The best first-date ideas for New Yorkers

If your date doesn’t love enormous LED-luminescent starfish, then you know it’s a deal-breaker. This kaleidoscopic ocean-inspired experience only costs you five bucks, and it will ensure you’re both in a great mood for a Battery Park picnic afterward. 10am–6pm.

Photograph: Flickr/CC/Victoria Pickering

If you’re too nervous to make first-date conversation, just don’t bother! With cushy seats and a stacked menu served to you during the movie, Nitehawk condenses “dinner and a movie” into one seamless event. Niche favorites like In Bruges, Ginger Snaps and Princess Mononoke ensure a game audience and let you gauge your date’s taste.

Escape the anxiety-inducing horrors of dinner reservations, cab rides and theater tickets and head out under the stars in the Hayden Planetarium for a perfect romantic night. While you gaze at the unfolding cosmos during Neil deGrasse Tyson’s marvelous show, sneak a few furtive peeks at each other.

Photograph: Flickr/CC/Brendan Lynch

The insane (and insanely talented) performers at this rowdy dueling-piano show at Grand Morsi expect audience members who want to sing, dance and scream for their favorite classics. Get ready to throw caution to the wind and head out for a wild and raucous time.

The Garret East provides you with an excellent opportunity to impress your date. You can bring your own classy records (yeah, you have a record player, natch) and show the crowd how it’s done at this chill hipster-jukebox night. Just leave your Phantom of the Opera OBC vinyl at home, at least for the first round.

Rather than guess at each other’s measurements under clunky coats, strip down and show off your muscles while learning to rely on each other up high on a towering wall. Choose one of the special cider or beer-tasting nights to give yourselves a satisfying reward for your bonding efforts.

No need for a movie or a show after dinner here; you’ll have all the spectacle you can handle for one night at this legendary cheese restaurant. Waiters will carve heated, dripping blocks of gooey Swiss raclette cheese onto your full dish of potatoes and arugula salad while you and your date watch in astonishment. Even if you don’t hit it off, you’ll have had a legendary dinner and your Instagram will be in great shape.

Any child of the ’90s can attest that the best way to get to know people is over several (dozen) rounds of Mario Kart. So step off the couch and show your date a free night of fun as you play games on the brand-new store’s colossal 15-foot screen, reminisce about your favorite childhood games and bond over favorite Nintendo characters from Link to Princess Peach.

If you’re too intimidated to participate in small talk, strap on a set of headphones and get to know each other on the dance floor, with nobody but the DJ to show you the way. NYC has an endless supply of silent discos—or headphone parties—in museums, clubs and even cemeteries. Check out Lincoln Center Local: Silent Disco, The Guggenheim’s Art After Dark series or Quiet Clubbing to find upcoming events.

Don’t be tempted to ease those first-date jitters by tossing back a few shots beforehand. Instead, tour this Brooklyn Navy Yard distillery and tasting room to imbibe some liquid courage with your date. You’ll learn the history and science behind whiskey and get to sample some of their inventive alcohols, like chocolate whiskey, peated bourbon and strawberry-ginger moonshine.