The Wall Street Journal reported last week on Wednesday that San Jose ranked #6 in its list of “The Next Youth-Magnet Cities.”  The Wall Street Journal “sought out six of the nation’s leading experts to rank the 10 U.S. cities they see as most likely to emerge as ‘youth magnet’ cities after the recession—popular target destinations among young, college-educated, often single people setting out to start a career, find a mate or both.”  While the Journal itself notes that the rankings are not scientific (calling the effort a “parlor game”), expert demographers, economists, geographers, and urban issues authors were among the panelists.

The rankings appear below, as well as the details on why San Jose made the list.

1. Washington D. C. (tie)

2. Seattle (tie)

3. New York City

4. Portland, Ore.

5. Austin, TX

6. San Jose, CA   <<<——-  GEEKS ARE SEXY!

7. Denver

8. Raleigh Durham, N.C.

9. Dallas

10. Chicago (tie)

10. Boston (tie)

Sixth Place:  San Jose, CA

Upside: Silicon Valley’s combination of lively entrepreneurs and smart money will enable it to continue to draw the best and brightest. The region routinely attracts one-third of U.S. venture-capital spending, which should rejuvenate growth in hot fields, including alternative energy and life sciences, one panelist says. A free-fall in housing prices has made the area more affordable. Young adults will continue to flock to San Jose and San Francisco alike for their restaurants and cultural life, access to outdoor activities and “large stock of smart, driven young people who want to make a difference in the world,” one panelist says.

Downside: High unemployment at 13%, and a high overall cost of living, make the region a hard sell for entry-level workers.

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CBS News did a short segment on the Journal’s report.  Hear first-hand from the Silicon Valley local geeks and yours truly, SV Bachelorette.

[*Please note below that my voice was dubbed in this segment.  My real voice is not deep and low.  Trust me, it’s a lot geekier (and sexier) in real life!  **If you can't view the video in your reader, click here.]

Lately, there are a lot of people tossing the word “geek” around as the new cool label in town.  Personally, I don’t quite remember this to be the case when I was in high school.  I know that many geeks, including myself, wished that being flagged as a “geek” got them the attention of that cute boy or girl, or better yet, the homecoming king or queen title.  Nevertheless, geeks grew up being themselves.  They were devoted to their studies and passionate of all intellectual things, especially science and technology.  They hardly had any time to mingle in social activities that most other teenagers were able to attend or experience, such as homecoming, bonfires, and chaperoned house parties with the cool, popular kids.

Today, geeks can attribute their success through their smarts, hard work, and passion to solve problems.  It is true that geeks shall inherit the earth.  We have already seen a small glimpse of this happening.  The tech geekette Justine Ezarik, also famously known as iJustine, casually hangs out with Ashton Kutcher.  Hollywood celebs, LeVar Burton and Tony Hawk, gave a talk at the Twitter Conference in front of a live audience of tech geeks.  Chamillionaire, a talented rapper, is now a staple at tech events.  The tech community is slowly merging with the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and forming as one.

Is this a good sign for the Silicon Valley geeks and community?  Yes and no.  Hollywood, endearingly referred as Tinseltown, is one of the few superficial central hubs in the U.S. that survives solely on good looks, fame, and money. The glamour of Tinseltown attracts huge mass media, both nation and worldwide.  By combining efforts of tech and Hollywood, the geeks are finally being recognized and praised for their contribution and impact to society.

On the down side, the merge may cause the seemingly innocent and untainted geek world to experience a bit of the superficial Hollywood effect.  In L.A., a single, young, and attractive individual who can turn heads, sometimes can find love to be a bit difficult.  They are competing with other beautiful people that have better surgically enhanced traits.  They are being judged on their looks every day.  Gold diggers, both males and females, run abundant in Hollywood, while the powerful and wealthy men and women have the pick of the crop of the superficially enhanced.  As a result, it’s hard to know whether the person is genuine or not.

Silicon Valley has inherited some of the superficial Hollywood effect.  Sometimes, it feels as though the tech bubble is trapped in a rap video. Scantily-clad dressed women are hired to work at booths at tech conferences to promote new startups and products.  Some of these male geeks have tried creating a special application for the iPhone to locate “geek diggers.”  Instead of a time where smart women should be praised for their mind and not as sexual objects, this outlook is going to have the female geeks work ten times harder than they have already been doing to gain the respect in an industry that is predominantly all male.

