Shabbos their day of mingling

Sad and depressing is the single scene in the Upper West Side.

N. Y. Times:

On a midsummer Saturday afternoon, the Great Lawn in Central Park is the best place - perhaps the only place - for these modestly dressed eligible bachelors and bachelorettes to meet, so much so that by 5 p.m., the lawn has been transformed into a unmistakable singles scene for the Sabbath-observant Jews of the Upper West Side....
Someone unfamiliar with the scene might have trouble distinguishing those searching for potential dates from the masses who have simply come to stroll. But this day the park is filled with more than 100 modern Orthodox Jews in their 20's and 30's, most of them single. It is that status they eagerly seek to change....
"Look, this is it," a young man announced while giving an impromptu tour with his wife to some acquaintances who were apparently in town from St. Louis and had seen nothing like this in their Midwestern Jewish world. "Welcome to the scene of the Upper West Side," he said. "This is the scene you've heard all about." ....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/nyregion/thecity/28chase.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1125288231-zGt8k0cA0O5EiFpaF93PAw

I have mixed feelings about the Scene. Singlehood to too many Scene-members has become an ends not a means, a convenience not a pursuit, an entrenched lifestyle not an end to one.

While it's lonely being single it's lonelier staying that way.