A 27-year-old Oakland transplant recently put out the call for — and we're quoting directly here — a "bad bitch with music taste" to accompany them to Chet Faker's Tuesday night show in SF. The pitch? Face value was $45, but they'll accept "whatever you can throw in, or a drink at the show." Romance isn't dead, folks. It's just been restructured as a peer-to-peer ticket exchange with optional beverage compensation.

On one hand, respect. This is entrepreneurial. You've got a depreciating asset (a concert ticket for a specific date), a clear value proposition (live music plus company), and flexible payment terms. If anything, this is more transparent than most dating apps, where people routinely misrepresent their height, their job title, and their interest in "long walks."

On the other hand, this is a little window into why so many young professionals in San Francisco say meeting people here is impossibly hard. We've got a city full of smart, ambitious people who work brutal hours, pay brutal rent, and then resort to posting ticket listings that double as personal ads. The apps aren't working. The bars are dead by 11. So here we are: concert ticket arbitrage as a social strategy.

We genuinely hope this worked out. Chet Faker puts on a great show, and $45 plus a drink is honestly a cheaper first date than most SF restaurants. But if this is where we're at — leveraging surplus event tickets to manufacture human interaction — maybe the city should spend less on another "community activation space" and more on figuring out why nobody here can just... meet people.

Godspeed, counselor. Hope she had taste.