Which bars, restaurants and other places do you like in Boston, particularly to meet people?

Going to bars (as opposed to parties given at a bar) to meet people is a waste of time. So if I go to a bar, it's either with a date or with friends. I prefer upscale places, such as the Bristol Lounge in the Four Seasons, the old Ritz-Carlton on Arlington Street, the new Davio's on Arlington Street, Stephanie's, City-Bar in the Lenox Hotel, and Blu in Sports Club LA. I'm not a big fan of clubs — too dark, loud music, and a lot of mindless people. I particularly like places with couches, which I find to be more comfortable and more conducive to conversation than chairs. Fireplaces — particularly real fireplaces — are a plus.

From a single guy's point of view, other than my parties, the best places to meet eligible women are black tie charity events.

Are there any particular cuisines you like?

I like them all. I do try to eat healthy. The book I follow is "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy" by Walter Willet, who is Chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard's School of Public Health. Willet advocates the Mediterranean diet — lots of fruits and vegetables, fats are fine as long as they are unsaturated fats, carbohydrates are fine as long as they are unprocessed. I've made extensive notes from the book.

How social are you?

I used to be awkward in social settings, not knowing how to make small talk with people I did not know. I was in a long-term relationship and when it ended, I started dating again, and I realized that if I wanted to meet someone, I would have to learn how to socialize. Since January 2002, I've become much more socially active, attending various events in Boston. My social life (as opposed to my love life) has been an extraordinary success, and I've become quite popular and I've made a lot of friends. I've enjoyed this immensely and now I feel quite comfortable meeting new people. I've given several parties so far, and people say they're among the best in Boston. (OK, I acknowledge that this doesn't necessarily mean much, since most Boston parties are terrible.) About twice a month I also organize dinners or other get togethers for friends of mine to meet each other.

I also do some match making. If we don't become an item and I think you are a classy girl, I might introduce you to some of my high quality male friends. In 2003 I set one female friend of mine with two male friends. The first she dated for six months and the second she married after seven weeks of dating. (!) I set up another female friend of mine who dated the guy for several months.

So why are most Boston parties so terrible?

Lots of little cliques, loud music (making it almost impossible to talk to people), and too crowded (too many people per square foot, making it difficult to move around). Boston being Boston, these drawbacks will most likely go on forever. Fortunately, my parties are different.

My favorite is when six women arrive together, stay in the corner talking only to each other (thus ensuring that no guys are going to approach them, since few guys have the self confidence to approach six women), and then at the end of the evening they complain they didn't meet anyone.

Tell me about the cocktail parties you give

About every 6 weeks I give a cocktail party. I give them on Tuesdays because my bargaining position with the bar or restaurant is stronger than if I were to give them on Thursday or Friday (Back Bay bars have little business on Tuesdays). Most of them are given at the old Ritz-Carlton, which provides me with a private room and there is no music. Attendance has been increasing at an increasing rate (or as an economist would say, the second derivative is positive), with the one in June, 2005 having approximately 450 people. I invite people who ideally meet all eight criteria:

1. They are interesting and have a wide range of intellectual interests.
2. They have interesting careers.
3. They are outgoing and have social skills and social poise — i.e., the ability to talk with complete strangers and make them feel comfortable. They mingle. I'm not looking for people who come with a friend and talk with that friend all evening or who sit in the corner all evening.
4. When you talk with them, they focus on you. They are completely present, in the moment.
5. They have manners, they are not rude, and they are not flakes. They return telephone calls and e-mails promptly, and they treat everyone courteously.
6. They are skilled at cultivating and maintaining friendships and relationships.
7. They are direct and don't lead people on.
8. They are not small-minded dweebs.

I'm looking for all eight, not just seven out of eight. ;-) My parties have become quite successful, and I now give them every 6 weeks or so. About 70 percent of the people who are invited eventually attend one, and once they attend, they're hooked — more than 90 percent of those who attend come to another one. Most of the people who attend say they are the best, or among the best, parties in Boston.

I wrote my own invitation system in Microsoft Access, which tracks who has responded, who is coming, etc.

Why don't you just use Evite, rather than writing your own system?

I tried Evite in 2003 but I found that many anti-spam e-mail programs reject e-mails from Evite as spam; approximately 20 percent of my invitations were not being received. Evite also has a more subtle problem. The return address on the invitation is an Evite address rather than your own e-mail address. So if a message bounced (perhaps you typed in the wrong e-mail address or the person has moved), you didn't see the error message and thus you don't know the address you entered is wrong. In 2005, I tried it again, and almost all of the bugs were fixed. So now I maintain my database in Access and then use Evite to send the actual invitations and to track responses.

How many people attend?

Attendance has been increasing at an increasing rate (or as an economist would say, the second derivative is positive), with approximately 550 attending the large cocktail parties.

Are there any other social activities that you plan?

I have a social e-mail list and I also run a series of dinner parties.

What is the social e-mail list?

I have a distribution list of several hundred people. As I receive e-mails concerning various social and cultural events in Boston, I forward many of these e-mails to the list.

What about your dinner parties?

This is a group of about 35 friends (basically, a subset of the people on my cocktail party invitation list) that get invited to a dinner party I host once a month. I give the dinners at Davio's and the Boston Millennium Hotel. The first nine people that sign up for the dinner attend. The idea is to have a group of people that want to nurture friendships that will hopefully last for life.

Tell us about your friends

Before I started to socialize in 2002, most of my friends were male. Since then, most of the close friends I've made are female. I find that women are much easier to talk with about feelings than guys are. They're also much more interested in really close friendships (e.g., those where you talk a few times a day). Since 2002, I've made six or seven close female friends, most of whom I think will be friends for life.

This is something a potential partner needs to be comfortable with. I'm very monogamous and I would never cheat on someone. These friendships are very important to me, and a potential partner should feel comfortable with them. I would want her, of course, to meet all of them. I prefer that a potential partner have close male friends, friends she can confide in and who can offer her advice.

How do you like the people in Boston?

My reaction is mixed. Boston does have a lot of high energy, exceptionally smart people who are doing interesting things. There are simply more high caliber people per square foot here than in, say, Cincinnati. On the other hand, there are a lot of rude, smug, insular, parochial people. There's a degree of complacency here that amazes me. Not everyone, of course, but among a substantial number of people. It's too bad you can't have the good without the bad.

One very gross generalization I've made is based on whether they grew up here. If they did not, the odds that they are a nice person are higher than if they did. There are obvious exceptions either way, but as a general rule, I find it holds. People raised in almost every other part of the country are taught basic kindness, something that is not emphasized as much if one grows up here. It would be fun to empirically test this hypothesis. Pick 1000 people from Match.Com at random in Boston, and another 1000 in another city in the U.S. Write exactly the same letter to all 2000 people. Eliminate the ones that write back saying they are interested, because they are motivated to write back. Look solely at the rest. My bet would be that in Boston far fewer have the courtesy to write back "Thanks, but I don't think we are good match" than in other cities in the U.S.