Will these geeks be able to find love or be seduced by all the fun of the glitz and glamour that Tinseltown has trickled into Silicon Valley? According to the Wall Street Journal and other blogs, they believe that Silicon Valley is the new hot spot for young professionals to find love.  This comes as good news, but personally, I believe that finding love might be tougher than before.  It’s already hard for an attractive, single person to survive and find love in the superficial world, but to have a geek be sucked into this new found fame and power when they never experienced this kind of attention previously, it’s going to be a bit more brutal and overwhelming.

What does this mean to all of us?  It just means that the tech social scene has been reinvented.  Silicon Valley has been spooning Hollywood over the past few years.  If it were not for the birth of Facebook and Twitter, no one would believe that Silicon Valley and Hollywood have been and are currently forking each other.  Nevertheless, as geeks, we’re smart and able to adapt to situations and find solutions to problems.  Tim Ferriss, for example, outsourced his love life by hiring individuals to set up dates for him.  Developers are constantly creating dating websites and iPhone applications.  There are love coaches that specialize in helping geeks find love.  These methods may not work for all of us, but it’s in the right direction.  Yes, it’s going to be a tough journey, but I truly believe there’s hope in finding love in Silicon Valley and San Francisco.  Don’t you?

As discussed in the previous post, geeks can be awkward when it comes to social situations, especially talking to girls.  To be fair, I have included in this post a non-geek’s approach on how to get a girl.  At the end of the day, both the geeks and non-geeks are looking to meet the right person.  We all want that best friend who we can love and who loves us back.  Courting the opposite gender and trying to date were never formally taught to any of us.  We all had to learn it through our peers and environment, which played significant roles on how we interact in the dating game today.

Personally, I love geeks.  There’s nothing sexier than a stimulating mind.  Ok, I have to admit, sexy abs are amazing.  A body like David Beckham is a turn-on.  For men, it could be the body of supermodel Marisa Miller.  Obviously, exercising, being fit, and living healthy are all important to the SV Bachelorette and most other singles.  However, a stimulating mind is much more attractive than a body made of steel and perfection.  Anyone who has discipline can work out and have a sexy body; whereas being smart requires a bit more effort.  Tim Ferriss is a very good example of this.  He’s a geek who transformed his image in less than four weeks to an amazing, toned body.  He now has the best of both worlds – smart mind and attractive body.

With all that said above, it really comes down to finding that compatible person.  What one may find awkward and annoying, may be lovable and endearing to another.  How to find that compatible guy or girl is all based on timing and survival skills in the dating jungle.  Dating is tough and sometimes more of a pain than what it’s worth.  We all thought that at one point or another.  However, each person we meet that is incompatible, we learn a new lesson on what to do or not to do.  It’s just one step closer to finding your perfect guy or girl.

Cheer up.  The non-geeks are equally as confused as the geeks on how to get a girl.  Want to hear it straight from the non-geek himself?  Yes, he’s a San Francisco local and normally hangs out in the Marina.

[*Please be warned that this video may be a bit annoying, especially if you’re watching it sober.]

Recap of the “The Non-Geek’s Guide to Getting a Girl.”

1. Knows how to not fake awesome.
2. Best pick-up line:  “Ladies, I’m single and I have no standards.”
3. Make loud mating calls.  The ladies will hear it and will find you irresistible.
4. Use lots of body language, especially the fist in the air, to show your amount of testosterone.  This turns on the ladies.
5. Non-Geek’s Advice:  “Be a jerk.  Girls love that.”
6. Wear large dark shades in the bar to show how cool you are.
7. Refer your biceps as guns and flex them several times with your buddies.  The ladies will feel protected.

Tech networking events are fun and a great place to meet other like-minded individuals to discuss possible partnerships in a new startup and/or investment opportunities with potential investors.   However, there are many others who come there to meet new friends or even, eligible singles to date.  Nothing is wrong with looking at networking events as an outlet to meet quality singles.  As a matter fact, it should be a perfect place.  Smart and ambitious men and women are quite attractive.  Being smart is the *new* sexy.

What if two people (a business networker and a mingling single on the hunt) have different intentions at a networking event?  It can be somewhat disastrous.  Nevertheless, it’s not a lost cause.  Like any business conversations or deals, you always look for confidence, sincerity, and compatibility in the other individual.  You want to make sure you can work with this person. You want to know if you’re making a wise investment in their startup.  So why not do the same thing when you want to meet someone who you want to potentially date?

If you’re a mingling single on the hunt talking to a business networker at a tech event, you need to portray that same confidence, sincerity, and rapport to the other person as you would when pitching to an investor.  If you don’t, things can be a bit sour.

To illustrate, here’s a recent scenario that happened to yours truly, SV Bachelorette, a frequent business networker at tech events.

