Date Ideas

This post is shamelessly inspired/ripped off from xkcd's excellent list of cool date ideas.

I am a sucker for the non-date date. Dinner and a movie is all well and good, but I'd much rather have a date where I really get to know a person. For me, this means more than just talking (note to all the people who know me in real life: don't act so surprised. I don't have to talk all the time. Seriously :-). A big part of the measure of another person is seeing how that person acts in real life. Here's some of my ideas, and I've also thrown in some commentary on the xkcd ideas for good measure.

By the way, the post after the cut is a bit long.

referring to xkcd ideas, which are now listed here with my commentary (website isn't working?)

The Current Top Date Ideas:

1. Pretend you've never met, then loudly try out lame pickup lines in a swanky bar. Act like they worked.
Hells yeah. I really enjoy doing random stuff like this. I have no problem drawing attention to myself in public (well, no problem with the attention, tho I do have a problem with many of the obvious ways to get attention in public. no arrests, public nudity, or screaming allowed). Additionally, I like the idea of pretending to be someone else :-)
2. Go on a walking journey and every fifteen feet draw a chalk arrow in the direction you're going. At the end of the trip, leave a big pile of chalk.
I heart chalk. One of my fun date ideas is taking a box of sidewalk chalk downtown to draw strange/funny/thought provoking things. When I was babysitting, my charges and I would draw body outlines on the pavement. What could be better than pretending your date was murdered? (joke)

3. Create photo evidence suggesting that you went on an adventure that didn't really happen
Pretty much anything involving cameras and silliness is a win in my book.
4. Go for a drive. You can only make right-hand turns. When you finally get stuck, turn around and then you can only make left-hand turns. Repeat until you find something interesting. Take pictures along the way!
I've done this before (but not with pictures). Sometimes, I feel lazy. I once tried to see if I could make it to a destination that involved a left by only taking judicious right hand turns.
5. Build forts out of furniture and blankets, and wage war with paper airplanes.
6. Go to a major chain bookstore, and leave notes to future readers in copies of your favorite books.
I think I might even do this by myself. Sounds like lots of fun. I knew there was a good use for those random index cards I always carry around.

7. Write a piece of fiction together. Outside at a cafe. Ask strangers when you get stuck.
8. Try and visit as many people as you can in one night, and turn as many things inside their apartment upside down as you can, without them noticing.
This reminds me of things we used to do to a friend. She was, um, extremely organized. We'd have parties at her house, and one or two of us would sneak off to her room to make small changes. Our coup d'etat was switching her CDs around in the cases and flipping them all upside. I think steam came out her ears when she found out. Okay, maybe not so funny now, but it was quite funny at the time, and it got to be a good running joke in our group of friends.
9. Do the lamest tourist thing in your area that you have both secretly wanted to do forever. Have an unabashed good time!
10. Hide and seek in the park
11. Go around the city with sidewalk chalk and draw hearts with equations inside on random things
12. Drive somewhere unknown and have dinner in a city you've never been to. With fake names.
I think we covered this already: I'm totally down with pretending I am someone else.

13. Go for a drive with the passenger blindfolded, choosing directions at random. see where you end up
14. Dress up as pirates, commandeer shopping carts, and have a war upon the high seas.. er, parking lot.
15. Go on a search for as many good climbing trees as possible, climb as high as you both can in all of them, compile photo evidence
16. Rent a movie you've never seen before. Set on mute and improvise dialogue.
MST3k!

So, I did this on 7/21/07 to Planet Earth. The sound, for some reason, was a little weird, so we could hear music but no dialogue. Great fun was had. Then, we listened to the dialogue. We mostly liked ours better
17. Dress up as pirates and go parrot shopping at local pet stores do ren faire clothes count? Totally been there, done that
18. Go to the airport, get the cheapest, soonest departing flight to anywhere when you show up, and stay there for a weekend. Someday, I will do this. Honestly, the thought of doing this, even just once, thrills me. Definitely some excellent jet-setting.
19. Walk around a city and perform short silent plays in front of security cameras
20. In the middle of the night, drive to the beach, so you arrive just as the sun is rising. Have a breakfast picnic, then fall asleep together. Bring a sun umbrella. This sounds so nice right now. I got 3 hours of sleep last night.

Okay, now for my date ideas:

-> We've covered the sidewalk chalk plenty. That's one of my big date ideas that I've never been able to use. I seem to only date stick-in-the-mud guys. Maybe this should be my next weird dating requirement: must be willing to play with sidewalk chalk.

