{"id":778,"date":"2026-06-22T12:49:41","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T12:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=778"},"modified":"2026-06-22T12:49:41","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T12:49:41","slug":"the-hot-new-place-for-singles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=778","title":{"rendered":"The Hot New Place for Singles"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Last month in Los Angeles, John Fulton reported the following: Cafe Stella has not only reopened\u2014it also might get a pool. Maru needs baristas for its Los Feliz location. The Salkin House, gorgeously restored, has found a buyer. Oh, and a 38-year-old guy who dislikes Los Angeles Police Department helicopters is single and open to dating.<\/p>\n

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Fulton is the publisher of a year-old Substack newsletter called The Eastside Rag, which focuses on the goings-on in a collection of L.A. neighborhoods, including the trendy Silver Lake, the upscale Los Feliz, and the quickly gentrifying Atwater Village and Highland Park. He returns to certain scenes, themes, and characters again and again\u2014celebrity sightings at Canyon Coffee (Echo Park), the sex appeal of the delivery guys at the east-side restaurant Bub and Grandma\u2019s (Glassell Park), sales at the hipster apparel store Mohawk. What he wasn\u2019t expecting, when he began his project, was that he would also become a relationship matchmaker\u2014and that his newsletters featuring personals would become subscriber catnip (his readers now number in the thousands).<\/p>\n

But when you think about it, the development\u2014call it \u201chyperlocal dating\u201d\u2014is sort of obvious. It seems that every few weeks, someone predicts the death of dating apps. The apps won\u2019t disappear anytime soon, though they may get worse, what with their growing reliance on AI, which threatens to further alienate users from anything resembling authentic human experience. More and more people may be trying to swear off machine-made love matches, but when they do, the question becomes: How in the world to meet someone?<\/p>\n

Just do it IRL<\/em>, people might say, but that can be harder than it sounds. With far more people staying home than in previous generations, those seeking romance face tough odds if they\u2019re hoping to simply walk out the door and stumble into a meet-cute. Singles mixers and speed-dating events have been around for decades, but at best they feel contrived, and at worst they stink of desperation. (One mixer I went to with friends was so cringe-inducing that five minutes into the event, we parked ourselves at a far-off table and made it a girls\u2019 day out.) Professional matchmakers are expensive\u2014and unreliable. They offer no guarantee of success, and working with one can be demoralizing, especially when money doesn\u2019t translate into excellent matches, or any matches at all.<\/p>\n

In this environment, newsletter-based personals have a lot going for them. As you might imagine, readers of The Eastside Rag are likely to have a good deal in common with one another. They probably live on L.A.\u2019s east side and have access to a fair amount of disposable income. In many cases, newsletter readers may also be somewhat like-minded. Consider the subscribers of the Substack run by the multi-hyphenate artist Miranda July, who earlier this year announced that she would begin featuring a profile of a date-seeking reader roughly once a month: Her audience tends to be made up of feminist, creative types. Ava Huang, the proprietor of Bookbear Express, attracts subscribers drawn to her commentary on books, technology, human behavior, and love. Last year, she began running her own (paid) matchmaking service\u2014because, she wrote, she realized that \u201cmy writing might be a way not only for me to meet people, but for other people to meet each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, there are downsides to dating in a circumscribed community; you might miss out on encountering interesting, exciting people who are very unlike you. But the appeal of these new personals is pretty clear, Camille Sojit Pejcha, the Brooklyn-based writer of Pleasure-Seeking, which explores sexuality and desire, told me. Because newsletters typically draw readers with similar tastes and worldviews, prospective daters may start from a stronger baseline of compatibility than singles who meet at a random mixer. (Pleasure-Seeking doesn\u2019t yet have a personals element, but Sojit Pejcha said she is thinking about it.)<\/p>\n

Newsletter \u201cdating,\u201d such as it is, tends to feel both more grassroots and more curated than the newspaper-based personal ads of yore. People\u2019s profiles are chosen by someone whom readers view as a vetted, trusted individual. They also read less like advertisements and more like a careful introduction. \u201cI mean, people want to be introduced by their mutual friends,\u201d Sojit Pejcha said\u2014so why not be introduced by \u201cyour mutual parasocial crush?\u201d<\/p>\n

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July calls her dating venture \u201cBeguiled\u201d: Romance seekers who want to be featured fill out a \u201clooong\u201d questionnaire, which asks for biographical details (gender identification, kid status, pet status) and their comments on, say, why they\u2019re single, their morning rituals, and what an ex or a friend might have to say about them. Interested readers can then fill out the same questionnaire, which gets sent directly, privately, to the profile-ee.<\/p>\n

The artist and TV creator Lisa Hanawalt, who was spotlighted in July\u2019s inaugural \u201cBeguiled\u201d column, told me that July chose her after she \u201cmade a little joke\u201d in the newsletter\u2019s comments section: \u201cI\u2019d love to date a guy who subscribes to Miranda July.\u201d Hanawalt had been fatigued by dating apps and figured she might as well try a different approach. \u201cI think it feels more intimate,\u201d she said, \u201clike one step away from asking friends to hook you up with someone.\u201d<\/p>\n

In March, buoyed by the success of his personal ads, Fulton, the Eastside Rag writer, decided to take things one step further and host a singles event at Los Candiles Night Club 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. \u201cPeople were talking to each other; people were going up to strangers and striking up a conversation,\u201d he told me. \u201cIt felt so, sort of, magical and rare.\u201d It\u2019s unusual these days, he said, for people to approach a stranger out in public, with no entr\u00e9e. \u201cI think this party gave everyone an excuse to talk to whoever they wanted to and not feel weird about it.\u201d He\u2019s planning more events, he said, after getting \u201ctons of requests\u201d from his readers.<\/p>\n

As for Hanawalt, she\u2019s dating someone exclusively now. She didn\u2019t meet him through \u201cBeguiled,\u201d but he did offer to fill out July\u2019s questionnaire, a gesture that she found super romantic. \u201cHe answered every question,\u201d Hanawalt said. \u201cHe texted an ex; he texted a friend.\u201d In response to one prompt\u2014\u201cPhoto of the inside of your fridge?\u201d\u2014he produced \u201ca picture of his fridge where he drew little guys inside the fridge.\u201d<\/p>\n

In their way, newsletter personals have the potential to delight and influence all sorts of readers, even those not participating in the experiment directly. For one, they provide entertainment (\u201cI own four mullet wigs. So I hope you don\u2019t hate 80s rock,\u201d an ad in The Eastside Rag read) and useful conversation starters (I love July\u2019s \u201cHow important is cuddling to you?\u201d). But they also offer heartening evidence, to anyone eavesdropping, that people are out there, not too far away, looking for someone who might be\u2014to quote Mister Rogers, that great philosopher of love and<\/em> community\u2014just like you.<\/p>\n

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Newsletter writers are playing cupid with their like-minded readers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Hot New Place for Singles - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=778\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Hot New Place for Singles - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Newsletter writers are playing cupid with their like-minded readers.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=778\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-22T12:49:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=778#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=778\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"headline\":\"The Hot New Place for Singles\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-22T12:49:41+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=778\"},\"wordCount\":1233,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=778#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/6dbca4163229aafca70e48f246adb0ac.avif\",\"articleSection\":[\"Family\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=778#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=778\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=778\",\"name\":\"The Hot New Place for Singles - 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