[*Please note that names have been changed to protect the identity of the individuals.]

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Tech Guy:  Hi, I’m Tech Guy*.  What’s your name?

Me:  I’m SV Bachelorette*.  It’s nice to meet you.

Tech Guy: [Without missing a beat]  Um…I would like to get to know you better.  Um…maybe over lunch, coffee, or dinner?

[A bit surprised with the forward question in such a short amount of time. I’m thinking to myself that he doesn’t even know what I do.  Regardless, I’m willing to go with the flow.]

Me:  Sure.

Tech Guy:  [*Silence*]

Me:  So what would you like to know more about?

[*Pause*  Noticing Tech Guy is gleaming with a huge smile and trying to put on an overdone cool stance. I needed clarification based on his body language and further questioned his intentions.  After all, this is a business networking event.]

Me:  Do you want to know more about me professionally?

Tech Guy:  Well, I can ask you professional questions, but I can also ask you questions that are not professional.

Me: Ok.

[*Silence*  I think I can hear the crickets chirping.]

Tech Guy: [mimicking a cool John Travolta demeanor and tone]  If you give me your number, I may or may not call you.

Me:  [a bit amused]  What? You may or may not call me?

Tech Guy:  [still mimicking the John Travolta stance] Yeah, I may or may not call you.

Me:  Ok.  Well then, do you have Twitter?

Tech Guy: Yeah.

Me:  I’ll make it easy for you, so you don’t have to decide whether you will or will not call me.  You can connect with me on Twitter.  My handle is SVBachelorette*.

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Tech Guy adds me on Twitter and Facebook within a few hours of meeting that night.  He never sent me a message.  It appears as though he wanted to get my contact info for the sake of getting it.  At least with Twitter and Facebook, he can be updated with what’s going on in my life without wondering whether he should or should not call me.

Tech geeks, please don’t let this be you.

[Personally, I would’ve deleted the message, but everyone has different judgment calls.]

Here’s a screenshot of the girl’s comments on his Facebook wall.  Well actually, just an excerpt of it.  Mind you, he never really wrote anything on her wall.  And yes, he just started dating this girl.

After this incident, it just went downhill.  Guys like the chase.  It becomes a turn-off when the girl gets too aggressive early on, especially if the guy is not considering the girl as a fling.

If you’re a girl, don’t make the same mistake as her.  Some things are meant to be said privately.  USE EMAIL!  Don’t try to mark your territory by leaving tons of messages or inappropriate comments on public walls.  Instead of winning the guy over, you are going to lose him.  The same thing goes with guys, too.  Possessive or jealous guys are not sexy.

What do you think of the situation?  Have you had a similar case of territorial marking?

I understand there has been a shift in technology and many men have found it appropriate to text or email a girl to ask her on a date.  I don’t like to accept dates over these forms of communication because I feel it’s impersonal and not chivalrous on the man’s part.  However, I’m not going to lie, I have accepted dates in the past that came in the form of a text.  Does that make me a hypocrite? No.  I never said, “Never.” Plus, how would it qualify me as someone who doesn’t like something when she hasn’t even tried it?  So there, I accepted dates via text and I, particularly, don’t like it.

Why?  Well, it’s already tough going through the dating game process of figuring out what you should do to respond to each other’s actions.  Such as, how many days does a guy need to wait to contact the girl? Or, how many days or hours does a girl need to wait to respond back to the guy?  Ridiculous games that we all play to elevate the other person’s interest.  We all hate it, but we still do it.  Texting adds to the complexity.  It creates more games and higher possibilities of misinterpretations.  Emails are even worse than texting.

My buddy Jon didn’t believe me about the difference between calling, texting, or emailing.  This was our conversation the other day.

Jon:  I really like this girl and I want to ask her out on Facebook.

Me:  What?

Jon:  I want to email her on Facebook and ask her out.

Me:  Have you met her in person before?

Jon: Yes.

Me: Do you have her number?

Jon: Yes.

Me: Then, why won’t you call her?

Jon: I work in tech and the internet is my life, so she should understand that.  It’s me.  It’s who I am.

Me:  I’m sure she respects what you do, but there’s something to be said about a guy calling a girl and asking her out verbally.

Jon:  Ok, I’ll let you know.

A day or two after our conversation, we met up for lunch and he recapped what happened.

Me: So what happened with you and that girl?  Did you call her?

Jon: No, I Facebook messaged her.

Me:  And…..?!

Jon: She said, “No.”

Me:  Oh, Jon.  I’m sorry to hear that.

