Grouper: Your Nonsketchy Alternative to Online Dating

Around this time last week, I had the pleasure of attending a Grouper at Ellabess in Manhattan's Nolita. Not to be confused with Groupon, Grouper is a self-described social club that involves signing up through facebook. Grouper techs match your facebook profile (interests, likes) to another Grouper applicant of the opposite sex; once matched, you receive a confirmation email and find two friends to join you on your Grouper meetup. The outcome? Three boys and three girls meet at a trendy location chosen by Grouper founders Jerry Guo, former "Good Life" columnist, and Michael Waxman, designer of the news reader Paper buff.

For 20$ a person, you and your friends have a table at an assigned venue, and the Grouper match and their friends meet you under one reservation name (first drink included!) For us, it was Lucy--no other information about either party was disclosed prior. Comparing Grouper to sites like OkCupid, this is a big difference. There is absolutely no stalking or ruminating on who you will meet up with! The experience is based solely on the actual meetup and nothing else.

In fact, Grouper is invitation-only, and Jerry Guo avows, "we don't disclose our members or the size of our club." Though he also reports there is a waiting list of "thousands" to try out the service, within two weeks of joining Grouper, I had a meetup scheduled. All three boys who met us at Ellabess were kind, interesting and attractive. Conversation flowed between leather lounges and cucumber-infused martinis; nothing felt forced or overtly sexual. As Guo emphasized in his interview with the Huffington Post, "If you got to a bar, people will talk to you, but why is it hard to meet people? It's hard to meet people that are non-sketchy." My Grouper meetup was the definition of nonsketchy.

Even more impressive, the guy matched through my facebook profile (and Guo's interpersonal finesse) held many of my interests, and was a blast to talk to. As most online-to-reality meetups go, conversation can be sticky if not forced and awkward, but I instantly felt comfortable with my Grouper match! We even relocated as a group for drinks afterward at a venue more intimate, and hope to meet up as friends later in the week. In a brief chat, Guo disclosed that this outcome is actually quite common: "something like over half the groups end up hanging out again and we've heard anecdotally of people starting to see each other (although we're not a dating site)."

Taking online dating and friendship from "pretty awkward and kind of intimidating" to accessible and relaxed, Grouper is the next step in social networking for the internet generation. Though sites like OkCupid and eHarmony remain popular, Guo says that Grouper lends improvements to the system: "you show up with your two friends, so even if the other group isn't your crowd, you're still out with your friends and can just go somewhere else. We also pick the other group--based on whether we think the two groups will have a good time together--which is a lot less work than what you have to do on a standard browse-and-message dating site, which, let's face it, is kind of just a beauty contest." So, disappointed-OkCupid-vets in NYC, forget the photoshopped, instagrammed-profile pictures, the daily quizzes on your soda drinking habits, and the constant stream of creepy messages from usernames like BitchComeRunnin. Grouper, tried and tested, is the answer. Though it currently only operates in New York City--it was founded in June 2011!--Guo hopes to expand someday to other cities like San Francisco and Boston. However, Guo explains, "for now, we're focused on making Grouper awesome in New York."

Review: Kinklab Neoprene Cuffs

My first experience with handcuffs in brief: painful scraping, paranoia over keys and their whereabouts, the inky smell of metal. Mind you, these cuffs were real police cuffs. Steel, double-locking, and hinged, they demanded a tennis-arm bend of the wrist to insert the key, and one more expert move to release the cuffs from an arm. Kinky, right? Closer to stressful.

But Babeland's Kinklab Neoprene Cuffs take the stress away, and leave the kink where it should be. The cuffs themselves are lined in neoprene, a synthetic rubber used in everything from wet suits to hydroponic gardening systems. Soft and pliable, the neoprene feels good against the skin, and quite comfortable as a cuff, almost like a woven bangle. For their outer shell, the cuffs boast a "wraparound velcro design," an easy way to keep the cuffs both structured when idle and functional to take on and off. Finally, the neoprene-velcro discs are held together by (nickel-free!) keychain hardware. This allows for the cuffs to be easily removed by another person, but difficult-to-impossible to remove by oneself during play. In short, the Kinklab product is ideal: no keys, no worries, no discomfort. Just cuffs.

The one drawback to this product is that the keychain hardware does appear a bit garish to the un-kinked eye. For a newcomer to this basic and mild form of bondage, seeing such a metal component may distract from their fun attributes and call attention to the act at hand. They are a step beyond the scarf, the ribbon, the more organic household item. But if you're ready for that, the
Kinklab Neoprene Cuffs are just what you need.