If you’re seeking a sweetheart in advance of Valentine’s Day, it would seem logical that your best shot at finding love would be to go to the city with the highest concentration of singles. According to the U.S. Census, 78.46 percent of Springfield residents between the ages of 18 and 34 have never been married, which means — believe it or not — Springfield has more young, single people per capita than any other city in the country.
I shared this fact with several friends. Most frowned or stared at me blankly. After all, Springfield isn’t known for its sexy downtown dating scene. Or, as one of my friends noted those Springfield singles “aren’t ready to mingle.”
But I don’t buy that. The city’s young single people must be having fun somewhere, laughing and flirting and drinking without me. I’ve gotta get in on the action — for purely journalistic purposes, of course. So I head downtown to find them. What the heck, right? It’s nearly Valentine’s Day. It’s Wednesday night. Who wouldn’t want to get out there in search of love?
On my quest to find “the place” to meet people in Springfield, I made my first stop by the Basketball Hall of Fame. I know, I know. But the parking’s so easy over there. And around the side of the museum, Samuel’s Sports Bar beckons. I head inside and scan the long bar for a sampling of the 18-34 set enjoying a night on the town. No such luck.
Out of a small handful of bar-goers under 50, I get talking with John Celentano, 28, of Enfield. He’s dating a girl from Ludlow, but she’s not with him tonight. I ask him if Springfield has a singles scene. He jerks his head back and snorts, like I’ve just cracked a corny joke, “Nope!”
“Maybe Max’s Tavern,” he adds, referring to a bar on the other side of the Hall of Fame. For a nice date spot, he’d also consider Latitude, an upscale restaurant on Memorial Avenue in West Springfield. “That’s all I can think of around here.”
He recommends I spend more time in West Hartford where, he says, the bars are more plentiful and the dining scene is more vibrant. “There are places you’d want to take a girl out. Around here …” He trails off and shakes his head. There’s just not enough places that walk the line between casual and date-y with drinks in the mid-price range and smart decor in Springfield.
After that promising start, I take another invigorating walk through the icy air, stopping at Plan B Burger Bar around the corner. Like Samuel’s, this place has a nice big bar area. As for singles, not so much. I approach an attractive young couple sitting close at the bar, each nursing a pint of craft beer.
When I ask about dating life in Springfield, he looks uncomfortable. “I don’t know, man,” he mumbles.
“We can’t talk right now,” she says. She’s been crying. “He’s in the middle of breaking up with me.”
I make my graceful exit.
I should be rethinking my plan for the night, but instead I’m pondering how a guy decides to end a serious relationship at a restaurant called Plan B.
While I’m over in the South End, I roll by Mr. D’s Sports Bar on Main Street. A sign that reads CASH ONLY is stuck to the door. Inside, the lights are low. The bartender is nowhere in sight. Three middle-aged men sit at the bar. They turn to study at me. They look irritated. I’m not sure which one is Mr. D. I’m not sure that Mr. D. is even here. It seems possible that Mr. D hasn’t stopped by in a very long time. I leave.
I head toward Worthington Street. On the way, outside the MassMutual Center, a young man wearing multiple sweatshirts asks me for a dollar. I pat my pockets, but no cash. That’s tonight in a nutshell: no singles.
We continue past each other. After a moment I turn and call to him. “Hey, are there any good places to meet singles around here?” He laughs. He pulls his hand out of his pocket and points at me. He laughs again, turns and walks away.
On Worthington Street, I take a look inside Theodore’s Booze Blues and BBQ. If I were writing an article about married people over 50 I’d have a field day in there.
But upstairs at Smith’s Billiards, I hit pay dirt. Relatively speaking. There’s a small mixed group of people, but as my eyes adjust, I see — yes — actual young people.
“This is definitely the place to be,” Kevin Howe tells me. “If craft beer is a hobby of yours, you can take your sweetie out and try craft beers together here.” Kevin is 30 and lives in Chicopee. He’s here tonight with his girlfriend Christina Griffin, 29, who just moved up from Connecticut. They live by the highway, and they often debate whether to go out in Northampton or in Springfield.
“I still have a lot of good memories in Springfield,” Kevin says. “I don’t want to see businesses like this one close. You have to support them in order to keep them going.”
But Smith’s Billiards is a good place for more casual parties and gatherings, says Kevin’s friend Tim Garstka, 29, of Agawam. “There are a lot of dudes at this bar. I have met girls here, but it’s not easy.”
Later, further down the bar, I get talking with Melissa Robert, 25, of Holyoke. Melissa says she used to party “wicked hard” in downtown Springfield when she was 21 and 22. “Now it doesn’t feel as safe. I feel like there used to be much more going on.”
She and her friend Myles Ierardi, 28, of Wilbraham make a list of the Springfield bars they no longer frequent. The Fat Cat Bar & Grill lost its license for much of this past fall after failing to comply with the licensing board’s requirement that they hire police officers as security guards. Sky Bar has closed, as has the Hippodrome and the Salty Dog Saloon.