Jon (shrugs):  It’s cool…

I feel bad for Jon because he’s a good guy and any girl would be lucky to get his attention.  But what was he thinking?!  I know it’s tough being a male.  Having to be the one going out on the limb to ask a girl out and possibly getting rejected each time is not easy.  However, the fear of rejection is not a good reason to not call a girl.  If she specified that she likes to text or email, then you should be attentive to that; otherwise, give her a call. You’ll probably get a better chance of her saying yes on the phone and a better gauge of how she feels about you.  I truly believe that the next best thing to seeing a person live is hearing his/her voice.

If you’re a guy, what’s causing you to call or not call?  Or, why do you call, text, or email a girl?

If you’re girl, do you like one form better than the other?  Why?

My friends call me the San Francisco/Silicon Valley “Hitch.” Not sure what it meant at the time, but found out later it was in reference to the movie Hitch that starred Will Smith as a professional wingman who knows the dating game so well that he teaches his clients how to court the ladies.  However, when it comes to his dating life, he struggles on how to win the heart of one woman that he’s completely smitten with. He violates all his dating rules and games that he taught his clients because he fell for this woman.  Of course, like all movies, he won her heart at the end.

I’m not a professional wingwoman.  I’m just a regular girl who happens to be a young professional executive in the Silicon Valley, but somehow make my way up to the city almost every night of the week.  I can definitely relate to the character that Will Smith played in Hitch. I had my share of dating men from different backgrounds – the gorgeous models, the geeks, the players, and everything in-between. I’ve had a lot of experience in the dating world.  It should be, since I just entered into my 30s.  With that experience, I’ve mastered the dating game and etiquette quite well.  My friends benefited from my skills since I helped them court the opposite gender. Many have landed in a successful relationship.  I’m not here to brag about my wingwoman skills, but rather that I know the game, but absolutely *hate* to use it on those I truly like and want to date.  Like “Hitch,” I naturally know how to connect others with love, but when it comes to mine, I’m still trying to figure it out.

I never arrived this way.  I was the bonafide geeky, American-born Asian girl with glasses who grew up with her nose in her books.  I was the nice girl that went unnoticed under the big glasses and baggy clothes. Boys aren’t insightful at a young age, so they couldn’t look beyond the nerdy attire I sported every day.  You wouldn’t know me now if you met me then.  I ditched my glasses by the time I hit college and changed my Asian haircut with the front bangs by the time I started grad school.  I didn’t have my first real boyfriend until I was 21.  I was late in the dating game.  Mostly because I was raised in a strict, conservative Asian family.  Ask any Asian girl and she will tell you the stories of her strict upbringing.  I don’t regret anything about it.  We all have different experiences that influence who we are today.  I embrace who I am and how I got here.

Today, I consider myself as an attractive woman, who is confident, ambitious, and independent.  I am successful in many ways in my life. I am a builder and creator of things and ideas.  At the same time, I make mistakes and acknowledge I’m not perfect, but I learn the most when I fail or am not at my best.  I believe I also described 90% of the women in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.  With that said, I am in a pool with a high number of very intelligent and *single* women with academic degrees, corporate experience, and/or startups to back up their names.

Why does this all matter?  To begin with, there is a lack of number of qualified single heterosexual males in San Francisco, in contrast to the large number of shy, geeky guys in the Silicon Valley.  The men in San Francisco acknowledge the lopsided scale of eligible single women versus eligible single men and they use it to their advantage by playing the field and always looking for the “next best thing,” even though the girl they are with hits all points in looks, smarts, and personality.  It’s understandable that we all need to date a lot to figure out what we want in a partner.  But seriously, does it really need to be a constant every day search for an upgrade?

On the opposite spectrum, the single males outnumber the single females in Silicon Valley.  Many locals have sometimes referred San Jose as “Man” Jose for this very reason. The single women in Silicon Valley have the pick of the crop.  However, the guys are a bit more shy and awkward than compared to their San Francisco male counterpart.  Nothing is wrong with this, but rather the Silicon Valley guys are too shy that they don’t ask a girl out or demonstrate interest.  If they do make an attempt, their methodology is a bit awkward. (I will get more into this at a future blog post).

I’ve been in the Bay Area for a total of 6 years. I use to live in San Francisco for the first few years before making the leap and stationing myself in the lovely Peninsula or otherwise, known as, Silicon Valley.  Here, I am going to chronicle my dating adventures as a Silicon Valley Bachelorette (and maybe share a few stories from my single friends).  Like every single person, I’m hoping that this fun, but also equally agonizing process called dating that I find Mr. Right.