LAMORINDA WEEKLY | To Lamorinda singles over 40: There's hope!


Lori Fowler and John George enjoy the fun at the Nov. 7 Lamorinda singles event Photo Nick Marnell

World Series over. No Sharks game. No Warriors game. Still plenty of time to procrastinate writing my own articles for the paper. It was Tuesday night and I had nothing to do, so I went to dinner at Rancho Cantina on Mt. Diablo Boulevard in Lafayette.

The place was mobbed! The first Tuesday in November, and not just mobbed, but buzzing. Three dozen-plus people drinking and talking and laughing and forcing me to sit at the counter. Co-owner Julie Mitchell walked over to me and explained: Her bar-restaurant was hosting a singles event, put together by the irrepressible Kim Thanh, a Lafayette commercial banker.

"Lafayette is so boring. It's so hard to be single in the suburbs," Thanh said, as smiling and upbeat and positive as one would expect of an event planner. So Thanh reached out on Nextdoor, a private neighborhood social network, and organized the Nov. 7 get-together. She promoted a singles event at Metro a month earlier, which drew only 10 people, albeit with a suggested age range of 28-48. The event at Rancho Cantina buried the earlier one: Rancho was promoted as a 40-65 event. And did the 40-65 singles respond.

"Way better than I thought it would be," said Cyndy Ayers of Saranap. "It's great to meet with people who have something in common from the same area."

Kristi Buckley of Lafayette, who works for an architectural firm in San Francisco, praised the turnout. "We need this. It's so hard to meet people in our city," Buckley said.

A faithful reader of our paper offered her special take to the evening. "Widows and widowers have no organization," said Lori Fowler of Lafayette, a widow herself. "People assume events for widows are for people only in their 80s. There are plenty of us in their 50s too," Fowler said. John George, a retired widower, agreed. "I've lived two and a half years in Lafayette, and I didn't think there were any singles here," George said.

About the only professed negative was the gender mix, as proclaimed by one attendee who wished to remain anonymous, who said the men didn't have the guts to show up. The turnout was 75 percent female. (I was working, so I didn't count.)

Thanh and Mitchell plan to host a similar event for the 40-65 age group on the first Tuesday evening of each month. No official title, still a work in progress.

And guys: On Dec. 5, there are no Warriors or Sharks games on television.