NYC is the largest city in the US. I live in a top 10 city for population, but not NYC. Aside from meetup do you have any google terms or general groups that are worth looking at?
I think maybe you need to give up on coffee dates, there are much better ways to make a first impression. I know the idea is that it’s quick and safe, so if the date is a drag you can bug out easily, but I think it’s more likely to be a drag so you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Next time just go bowling, or to a movie, or mini golfing or help out at a food pantry or something, anything, but make it an actual activity instead of a quick Q & A. It’s hard to be your smart, funny, interesting self right off the bat face to face at a tiny table in a crowded room. I’d rather get to know someone by sharing an activity, it gives me (and him) a chance to settle in and relax a bit. Even if it’s not a match, at least I got to go bowling 
and maybe make a new friend.
Just my opinion but I think a movie is a bad first date choice. What you end up with is two virtual strangers sitting silently, side by side, not even looking in each others’ direction for a couple hours. There is no ability to break the ice or get to know each other.
So you go for coffee after and talk about the movie. Or maybe a movie is a better 2nd or 3rd date, but still, do something!
Well I have friends that do kickball, but I’m sure you can google coed intramural sports [insert city here] and find whatever it is you’re into. Alumni groups of your college in your city. [insert city] singles events, [insert city] dining, fun4singles… etc. I’m in the DC area so a lot of events are embassy and museum intensive.
I agree. I prefer activity events for the first couple dates. Dinner, coffee, and other intense 1-on-1 events require a lot of freeform conversation. If you’re doing something, you have a built-in topic of conversation to fall back on and there are no lulls in conversation. Museums, hikes, wineries, breweries, distilleries (hm…) etc. are better date ideas.
I’ve initiated contact with about thirty people online. I’ve maybe had about eight conversations, and one official date. I’ll agree about coffee…next time I’ll do an activity. I was reminded of being interviewed for a job. High stress and no fun. I invited her swing dancing for the second date but by then she was no longer interested. It’s frustrating…but we must carry on!
On a first date – regardless of gender, whether opposite or same – hearing the above from my companion, would have me immediately running for the hills: I’m tone-deaf, with little-to-no liking for music, and your “answer” which you cite, could be in Vietnamese for all it conveys to me. (And I wouldn’t know Mumford and Sons, from L. Ron Hubbard and the Scientology mob.) My pig-ignorance about music would, I feel, put me right out of the running with you.
OP, I’d be – see above – a complete wash-out re your “Question 1”. Hope that I might make a better showing with your 2,3, and 4 (and attempt to ask you something about you).
Umm… presumably you wouldn’t have asked ‘What sort of music do you like?’ then… 
ETA: If asked the question, a reasonable answer could be something like: ‘To be honest, I’m pretty well tone deaf. I don’t listen to much music. I tend to spend most of my free time reading/watching films/hiking.’ The problem is ‘I don’t listen to music’ is a crap answer, not that not listening to it is necessarily a problem.
Reckon so – but it’s a bit rare for music-devotees to hook up with music-haters. Not unheard-of – in a different area of life, one hears of enduring loves happening, across passionate political divides – but initially, “not a positive”.
Living Social often runs popular events. Also keep an eye on your local city blogs and alternative weeklies. But honestly, the best thing to do is to tap in to a group of active single friends.
But that’s sort of the point. The initial stages of dating (or screening dates online through chats and emails) is to check compatibility. If you care so little about music that someone who *does *like it would send you running, then isn’t it a good thing to get that established early?
Talk about things you like, see how they respond. Ask them about things they like, see how you feel about their answers.
That’s why I liked OK Cupid for online dating. It helped to narrow down my matches quite a bit so that most of the interests and values of the guys I communicated with were at least decently compatible with mine. Saved me a lot of time.
One doesn’t. So (Gentlemen dopers, please close your eyes and turn your heads away), don’t make a conversation. Relax, and stay silent. Nothing intrigues a guy more than an attractive, intelligent woman who ignores him. Put on a thoughtful, but slightly pleasant, expression and focus, say, on the menu, or on the dish. If the silence continues much longer, pull out the book that you have made it a point to carry with you and start reading. If the (shocked, by now) silence still continues, take out your notebook, and start jotting down… anything really. Your thoughts. The scene. The way the other customers look. Or pull out your ipod and tap your feet to your favoirite music. If you are effectively dating yourself, then you might as well have a nice time of it. If your date chooses to break the silence (mostly by asking “what do you think are you doing?!”), explain sweetly and sincerely that since he obviously finds silence so comforting, you have decided not to ruin it for him by making pointless small talk, and could he order you some dessert (assuming he is inviting you and not the other way around)?
At this point, your date should get the message. Or you should. At the very least, both of you will have had an interesting, memorable date. And isn’t that the point of such encounters?
Good luck for future dates. 
But then presumably you wouldn’t have asked about music in the first place, correct?