Myles used to live in Boston. “It was much easier there. People went out to meet people.” But what about right here? I ask.
“It’s such a load of crap when you go down to a bar to try to meet single people and you just meet drunk fucking idiots,” he says. “It’s such a small pool. People around here have been local for such a long time.” When it comes to dating, Myles says he prefers to try his luck in Northampton.
So, what about Northampton? While I’ve been bumming around Springfield, fellow reporter Amanda Drane has been surveying the Valley’s single scene at a few hot spots in Hampshire County, asking locals to share some of their adventures in dating, both online and in-person.
Ben Janas, a bartender and manager at the Dirty Truth in Northampton, says he sees a lot of online love-seekers meeting for the first time. “One of my favorite parts of the job is watching awkward first dates,” he says.
Ben recently observed one smartly-handled interaction in which a woman sat for about a half-hour reading a book at one end of the bar, scoping out the man she came to meet from afar before introducing herself.
At the Dirty Truth, a woman who identifies herself as Alicia sits at the bar, drinking a beer and working on her computer. She’s single, she says, and comes here often but not in search of love. Like a heroine in a rom-com, she’s waiting for that chance meeting. “I am looking for things, but I wouldn’t come here expecting to find them,” she says.
Many local singles said the place to meet isn’t physical, it’s online. Over at Amherst Coffee, Alex Mozell sits reading a large textbook. Alex, 26, is a UMass Ph.D. student in economics. He says that dating apps OkCupid and Tinder are useful, though they can lead to surprises.
Alex says he once met a beautiful woman online and decided to meet her at a restaurant. Upon hearing her first words, Alex cut the date off. He was sure the woman was a transgender.
“The voice gave it away,” he says. “I wasn’t prepared to deal with that.”
Alex told her he didn’t want to be in a relationship with someone in transition. The woman ran from the table, and Alex picked up the tab.
And he’s still dating online. “The online world is so effective. If I had to be brave and go to bars, I would, but I don’t have to.”
Claire Kelly, 28, says she has reluctantly joined the online dating world since moving to Northampton about a year ago. Claire, who has traveled extensively and lived abroad, has found it difficult to meet people in the Valley.
“When you’re abroad you meet people all the time, non-stop,” Claire says, adding people are more relaxed about dating in South America, where she lived for several years. “It’s difficult coming to this area without knowing someone who lives here and has a circle.”
Her first online dating experiences were off-putting. One inebriated date tried to hit her with a cane. On another date a stressed-out, culture-shocked foreigner, broke down sobbing in front of her. There was also the time her date was so nervous beads of sweat kept dripping from his fingertips into the food. Since then, she says, she has gotten better at vetting potential dates online before meeting them in person.
Shamara Jones, 29, of Northampton says it’s difficult to meet people in the Valley. She is sitting at a table at Hinge in Northampton, playing trivia with two of her friends. Shamara says she works from home, so she doesn’t have the benefit of meeting people at work. She takes art classes at Greenfield Community College, she says, but many of her classmates are too young to consider.
Her friends have suggested using Tinder for casual dating, but Shamara has her doubts. “The Valley’s too small for Tinder,” she says. “I’ll end up seeing these people somewhere.” She says she’s experimented with OkCupid, but that she grew tired of the upkeep and of the comments. “It’s a horrible onslaught of disgusting humans.” Shamara will talk to guys at bars, but it sometimes ends poorly. One night, she says, she was out at Ye Ol’ Watering Hole in Northampton. She was playing pool and chatting it up with a guy, when she realized he was wearing a wedding ring. She asked him about it, she says, and he responded casually: “What? She doesn’t own me.”
Maybe love isn’t best found in a bar or online. Melissa met her current boyfriend at the Walgreen’s on Northampton Street in Holyoke. “He cashed me out in the cosmetics department,” she says. “We’ve been going out for almost three years.”
Myles shakes his head. “Maybe the casino will bring in some good business. It’s not what it used to be around here. I’ve been to almost every bar in this area, and I don’t feel like there are any young kids anywhere.”
I’m getting that impression.
Later on, I stop into the Student Prince Cafe & The Fort Dining Room. I visit Petra, the hookah bar on Worthington Street. I drive up to Western New England University to see whether Sophia’s Pizza & Sports Bar or Paddy’s Irish Pub are hopping mid-week (they’re not). I head up to Mingle’s Lounge in West Springfield and to Brennan’s Place in Holyoke in search of some young, socially-inclined night owls who can tell me something — anything — about the local singles scene.
But in this moment, talking with Melissa and Myles about the ways things used to be, it’s already starting to sink in. Maybe some day, young lovers will wander the streets of downtown Springfield. For now, though, they’re staying warm somewhere else, and I’m getting cold looking for them.
Melissa and Myles close out their tabs. I’ve been hovering at the bar now for 30 minutes. The bartender asks me if I want a beer.
I put my notepad in my pocket. “Sure,” I say. “Just one for me.”•
Staff Writer Amanda Drane contributed to this article.
Contact Hunter Styles at hstyles@valleyadvocate.com.