-> I love doing scavenger hunts of any type (photo ones are my preference). Geocaching sounds right up my alley.

->My family loves to packrat stuff away. For the past, heck, 10 years or so (man, that sounds so long), we've been slowly purging our accumulated junk (strangely, despite all the purging, I still feel like I own so much stuff. Any time we're getting rid of a big box of random cool stuff, my brother will take the cheap not-worth-selling stuff downtown and spread it around everywhere. Might be a fun date to take some masks, put them on random statues or objects, and take pictures of them. Once, we gave away these awesome elephant masks (they were for a game where you would toss a ring into the air and a person wearing an elephant mask with an upturned trunk would have to catch it -- see the picture).

-> Going to the zoo = always fun date (as long as the guy doesn't spend the whole time asking me about reproductive behavior. That happened once. No, really!)

-> Playing board games in random outdoor locations. It's about violating people's assumptions about where certain activities should take place. I have no problem with playing scrabble at the local park.

-> Something kind of crazy but also likely fun might be to take a camp stove somewhere random and start cooking. I'm sure it violates some sort of law, but I could try and pretend that I'm filming a cooking demonstration (obviously, date would need to set up a camcorder) and try to get people to sample my food. Teehee.

Anyway, I'm sure I have more ideas, but that's what I can think of now. Feel free to share your own awesome date ideas in the comments. (Juliana, I am looking at you. I know your husband is crazy good at coming up with random but excellent dates.)

Comments

[Palmer]

More than once, me and my friends have bought a pack of hot dogs, a pack of buns, and gone to the (large, forested) local park, where we would find an out of the way clearing, build a small fire, and have a weenie roast.

Yes, illegal. But hella fun, you can pretend like you're camping, bring marshmallows, etc.

We had a pack of drunk teens find us one night. They thought it was the coolest thing ever, and we gave them hot dogs and they joined in.

Also, backyard camping. Or patio camping. Or living room camping.

Finally, the airplane thing is neat. I know one guy who used to do that. He said you could always get a cheap vacation, as long as you didn't care where. Last minute tickets are often dirt cheap. He randomly ended up in Costa Rica.

But an easier idea is to get a map of the state/area.

Spin a pencil or something to get a direction. Then roll a die to get a distance (in inches).

Plot that from where you are on the map. Drive there and do something.

[Levitra]

I think i will try #4 with my girl 2night. Driving around aimlessly is always fun. Adding the only right hand turns should make it even more fun.

Great Post!

[dian]

that's very good tips.. hehehe

[Marissa]

My boyfriend and I have played multiple games of hide-and-seek in the Mall of Georgia and Wal-Mart! Get a ton of friends together, splint into two-person teams and hide then call, in an specific order when everyone is ready, and go hunting for them while getting text message clues! Its tons of fun!

[Justin]

Blind Date... Seriously.

When you get to the restaurant, one of you doesn't take off your sunglasses. Hold the arm of your dinner guest as you walk in unison to the table. It is a fun social experiment to see how differently you are treated (usually for the better), and it lends itself to an entire meals worth of interesting conversation. Just don't spoil it half-way through.

[Duncan]

You could take the hot dogs and go hotdogging. It's kind of like Toilet Papering someones houe, except with hot dogs, and you put them in strange places. I got hotdogged once, they were everywhere, underneath car door handles, on the antennas, in the mailbox. It is quite fun to do, although I recommend you do it to someone you know who has a sense of humor.

[Koro]

A couple of simple wintery ones (I live in Canada, so winter is a big fact of life) are

1) build a snowman. even better, pretend that you just thought of the idea, then, when its almost done, and they ask, "So what are we gonna use for the face and stuff?" reply "Well, lets use these lumps of coal and carrot that I just happen to have with me."

2) go to a park and randomly decorate a christmas tree. even more fun if christmas has already passed.

[holly]

The first date I had with my now long term boyfriend, we found a gym in uptown with big windows facing outside and the treadmills were facing outside as well, so we bought two pints of ice cream and stood in front of the windows and ate the ice cream and watched people running on the treadmills.
On our second date we biked through downtown minneapolis around midnight and counted how many drunk, stumbling people...there was a lot
our third date, we walked around uptown with cameras and took pictures of the oddest objects or people that we could find

[S]

Good ideas! Cooking together is my favourite date idea!

[executive dating]

These are some good out of the box date ideas. I think the driving ideas are very cool, particularly #13. I can picture that as being really fun.

[russruggles]

Haha, I really like #1. That would be great fun, though probably not for a *first* date :)