It’s not music or nothing; it’s music, reading, hobbies – all the examples she gave of conversational sallies that fell flat.
I wouldn’t have crossed you off the dating list merely because you have no liking for music. But if you have no liking for music, can’t name a single book or author you’ve ever read, can’t say what you do after work except “Think,” or “Talk to people,” THEN I doubt we’d have much on which to base any sort of relationship.
ETA: My first sentence plagiarizes Filbert’s response. Great minds think alike: I hadn’t read his when I wrote mine.
I think you should give a little thought to the direct approach. There are ways to do it where it’s not aggressive.
I’ve never done online dating but I think if I did I’d want a coffee date for the first meeting. That or drinks or just appetizers somewhere. Something that is set up to be brief so you can both see how it goes. That way if you get someone that is sitting there giving you one word answers or not talking at all you can finish up fairly quickly, pay for your portion of the tab, and excuse yourself by saying something like “It was nice to meet you, but I feel like we’re struggling a bit for conversation and I don’t want to take up any more of your day. Take care.”
I think if you’ve really done what you can to hold up your end of the conversation and you’ve honestly tried to meet him halfway there’s nothing wrong with cutting it short and being direct. Why waste your time or his?
When it clicks, it’s a great thing. And it doesn’t have to be direct Q&A: I remember meeting a girl for dinner mumble-many years ago as a single guy. First date. We get to the restaurant about the same time, and learn there’s a forty-five minute wait for a table, and no room to sit down anywhere. So I volunteer to to get us a couple of drinks from the bar, and we’re just standing there sipping. I said, “Oh, well. ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’”
And she looked at me for a second and then said, “Yeah, but Milton would have reconsidered if he saw Adams Morgan on a Friday night.”
So that was very cool. Right off the bat she picked up on a somewhat obscure literary reference and tossed it back at me.
The main thing is that it is a skill. You can get depressed about dating fails, sure, or you can take a cold look at what went wrong and try to do something different next time. You’ll get better at it.
I guess it’s a skill in the sense that you can get better at it but wouldn’t label it a skill since it’s not specific enough a task to warrant it (as opposed to crocheting, a tennis backhand, or spearfishing).
I think it’s more of an issue of honesty and confidence. Being honest with yourself and your date, and having the confidence to communicate that honesty effectively is probably the best anyone can reasonably ask for. Beyond that and some members on this board will cry heresy and roast you alive for subscribing to PUArtistry.
Huh. So dating as some sort of didactic war game? Sounds lovely.
But yeah, speaking of that click, I think an hour-plus-long coffee date is enough time for there to be at least a flash of a connection, but I think you have to make at least a bit of an allowance for nerves. The unspoken “do we like each other” hanging in the air makes it hard to have fun sometimes. I read about a lady who took a hit of oxytocin spray before a second or third date with a guy, and by her account, at least, things were vastly less awkward and more intimate right away for both of them, just because she was feeling it. I mean, I think you can read that story a few different ways, but all I take it to mean is that you can get over the awkwardness and have fun, at least, if you’re both relaxed and engaging. “Relax and be yourself” is cliched advice for a reason - people suck at it. I had a sort of blind date thing once that was awkward and dull until I said “I feel like we’re not really feeling this,” and from that point on it was a lot of fun, just because the tension had been addressed. Possibly impractical, but just kissing each other and getting it over with also has the same effect, for the record.
It sounds to me like you’re giving enough outs that a good date ought to be able to happen, and despite the constructive criticism in the thread I feel like you shouldn’t worry much about your approach. I don’t think, ultimately, that it does come down to having a skill, although obviously people skills exist. I don’t think it’s about you being too pushy or not honest or not bold enough or whatever. I think you’re just supposed to be finding out if you have fun together, and you’re doing that.
That’s also why I think a coffee / drinks first date is a good idea, especially if it’s an online thing. If you don’t enjoy talking to each other, you should find that shit out! Most of the really great first dates I’ve been on, if you charted them as like a conversational tree, would have had a whole bunch of branches that didn’t even get fully explored, because we jumped to another topic or started joking and lost track, or whatever. I wouldn’t be sitting there resenting the silence and throwing the girl’s questions back at her… I liked her! Even where you run out of steam on a particular topic, if you like each other and are having fun, it doesn’t matter what you talk about next. If you’re sitting there and it’s work the whole time, you aren’t a great fit. There’s no real blame to be assigned or problem to be worked out, assuming you gave it a fair shot, which it sounds like you do.
Ok, I think I’ve found the problem.
[QUOTE=CatherineZeta]
(asked when the fact that I’m a vegetarian comes up)
[/QUOTE]
Eat some meat.
You’re welcome.
Bricker – and Filbert and Antigen – yep; my life’s experiences have given me a bit of a “thing” about the music issue. I “see with my head”, that this matter doesn’t necessarily have to be “all or nothing”.