Last month in Los Angeles, John Fulton reported the following: Stella’s Restaurant isn’t just open—it’s also getting a pool. Maru needs a barista for its Los Feliz location. The Salkin home, beautifully restored, has found a buyer. Oh, and the 38-year-old guy who doesn’t like Los Angeles Police Department helicopters is single and ready to date.
Fulton is the publisher of the year-old magazine Substack Oriental Ragwhich features happenings in a collection of LA neighborhoods, including trendy Silver Lake, upscale Los Feliz, and fast-growing Atwater Village and Highland Park. He returns to certain scenes, scenes, and characters again and again—celebrity sightings at Canyon Coffee (Echo Park), the sex appeal of deliverymen at Bub and Grandma’s east-side restaurant (Glassell Park), sales at the hipster Mohawk clothing store. What he didn’t expect, when he started his project, was that he would also become a relationship planner—and that his newsletters featuring individuals would become subscriber catnip (his readers now number in the thousands).
But when you think about it, the development—call it “hyperlocal friendship”—is kind of obvious. It seems that every few weeks, someone predicts the death of dating apps. Apps aren’t going away anytime soon, even though they might get worse, what with theirs increasing reliance on AIwhich threatens to further alienate consumers from anything resembling real human experience. Maybe more and more people are trying to swear Machine-made love is similar, but when it happens, the question becomes: How to meet someone in the world?
Just do it IRLpeople might say, but that can be harder than it sounds. And many more people stay at home than in previous generations, those looking for romance face a tougher situation if they hope to get out the door and stumble across a cute encounter. Singles mixers and speed dating events have been around for decades, but at best they feel contrived, and at worst they reek of desperation. (One engagement I went to with her friends was so amazing that just five minutes before the event, we parked ourselves at a table far away and made it a girls’ day out.) Matchmakers are expensive—and unreliable. They don’t guarantee success, and working with someone can be frustrating, especially when the money doesn’t translate into a great match, or any match at all.
In this environment, people who rely on magazines have a lot going for them. As you can imagine, readers of The Eastside Rag likely have a good deal in common with each other. Maybe they live on the east side of LA and have a disposable income. In many cases, magazine readers may also be like-minded. Consider Substack subscribers powered by multi-track artist Miranda Julywho earlier this year he announced that she would start featuring the profile of a dating reader about once a month: Her audience tends to be feminist and creative types. Ava Huang, owner of Bookbear Express, attracts followers interested in her views on books, technology, human behavior and love. Last year, he started run away his own (paid) matchmaking service—because, he wrote, he realized that “my writing can be a way not only for me to meet people, but for other people to meet each other.”
Of course, there is a downside to dating in circumscribed society; you can to miss about meeting interesting, exciting people who are very different from you. But the appeal of these newcomers is clear, Camille Sojit Pejcha, a Brooklyn writer. Seeking Pleasurewhich explores sexuality and desire, he told me. Because magazines typically attract readers with similar tastes and worldviews, people hoping to date can start from a stronger base of compatibility than those who meet randomly. (Pursuit of Pleasure doesn’t have a personal feature yet, but Sojit Pejcha said he’s thinking about it.)
A “dating” magazine, such as it is, tends to feel lower and more regimented than the personal ads of old magazines. Profiles are chosen by someone who readers see as a verified, trustworthy person. It also reads less like an advertisement and more like a thoughtful introduction. “I mean, people want to be introduced by their mutual friends,” Sojit Pejcha said – so why not be introduced by “your mutual respect.” parasocial crush?”
July calls him his date “Beguiled”: Love seekers who want to be featured fill out a “looong” questionnaire, which asks for biographical information (gender identity, child status, pet status) and their opinions about, say, why they’re single, their morning rituals, and what an ex or friend might say about them. Interested readers can fill out the same questionnaire, which is sent directly, privately, to resume-ee.
Artist and TV producer Lisa Hanawaltwho was to be highlighted in July’s first column of “Beguiled”, she told me that July chose her after “making a little joke” in the magazine’s comments section: “I’d like to date a guy who signed up for Miranda July.” Hanawalt was tired of dating apps and thought he might try a different approach. “I think it feels more intimate,” he said, “like a step away from asking friends to meet someone.”
In March, buoyed by the success of his personal ads, Fulton, a writer for Eastside Rag, decided to take it one step further and organize a one-man event at Los Candiles Nightclub in Glassell Park. I went to check it out, and I can report that the gathering was well attended: At its peak, more than 300 people filled the room. “People were talking to each other; people were going up to strangers and starting conversations,” he told me. “It felt so, kind of, magical and rare.” It is not common these days, he said, for people to approach a stranger in public, without an introduction. “I think this party gave everyone an excuse to talk to whoever they want and not feel weird about it.” He is planning more events, he said, after getting “a lot of requests” from his readers.
As for Hanawalt, she is dating a single person now. She didn’t meet him through “Beguiled,” but offered to fill out July’s questionnaire, a gesture she found very romantic. “He answered every question,” Hanawalt said. “He texted an ex; he texted a friend.” In response to one question—”A picture of the inside of your refrigerator?”—he provided “a picture of his refrigerator where he drew little boys inside the refrigerator.”
In their own way, personal journals have the ability to entertain and influence all kinds of readers, even those who do not participate in the experiment directly. For one, they provide entertainment (“I own four mullet wigs. So I hope you don’t hate ’80s rock,” an ad in The Eastside Rag read) and useful conversation starters (I love July’s “How important is flirting to you?”). But they also provide encouraging evidence, to anyone listening, that people are out there, not far away, looking for someone who can be quote-unquote. Mr. Rogers, that one a great philosopher of love and society – like you.
