The Pick Up (A Gallon Of Non-Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone Milk) Scene At Your Local Whole Foods

Like WNYC’s attempts to cash in on its wonky, somewhat female-overloaded Soterios Johnson-loving unattached demographic, the new Whole Foods on Houston is hosting events for, er, thin-slicing singles:

Over samples of aged Gouda and amid aisles of extra-virgin olive oil, New Yorkers shopping at Whole Foods Bowery are turning the grocery into a thriving pick-up scene. The gelato bar, the upstairs café, the chilled, private cheese room, and long checkout lines are where flirting is most rampant in the 71,000-square-foot store that opened last March, Whole Foods employees said.

. . .

While many pick-up lines fall flat, single shoppers said the floodlit aisles provide a “safer” space to start up conversations with strangers than most bars in the neighborhood. Peeking into each other’s grocery carts, they said, could also be more revealing of a person’s lifestyle choices than an online profile on a social networking or dating Web site.

“I’m really health conscious,” a 28-year-old singer in the band edible red, Collette McLafferty, said. “I want to date health conscious people, and that could be why Whole Foods seems like a good place to meet people.”

After chatting with an attractive man at Whole Foods two nights ago but forgetting his name, Ms. McLafferty, who lives on the Lower East Side, posted a message on Craigslist looking to reconnect with him.

“He had dark, curly brown hair, blue eyes, he was well built, probably about 5-feet-10,” she said. She is waiting for a response to her posting, she said. Ms. McLafferty, who said she has often been approached by shoppers who comment on the tattoo of a dragon around her upper arm, added that flirting was easy at Whole Foods because of low expectations. “When you go out with the intention of meeting someone, you never meet anyone,” she said.

. . .

“I make eyes at people,” a 27-year-old actor who lives near South Street Seaport, Ari Rossen, said. “It’s a hip neighborhood, everyone who shops here is young, and there are plenty of things around to talk about.”

Whole Foods Bowery is actively boosting its reputation as a place for singles to meet, a spokeswoman for the store, Rebecca Ulanoff, said. In August, the store is hosting “Check Out,” a singles night co-sponsored by the Web site Gothamist.com. The store is also hoping to attract a fashion-forward, eco-friendly crowd tomorrow morning when it sells Anya Hindmarch shopping totes printed with the message: “I’m Not a Plastic Bag.”

I guess the singles events at the Pathmark by the Manhattan Bridge were sparsely attended?

Potential sociology dissertation topic ca. 2014: “The Rise Of The Co-Optation Of Interpersonal Relationships By Corporate Entities In The 21st Century.”