Finding love in Las Vegas?

By Jackie Valley

Monday, Feb. 9, 2015 | 2:01 a.m.

It was their first date. Zack Kalashian, then a VIP host for Las Vegas nightclubs, wanted to treat the woman well, so he brought the young cocktail waitress to N9NE Steakhouse at the Palms.

She demanded they order a $2,000 bottle of champagne. Kalashian could hardly believe it. Sure, they were dining at a fancy restaurant and he made good money ushering tourists into clubs, but his practical, small-town Wisconsin sensibilities were screaming in his head. The request seemed frivolous.

“I’m not going to throw $2,000 on a bottle of champagne,” Kalashian, now 35, recalls telling his date. “I barely know you.” That was it. The woman walked out. Kalashian stayed at the restaurant, invited friends to join him and never regretted the decision.

Now living in Hawaii, Kalashian’s first reaction to the mention of dating in Las Vegas is, “It’s not easy.” He said there was a common refrain among his friends who work on the Strip: “In order to find someone to marry, you’re going to have to leave Las Vegas.”

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Dating is tough anywhere, but Las Vegas can be an especially challenging environment. The city’s fantasylike atmosphere, where good looks carry heavy weight, can contribute to unrealistic expectations for a mate. That’s on top of many residents’ odd work schedules, neighborhood conveniences that can prevent people from crossing paths and the community’s overall transiency.

“There are so many good people out there, they’re just not meeting,” said Mickie Choi, a dealer at the Cosmopolitan who organizes the “Single & Fabulous in Las Vegas” Meetup group.

Those difficulties led Lauren Peña and a friend to start their own matchmaking service. A Las Vegas native and bankruptcy lawyer by day, Peña kept hearing friends complain about not meeting people to date. Her friend, Steven Peralta, encountered the same gripes in his circle, so they decided to set up a handful of friends.

It spiraled from there as more friends and acquaintances expressed interest. Called Project Duo, their company pairs eligible bachelors — many of whom are successful members of the community and pay thousands of dollars to join — with women seeking a relationship.

“A lot of women are really convinced it’s going to happen in the most organic, beautiful way,” Peña said. “Nowadays, it just doesn’t happen that way.”

Peña has several theories about why, particularly here.

First and foremost: locals’ impossibly high standards. Women want men with six-pack abs. Men want beautiful women with perfect proportions. Sixty-year-olds want to date people half their age.

Such desires aren’t unique to Las Vegans, but Peña said people seem to be more honest about it here, perhaps because of the perceived accessibility to good-looking people.

It’s not hard to imagine why. After all, the Strip runs on hospitality, so it’s many workers’ job to make people feel important. Cocktail waitresses chat up middle-aged men sitting at slot machines, while VIP hosts in sharp suits sweet-talk women into clubs and lounges.

“Unrealistic expectations are the most giant hurdle for single people” in Las Vegas, Peña said. “If I could put that in neon lights, that would be it.”

Naturally, in a city flush with money, material expectations play a role, too. SeekingArrangement.com, which describes itself as a place “where beautiful, successful people fuel mutually beneficial relationships,” has 47,000 “Sugar Baby” and 9,000 “Sugar Daddy” members in Las Vegas. That places the city in the top 10 nationally for both men and women seeking well-off partners on the site.

Marquel Martin, who last year appeared on ABC’s hit reality show “The Bachelorette,” used the word “fabricated” to describe the local dating scene. The former UNLV football player said wooing prospective girlfriends is challenging because his idea of a good time isn’t necessarily glitzy. It typically involves hiking, bowling or watching Netflix and hanging out with friends.

“I’m much more laid back,” said Martin, 27, who works in sponsorship sales at UFC. “I don’t like clubs at all.”

Martin says he struggles to find people who value education and ambition. He has a master’s degree from UNLV and is working on starting his own business, a dessert lounge called Social Cookie.

“It’s tough to find someone else who may be on the same level or mindset out here,” he said.

Dating someone who works swing or graveyard shifts at a casino wouldn’t mesh with his 9-to-5 workday or the hours he plans to spend at Starbucks dreaming up his future business plans.

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This is a city of 2 million, filled with neighborhoods, schools and parks. Sometimes it’s just a matter of meeting the right people, which can be tricky for many reasons.

When Choi started her Meetup group in 2009, it was called “Odd Hours,” a nod to the thousands of locals who work evenings, nights and weekends on the Strip and miss many social outings. The group quickly grew and now has nearly 3,000 members, including nurses, engineers and lawyers, who attend happy hours, club nights and other activities.

“It’s all about having fun and making friends,” Choi said.

