Want to chat to strangers in the street? Get a dog!

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Seriously. If you have a dog, ideally not a huge, child-eating scary dog, but an ordinary, pleasant, happy mutt, then people will stop and talk to you. Most of the time, this will simply be friendly chat - with the focus on the dog initially, but if the person is friendly you can chat more generally. People who like dogs, like talking to people with dogs.

If you can't, or don't want, to get a dog of your own, see if you can volunteer at a local animal shelter as a dog walker. Gets you out and about, gets you fit, gets you known within the local area, and maybe, just maybe, a friendship or even a more intimate relationship might develop.

Stands a better chance than simply accosting strangers in the street at random.

This is great advice! I could let the dog accost the stranger instead, and blame it all on the dog. Gee, this will change my life.

In all seriousness, it is good advice, and a good icebreaker. Thanks for sharing your idea.

Absolutely. Walking a friend or relatives baby is good too.

also, wearing an interesting statement [or cause, or destination] t-shirt or sweatshirt. As long as the conment is not negative.

also, wearing an interesting statement [or cause, or destination] t-shirt or sweatshirt. As long as the conment is not negative.

carrying something that you find interesting that someone else may comment on.[ your snowshoes, boogie board, trader joes bag, bookbag covered with funny and political and special interest buttons pinned on it, kaleidioscope from your collection,anything]

What if the stranger you want to talk to is themselves walking a dog; is it kosher to use their dog as a conversation starter, or would that be "accosting" them? Flipping it around, why does the presence of the dog make it okay for strangers to approach you in public, since it's being argued elsewhere that approaching strangers in public is a universally unwelcome intrusion?

I take my cat out for walks (I hold him). People stop to talk to me and pet him constantly, even people who have dogs with them (he likes dogs). When I don't have him they stop me to ask where he is.

Depends on the situation. If you're on a city street, probably no. Dog park, for sure. Smallish town, only if the dogs aren't making each other crazy or trying to hump.

I'd say "get dog, go to dog park" is your best bet, but honestly that's taking on a lot just to meet people. Dogs are pretty needy creatures, and if you're looking after them properly they're not cheap. And if you get a dog because you want to meet people, but you don't really like them, and someone who's actually interested in dogs talks to you...they're going to think it's kind of creepy that you're using the dog as a prop, and probably feel bad for the dog.

Really, there are better ways to meet people. Take a class in something. Volunteer somewhere. Join a hiking or biking or nature or gardening group. A lot of these things are actually kind of difficult if you've got no money and your municipality doesn't provide much in the way of recreational services, so the fallback there is usually church. Alas for the impoverished atheists in the middle of nowhere, your best bet is to move to a city.

In cities I don't like dogs and even less people with dogs. It's an immediate sign of high levels of egoism. For not to mention people are known to attain a dog because they do not want human comradeship. It's a symbol of immovable personality, in a relationship you are meant to adapt. Double morale standards perhaps? I don't even want to find out...

Approaching strangers in public is not necessarily universally unwelcome. I had plenty of experiences in the southern USA where people in the grocery store would start talking to me about the meat or produce.

I found it odd, not being originally from the south and not particularly liking it. But, I can definitely say people were friendly, at least in the store.

I had a friend that got endless female attention by walking a ferret on a leash; now to me, a weasel on a string is smelly and not exactly a turn on, but it seemed to work for him, go figure. Personally, I tend to meet women on dating sites, since being there is a pretty good indication that they're looking to be approached, and I have two things that stand out on dating sites; a good picture (that's not of my junk), and the ability to string words together that make sense and are grammatically correct. Between that and an attractive occupation, cooking professionally, and a functioning sense of humor, I do pretty well, but I could see how leading around a personal ice-breaker could work for people who don't possess all of those traits. Hell, my brother recently got a puppy, and just sitting in a lawn chair in the the front yard keeping an eye on the thing gets the female neighbors to stop by and chat, and these are people I've never exchanged words with in the months I've lived where I do. Still a silly reason to own an animal, IMHO, but I have to admit that it seems to work.

Oh, I'm not saying it is, that would be some people in another thread, which this one is referencing. I'm not from the south, but I actually do that quite often, as I simply can't resist helping people when I happen to know the answer to a question they're asking, or about a product they're looking at. It's actually pretty funny when I hit the grocery store straight from work and am still in my chef's jacket, I'll be pawing through the meat in the case and get people asking how they should cook things, like they think I work there or something, but since I actually do butcher meat for work, I'll usually give them way more information than they were looking for.

Oh, sure. I don't mean "zomg never talk to people on the street". We were talking about going up to random strangers and telling them how hot/beautiful/attractive etc. they are. But sure, I think civic friendliness is nice. People are just sensitive to different topics different places -- where I live, I don't mind being asked what neighborhood I live in or what school my kid goes to (unless the person seems creepy), but I don't want to be asked about church or have a God-based conversation.

Hey, we agree on something!
It's not really a problem where I live in the PNW, but man, the Mormons could get a bit aggressive when I lived in Denver, and the Witnesses are a whole 'nother can of worms. I actually ran into some Witnesses in a parking lot the other day, they hailed me from a van, gave me a flyer, and that was it, probably the most pleasant experience I've ever had with them. Downtown, it's actually the Buddhists that can be a problem, they're kind of pushy about buttonholing you and putting literature in your hand, and then asking you to pay for it. I treat it about the same as I do high pressure panhandling, smile but keep walking, maybe a perfunctory nod or a 'sorry'.

Dox47, you are grossly exaggerating and misinterpreting that other thread. It is not discussing how "approaching strangers in public is a universally unwelcome intrusion". It's addressing specifically a man approaching a women he thinks is "hot" with a view to trying to date her, when they are both strangers walking along a street.

That thread was started by a person saying he wants to approach strange women on the street as a way to pick up women.

That's a VERY different thing from i] general[/i] approaches such are beginning to be discussed on this thread -- woman to woman: Oh where did you get that jacket? Man to man: great bike dude! Man to woman: are you okay, I saw you fall and here's your stuff you dropped ----- etc, etc etc.

I can't believe the misinterpretation that goes around this joint.......it's like nobody even really actually READS the posts, they just see a few select words, get mad, and go off on a rant based on something they're actually assuming the other person said, not on WHAT THEY REALLY SAID.

Last edited by BirdInFlight on 07 Jul 2014, 4:20 am, edited 1 time in total.