April 10, 2000

For Women in Silicon Valley, It Seems Like Strikeout.com

By EVELYN NIEVES

ALO ALTO, Calif. -- It was getting too late to meet a geek.

The crowd at Nola's, a bar six deep with techies not an hour before, had thinned to little clusters of buddies fixated on the Sports Channel. Debbie Giacomo and her three friends, perched on too-tall stools around a table, felt wasted, and not from their warm Anchor Steam pale ales.

"What are we doing here alone?" said Giacomo, a 31-year-old third-grade teacher in nearby Hayward, surveying the remaining, idling men. "We're young. We're cute. We're available. So what are we doing here alone?"

	Peter DaSilva for The New York Times
	Craig Newmark, 47, ranked as one of Silicon Valley's 10 most eligible bachelors, has had little action in the date department. "Online chemistry, even voice," he said, "often does not translate into physical chemistry."

A good question. This, after all, is the heart of the heart of man country, one of the few places in the Western Hemisphere where men outnumber women.

Palo Alto, arguably the center of the Silicon Valley universe, has a whopping 36 percent more men than women. Sometimes, the troops of men strolling around downtown makes it seems like a Boy Scout reunion is in town. And since this is also the land of the best educated, highest paid workers in the world, minting 64 new millionaires a day, single women in search of smart, successful men should be having a ball.

But the valley is a weird world, unto itself. In this sphere, techies take their dogs, birds and pajamas to work, and being too busy for anything but becoming the next MOP (millionaire on paper) is as crucial to fitting in as Palm organizers and T-shirts.

On Friday nights, Fry's Electronics, the techie haven here, is more packed with single men than the trendy bars, which tend to fill with Stanford students. So while the geek glut has spawned an industry of matchmakers and image consultants -- those who teach men everything from how long their pants should be to how to say hello -- finding romance is harder than finding a house here for under half a million dollars.

Matchmakers say the dating scene is probably worse than anywhere. "It's pretty brutal," said Julie Paiva, president of Table for Six Total Adventures and Entertainment, a meeting service and social club that began in San Francisco in 1997 and branched out to Silicon Valley's Mountain View last fall.

"A lot of people don't have a lot of time," Paiva said. "There's a lot of stress on their lives. It's very, very competitive. Everyone is worried that the other guy is moving faster. I've never seen such competitive people in my life."

No one, if the anecdotal evidence gathered from single men and women in bars and on the street can be trusted, is happy. Everyone complains. The men complain that the women are too few and too hard to get; the women, that the men don't bother with them or even know how to try.

"Wherever you go, the ratio is five to one, men to women," said Jim Aronson, a 30-year-old sales representative for a semiconductor company in San Jose, as he crankily surveyed the scene in Nola's the other night. Actually, the ratio looked more like 60-40, but all he could see, he said, were "guys, and more guys."

"The girls know they have the pick of the litter," Aronson said. "And there's a lot of gold diggers out there. They come around just to play who wants to meet a millionaire."

Indeed, an urban legend is growing in Silicon Valley about women flocking here in search of geek gods with all the right assets, at least on paper. But like Big Foot, such tales, told by disgruntled single men, are hard to prove. At Nola's, the women come from only as far as other parts of Silicon Valley, same as the men. Danette Austin, a 33-year-old kindergarten teacher in Campbell, next door to San Jose, was not even sure the hype about a guy glut was true.

"They say that the ratio is so good here," Austin said. "But the good guys that are available don't come out of their cubicles."

Of course, she said, a bar has never been the ideal way to meet a mate, or even a date. "I had one good relationship come out of meeting someone at a bar," she said. "But I don't know where to meet anyone anymore. I work really hard, really long hours, and I'm really busy. I've gone years without seeing someone or having a date. It's crazy."

It's not as if opportunities to meet The One, or The One in the Meantime, are lacking. It's hard to read a newspaper without coming across ads for yet another dating service. Consultants like Jama Clark in San Francisco, who offers a six-week course on "The Art of Meeting Women," are busier than some stock-optioned CEOs. (One of her tips: "The first gatekeeper to sexual attraction is the way you look.")

