We love a pub. The pub is a safe harbour, a first-date default, a place where you can nurse one drink and read a whole person across a sticky table. But if every date starts to feel like the same booth with a different face opposite you, it might be time to switch it up. Whether you are three dates deep or still working out if this is even a date, here are seventeen ideas that get you out of the beer garden and somewhere a little more memorable.
Take a class you are both bad at
There is nothing like being equally hopeless at something to break the ice. Pottery, life drawing, a beginners’ bouldering session, a pasta-making class where you both end up covered in flour. The point is not to be good. The point is to laugh, to help each other, and to have something to do with your hands when the conversation dips. You will learn more about someone from how they handle a wobbly clay bowl than from any amount of small talk.
Do a gallery lap with a rule
Wandering a gallery in silence is fine, but you are here to learn something about them, so give it rules. Each of you picks the one piece you would steal, the one you would never hang at home, and the one that is secretly them. Their answers will tell you more than an hour of “so what do you do” ever could, and you get to disagree loudly about a Rothko in the process. Most are free, so save your money for the good coffee after.
Go record shopping, then cook to the results
Head to a charity shop or a record store and each buy something for the other on a small budget. Then take your finds back, put them on, and cook dinner together. You get a soundtrack, a story, and a low-stakes way to see how you move around a kitchen together. Chosen family starts somewhere, and often it is over a shared chopping board.
Find your nearest queer bookshop
A queer bookshop is a date in itself. Wander, recommend, judge each other gently for what you pick up, and leave with a book chosen by the other person. Bonus points if you swap and read them before date number four. It supports a space that matters, and it gives you both homework you will actually enjoy.
Spend the day at the lido
When London is melting, there is nowhere better than an outdoor pool. Pack a towel each, a bag of snacks and something cold to drink, and make a day of it at your nearest lido. There is a lovely ease to it: you swim, you dry off in the sun, you talk, you go back in. Being in swimwear on an early date takes a certain confidence, which is its own quiet way of getting to know each other. Get there early on a heatwave day, because everyone else has had the same idea.
Go on a graffiti and street-art walk
Turn a wander into a treasure hunt. Areas like Shoreditch, Camden, Leake Street and Peckham are covered in street art, and a slow loop looking for the best of it makes for a brilliant date. Take photos, argue about your favourites, work out which ones will be painted over by next week. It is free, it keeps you moving without feeling like a hike, and there is plenty of shade between the walls when the sun is fierce. Bring water and finish somewhere with a cold drink.
Lace up for a roller disco
Nothing dissolves first-date nerves quite like wobbling round a rink holding hands because one of you genuinely cannot stop. Roller discos have had a full queer renaissance, all disco lights and shameless nostalgia, and half the fun is that neither of you has to be any good. She catches you, you catch her, and by the third lap you are both showing off. Wear something you can fall over in, and let the skate-hire fee count as a bargain.
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Have a kick about in the park
Grab a ball, find a patch of grass and see what happens. There is a reason sapphic football culture is having such a moment: it is competitive, it is a bit sweaty, and it lets you flirt through the medium of a badly taken penalty. You do not need a team or a clue, just two of you, jumpers for goalposts and a shared willingness to take it far too seriously. Bring water, go early or late to dodge the worst of the heat, and reward the winner with an ice cream.
Book a dinner, just the two of you
Sometimes the switch-up is doing the classic thing with intention. Not the quick pint before deciding, but a table booked, a meal you look forward to, an evening where the only plan is each other. Pick somewhere queer-owned or queer-friendly if you can, dress for it, and let yourselves be a little bit fancy. You are worth the reservation.
Go to a daytime queer event
Not everything has to happen after dark. Sapphic picnics, queer markets, community sports days, afternoon socials and film screenings are popping up in more and more places, and daytime takes the edge off a first meeting. You can leave when you like, you can actually hear each other, and you get to see your date in daylight, which is its own kind of intimacy.
Get lost in a glasshouse
When the pavement is too hot to think, a botanical glasshouse is a small miracle, and a properly romantic one. The Barbican Conservatory, Kew, the Kibble Palace if you are up in Glasgow: humid, green and quiet, with a bench half hidden behind a giant fern that might as well have your names on it. Wander the tropical bits, invent Latin names for things, and take the photo you both know is going straight in the group chat. It feels like slipping into another country for the afternoon, which is precisely the point.
Book a private karaoke booth
Doing karaoke to a full pub takes nerve. Doing it in a private booth with one person takes something better: trust, and a willingness to be a bit ridiculous. Book an hour, order something cold, and take turns picking songs for each other. There is no faster way to find out if someone can laugh at themselves, and belting a duet badly together is a surprisingly tender thing to share.
Get your tarot read together
Whether you take it seriously or treat it as pure theatre, having your cards read is a brilliant date. Find a queer-friendly reader or a good café that hosts them, sit close, and let a stranger tell you things about yourselves. You will end up talking about hopes, fears and the future far sooner than you would over a pint, and it gives you both plenty to unpick afterwards.
Go to a museum late
Lots of museums throw after-hours evenings with drinks, a DJ and the odd silent disco between the exhibits, and they are so much better than the shuffling weekend version. Low lights, a grown-up crowd, and a building doing all the impressing so you do not have to. Pick one with a lates programme that sounds a bit unhinged, keep an eye out for the queer and late-night specials that pop up around Pride season, and let her think the whole thing was your idea.
Find a rooftop or a hill at golden hour
You do not need a fancy bar for a good view. A free rooftop garden, a park on a slope, a bit of high ground with the city laid out below. Time it for golden hour, bring something to sit on and something to nibble, and watch the light go soft over London. It is romantic without trying too hard, and once the heat of the day breaks it is one of the best places to be.
Plan a tiny adventure out of town
A day trip does a lot of heavy lifting. A train to a seaside town, a nearby city neither of you knows well, a National Trust garden you can mooch around. A shared journey gives you hours together, a change of scene, and the small logistics-solving that quietly tells you whether you actually like being a team.
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Stay in and make it an occasion
The at-home date gets a bad name, usually from people who did it lazily. Done with care it is one of the best there is. Cook together, curate a gloriously daft double bill, play a board game with real stakes and no mercy. The trick is to treat it as a plan you both showed up for rather than the thing you defaulted to, and there is a particular kind of relief in being fully yourself with someone before the second date is even over.
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The pub will always be there. But the best dates tend to be the ones where you actually do something, learn something, or see a new side of the person across from you. Go on, book the pottery class.
Nonchalant x
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This article was written by one of our creative team writers here at Nonchalant Magazine.
