By CAROL CHEN

news@queensledger.com

RIDGEWOOD  — “Date Alice, because she won’t date us.”

It was the closer of a double pitch — two best friends, Camille and Esther, sharing a microphone at Cassette, a bar on Forest Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens, last Thursday night. They’d all come wearing baseball caps. They made Alice take hers off, because she was the catch.

The two friends painted a vivid picture of just how much of a catch Alice, who is sitting on a bar stool right next to them, is: she is an actress and filmmaker from Australia, someone who delivers flowers wrapped in brown paper and leaves gorgeous voice messages; someone who will show up when you need her and say “I’m going to be here with you every step of the way.”

“The fact that she doesn’t have a partner,” said Esther after her pitch, “is always very befuddling to me. Baffling. Befuddling. Perplexing, all of those synonyms.”

This is “Date My Friend,” the sold-out event series where friends take the stage to pitch their single besties to a room of strangers. It started in January when Brit O’Brien, a married LA music photographer, held a low-key singles night at a record store bar in Los Feliz on a whim. It became popular in Los Angeles and has arrived in New York for two consecutive nights, one on the Lower East Side and one in Ridgewood.

The apps, meanwhile, are becoming less popular with the younger generation. A Forbes Health survey found that more than three-quarters of Gen Z respondents felt burned out on swiping. Even Hinge has launched a one-million-dollar initiative to fund in-person social events.

“The revenue model for these apps is not to help you find someone you’re really compatible with and get off the app,” said Jonathan Gilmour, 28, from East Williamsburg, who came to be pitched by his friend. “It’s to keep you enticed, but just frustrated enough that you buy the premium version. I feel jaded and resentful that that is the way we have chosen to connect with one another.”

“There’s so much painful dating online in New York,” Brit O’Brien said after the Ridgewood show. “I knew it would go over (well) here.” The event charges $18 and asks that you bring someone who loves you enough to pitch you on stage

The pitches at Cassette ranged from tender to comical, sometimes in the same breath.

A friend of Sophia’s admitted she had taken to inviting Sophia to parties early — before other guests arrived — just so “her energy permeates the room.” She described Sophia as a dancer, a great host, someone who would bring “more beauty and more grace” into your life. Then she told the story of the shrimp: Sophia had thrown a dinner party so abundant that she forgot an entire pound of fresh shrimp in the refrigerator. The next morning, she cooked it, packed it into Tupperware, and drove around the city delivering it to her friends’ houses.

“As much as I hate to say it,” the pitcher told the crowd, “when she falls in love, she will be less present in my life. I have to share this girl.” But she was willing to make the sacrifice: “Please. Please. Please. Date my friend.”

Alice Kim, 27, pitched her friend Max, whom she met on Tinder four months ago, went on one date with and immediately determined was too chaotic to actually date. “We’re both a little bit too crazy,” she said. “It would end in Earth exploding.” So they became best friends instead. Her pitch described him as “a high definition human living in a low res digital world,” someone with “the emotional intelligence and outfit coordination of your favorite she/they mutual” who is also “100% a straight man who actually just listens.” As proof, she cited a Venn diagram he once drew to help her work through her anxieties about money and the future. The diagram, she added, also contained “a really nice, detailed penis drawing. A breath of fresh air, because he actually cared.”

Gilmour said that watching his friend Alexander Ging pitch him onstage changed something. “I figured there were two possibilities,” Gilmour said. “He would say something really genuine and sweet, or he would really roast me. And I was okay with both.” Ging said watching the earlier pitchers shifted his approach. “It made me realize it’s not that I need to give the best presentation possible,” he said. “I just need to describe the person I know and love as authentically as I can and hopefully that will feel genuine, instead of a sales pitch.”

Camilla Crawford, 31, who came to pitch her friend said she’d deliberately avoided using AI. “I was like, if I use AI, they’ll clock out right away,” she said. “So I just went down the list of my friend’s best qualities.” Gorgeous. Really smart. About to become the youngest chief compliance officer in finance. Has an accent. From South Africa.

Carol Cohen, 23, pitched her friend Harry Abrams by recounting how he once left a party to spend an hour looking for her when she got lost in her own neighborhood. “People that can prioritize a friend like that,” she said, “I can only imagine how they would show up as a person to date.”

“I just feel like there hasn’t been a space where people can go share their friends with the world,” O’Brien said, “even if it’s not about dating. For two hours, there’s just some really genuine, honest joy in the world, and you get to take that in.”

Esther, watching Alice work the room after her pitch, seemed to be feeling exactly that. “I don’t really know how we could be closer,” she said. Then she reconsidered. “But I’m even more in love with her now.”

The New York crowds, O’Brien added, felt different from that of L.A., less like a singles mixer and more like an intentional hangout. “A really nice mix of wedding speech happiness, and people who just know their friends in and out. There’s a little bit of grit to it. I loved it.”

By COLE SINANIAN

cole@queensledger.com

ASTORIA — State Senator Kristen Gonzalez wants your personal data to stay personal.

Having sponsored a series of ambitious bills aimed at limiting tech companies’ access to New Yorkers’ personal data, the Elmhurst native is on the forefront of the push to regulate the tech industry at a time when artificial intelligence seems to be creeping into every corner of society.

During an online meeting on March 25 hosted by the Old Astoria Neighborhood Association (OANA), Gonzalez outlined several of her recent bills, including legislation that would stop the MTA from sharing rider data with law enforcement and restrict government agencies’ ability to use artificial intelligence tools.

Gonzalez, a Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed senator who began her legislative term in 2023, has sponsored and introduced several AI bills, including the landmark Senate Bill S1169A  — also known as the New York AI Act — which would give the state government the tools to prosecute AI companies by authorizing independent audits and prohibiting algorithmic discrimination. Gonzalez also sponsored Senate Bill S3044, a bill that would empower consumers to obtain the names of all entities collecting their data, and has supported Assembly Bill A5739, or the ‘Secure Our Data” Act, which would compel state agencies to develop a standardized data protection framework regarding state-held consumer data.

Her bill, the “legislative oversight of automated decision-making in government” act (LOADinG) was  recently signed by Governor Hochul and aims to regulate the use of generative AI by government agencies. At the OANA meeting, Gonzalez explained that prior to the bill, there was no public reporting on which AI tools the state government was using. The now infamous MyCity chatbot, for example, an AI tool for small businesses implemented by the Adams Administration, encouraged users to break the law by suggesting that business owners should take a cut of their employees’ tips.

“These aren’t perfect  tools either, and I think we have to be mindful in what context we’re using them,” Gonzalez said. “A lot of them have kind of been sold as these silver bullets but at the end of the day, you should always be in control of the data that’s being used, where that tool is sending information.”

Gonzalez also called attention to her efforts to secure rider data collected by transit companies through her bill, SB S4886A, which would prohibit the disclosure of individual fare payment data to outside agencies. Transit companies like the MTA collect rider data that shows their movements— possibly sensitive information that could compromise rider privacy if shared with law enforcement or tech companies without their knowledge or consent, Gonzalez argued.

“Sometimes it’s not just a single company or an authority like the MTA that’s suddenly getting a lot of data about you that could be used for a number of purposes,” she said. “Sometimes there are companies that are literally dedicated to taking that and buying and selling and creating an entire market around it.”