The group is a prime example of what Peña said more singles should do — actively meet new people in the community. The city’s conveniences are a detriment to the dating scene, she said. Because grocery stores, restaurants, shopping centers and casinos exist in most neighborhoods, people never have to wander far to run errands or find entertainment, and thus have fewer serendipitous encounters with new people.

People “are just not intersecting,” Choi said. “The convenience works both ways.”

That’s why Jennifer Parsons, 30, turned to online dating several years ago. She wanted to expand her dating pool beyond the people she met through friends and work. Dating sites such as Match.com and PlentyOfFish seemed like her best hope. Match.com has more than 37,000 profiles for people living in the Las Vegas area, a spokeswoman said.

A relationship blossomed for Parsons but fizzled after a few years.

Now, Parsons is giving online dating another shot. She updates her profile with flattering pictures and has a list of go-to spots for when she meets someone. She prefers meeting for frozen yogurt because if she doesn’t like the guy, she isn’t trapped for hours like she would be at a three-course meal.

“Around here, the pickings are slim,” said Parsons, who works at a law firm. “You have to weed through a lot of weirdos to get to the nice ones.”

Online dating in Las Vegas is challenging because of the community’s transiency. Some people aren’t looking for a lasting relationship because they don’t intend to settle down here. Others don’t live here at all.

Peña, who is single, once did a seven-day trial of Tinder, the dating app that suggests matches based on a person’s Facebook profile and geographic location. Her suggested matches ranged from men down the street to tourists from as far away as Australia who were in town and looking for fun.

But if dating is the luck of the draw, it’s bound to work out every so often.

Janay Oakland, a model and company sales representative, joined Tinder on a whim and met her current boyfriend. He was here on a business trip in April. Their first date, which started at Mix Lounge and ended at Tryst nightclub, lasted 10 hours and led to a long-distance relationship.

“We both swiped right,” she said.

Oakland, who’s in her 30s and never considered dating in Las Vegas very difficult, called their meeting a fluke. Previously, she met people through friends or social activities, such as tennis.

“I’ve never done online dating,” she said. “It’s kind of a numbers game anyway, so you might as well use all the tools available.”

The method worked for 29-year-old Julian Concepcion, too. Except, in his case, he began using dating apps to fill a gap he saw in Las Vegas’ gay community.

Concepcion moved here two years ago from San Diego, which has the gay neighborhood Hillcrest — a dozen blocks filled with stores, coffee shops and bars. Although Las Vegas has clusters of gay bars in several areas, it lacks a distinct gay neighborhood where residents can live, shop and be entertained.

An employee at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada, Concepcion didn’t want to date anyone who worked or volunteered there. Nor was he into the bar scene.

“The gay community in this city is all spread out,” Concepcion said. “If you don’t have physical venues to go to, you have to go online.”

In September, he joined a handful of gay dating apps and met his boyfriend, who works in marketing on the Strip. Without dating apps, Concepcion knows their paths might not have crossed.

“I’m in love,” he said.

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On a recent Tuesday evening, four high school friends camped out at a high-top table at Born And Raised, the southwest valley bar geared toward locals.

The Desert Oasis High School grads, all in their early 20s, defended Las Vegas’ dating odds as they sipped beers and waited for food. Two of them met in middle school and now are dating.

“It seems pretty normal,” said Cody Larson, 21. “It’s the same as any other place. It’s all about personality.”

His unscientific assessment might not be far off base. Las Vegas’ dating demographics are more average than unique.

Fifty-nine percent of Las Vegans aged 25 to 34 are unmarried, compared with 66 percent in Los Angeles and Miami, according to 2012 census data. Las Vegas’ percentage of singles is in line with cities such as Seattle (58 percent), Portland, Ore. (59 percent), and Austin, Texas (59 percent).

The Pew Research Center, analyzing Las Vegas’ “marriage market,” found there were 118 men for every 100 women in the valley, the same as in Phoenix.

“Statistically speaking, Las Vegas isn’t that different than a lot of other metro areas,” said Christie Batson, an associate professor of sociology at UNLV who studies urban demography. “It seems like we share a lot of the qualities of up-and-coming urban metro areas.”

The data solidify what Peña likes to preach to dating skeptics in the community.

“If you really wanted to be proactive, there are a ton of singles everywhere,” she said. “Everybody is looking for love. I still believe in that.”

As for Kalashian, the VIP host now working in Hawaii’s nightlife industry, he left Las Vegas as a single guy to move to Miami for a new job.

But there was a girl named Alice in Las Vegas. A former girlfriend, in fact. She shared his Armenian heritage, love of family and, in his words, was the nicest, sweetest girl he had ever met. She also was the one who got away.

Several years later, when she contacted him, he didn’t want to let her go again. So he moved back to Las Vegas and married her, proving himself wrong. He didn’t need to leave Las Vegas to find the one.