And then there are the parties. Lots and lots of parties. It's becoming a tradition for every new start-up to hold a launch party in San Francisco, usually with an open bar and open door. Indeed, one Web site, www.sfgirl.com, which lists every techie party in town, often lists two or three on the same night.

The dot camaraderie is as thick as the sweaty, crushed crowds at these events. But the action in such parties is all about networking, not dating, the regulars say. Dates, when made, tend to be lavish: at the most expensive restaurants, or on yachts, across borders on private planes, even across the ocean. But dates seem to be the exception.

Larry Gioffree, a 31-year-old sales representative for computer hardware and software to dentists, said neither he nor his friends had ever met women they might date. "The ratio is not good," Gioffree said. "I travel a lot, and wherever I go, it's quite different. Plus the women are quite stuck up here."

If dating is bad for most singles here, it's even worse for those who happen not to fit the prevailing demographics -- white and young, between 22 and 35. Maxeau Mercier, a 30-year-old systems engineer from Montreal, who is black, has had a very dry spell, dating-wise, since moving to Sunnyvale three years ago.

"I work 50 to 70 hours a week anyway," Mercier said, watching three women semisurrounded by a dozen men at Q's, another popular gathering spot in downtown Palo Alto. There are few women in his company, he said, so the corporate gym and the corporate cafeteria and the corporate water cooler are out. And so are clubs, he said.

"I don't ever see a girl here that I'm attracted to," he said. "So I think, 'What's the point?' When you meet them and you tell them what you do, they assume right away that you make a lot of money."

In another world, say, the Upper West Side of Manhattan, which is heavy with single women, Craig Newmark, a 47-year-old self-described "George Costanza, formerly classic nerd type," would be a catch.

Newmark, founder and chief executive of craigslist, a popular community service Web site in San Francisco, is witty (asked the contents of his refrigerator, he says, "don't ask, don't tell"), civic-minded (his Web site is partly nonprofit) and utterly available ("I'm open to all possibilities").

Though listed on the Web site www.women.com as one of Silicon Valley's 10 most eligible bachelors, Newmark has had little action in the date department. The only eligible bachelor on the site who is over 40, and overweight, he has received about two dozen e-mail messages over several weeks and has answered every one. But only one turned into a date -- a first and last date.

"Online chemistry, even voice," he said, "often does not translate into physical chemistry."

Julie Paiva, of Table for Six Total Adventures and Entertainment, which arranges dinner dates with three women and three men with similar interests, said one of the big problems in Silicon Valley these days was that the women were too picky.

"I think it's kind of unfair what they're saying about the men -- that they're geeks who don't have social graces," she said. "I think the ideal man is still the Harrison Ford-Indiana Jones type. The women will say, 'I don't want to meet anyone who is bald.' Well, that bald man might be their soul mate."

She added: "I've been a relationship coach 10 years, and I've never seen things so bad. The misunderstanding between the sexes is tremendous. The women are very tough on the men. They're constantly finding reasons to not like them. And the men, who are some of the nicest guys in the world, think that women just don't want nice guys."

Actually, the women think there are not too many nice guys around, and vice versa.

At Nola's, one of Danette Austin's friends, Katie (who wanted only her first name used), decided to test her theory that all men want to do is brag about how much they make. She pointed to a clean-cut, well-pressed young man of about her age, 26.

"Just watch," she said. "I'm going over to that guy and in five minutes I'll tell you what he makes."

Five minutes later, she was back. "A hundred thou," she said with a shrug. "In sales. He said he'll do a lot better next year."

She didn't hear what the gentleman, Bob Cruz of San Jose, said about her afterward. "A pure gold digger," Cruz summed up. "Just like most of them."

---

Related Sites
These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability.

• Table for Six Total Adventures and Entertainment

• www.sfgirl.com

• craigslist

• www.women.com