (If you want to read more about it, this post from OkCupid founder Christian Rudder is a good place to start.)īeyond demographic issues, our hotline received several stories of star-crossed lovers living on different train lines. This racial bias, of course, exists across the country and is not exclusive to Chicago. Chicago neighborhoods are segregated by race and research shows that race has a strong influence on dating choices. Race is a likely factor in these neighborhood messaging patterns. In areas with a lower density of users (say, South Shore) the pattern exists, but less so. In areas with high density of OkCupid users (say, Logan Square) this trend is more pronounced. We analyzed data provided by OkCupid and learned that Chicago daters do indeed send more messages to daters who live nearby, and along the nearest CTA 'L' line. Chicago daters told us again and again that they prefer not to stray far from their neighborhoods for romance, or to date someone who lives along a different CTA line.
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The text prophecy was right Meenan and this person never met up.
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Despite slight variations, dating-by-the-numbers in Chicago is very much on par with dating in other large U.S. But that data was not particularly revealing. We looked at census demographics and statistics from the online dating site OkCupid. We began our investigation of the dating scene by comparing Chicago's dating data to other cities'. People sometimes even consider a city's dating scene when deciding where to live.
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Each year, a flock of " Best Cities for Dating" and " Best Cities for Singles" lists hit the internet. The question of how conducive a city is for romance looms large. And this quest is at the heart of Curious Citizen Yvette Ambert's question: How is the dating scene in Chicago? When a Chicagoan hears about a meat market, they may just expect a nice slab of ribs. Of hardball machine politics, not milkshakes with two straws. We are the people of big shoulders, not fluttering hearts. We explore a phenomenon called "cuffing" and the (short) lengths Chicagoans will go for love.Įditor's Note: This story was originally reported in 2017.Ĭhicago is not normally a city associated with romance.