Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
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bit A DEEPER Ms. Missed Connections By Amy Talbott Illustration by Bart Galloway T he third thing I do every morning (after making cofee and checking Facebook) is browse Craigslist "missed connections" ads — basically, people looking for love (or, OK, to hook up). I've been doing this since January 2006, right after I moved to Louisville to attend U of L after three miserable semesters at UK. I was 19, living in a depressing studio apartment in Old Louisville, and I didn't know anyone here yet. One night I was reading a blog about life in New York and ran across a reference to the ads. I went to Louisville's page on Craigslist. Tere they were. I immediately liked posters' little stories of meeting people in bars I couldn't get into, like the Mag Bar and the now-closed Pour Haus in Germantown. I wanted someone to notice me at Highland Cofee or somewhere else I hung out. Scanning the ads for someone who might have observed me became addictive. Plus, part of me liked learning about the city's seedy underbelly, at places such as the Love Boutique downtown and Teatair X across the river in Clarksville (they did what in those booths?!). Craigslist is the online version of newspaper classifeds, except anyone can post at any time for free. Missed connections are a subsection of the personals. It's a barebones site — white 28 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 12.13 background, blue links, no graphics except photos uploaded by posters with their ads. From a sample of 200 Louisville ads, men posted almost 90 percent of them, and the average age of the poster was 36. A typical ad starts out with a headline like this: "Meagan at nowhere bar! - m4w - 23." Translation: A 23-year-old man is looking for a woman he saw at Nowhere Bar. Other common locations include the Kroger on Goss Avenue, the YMCA downtown, and what seems like any Torntons gas pump. Recently a woman was looking for a "Tall cowboy at many (sic) and Merle." Te body of the ad, which is more often than not peppered with misspellings and grammatical errors, goes something like this: "I have seen you two Tursday in a row and think you are so sexy. I tried to get your number but you were busy and at work and was awkward lol. I am the person that messed up all my friends happy hour drinks lol. My name starts with a B. I want your number snd if you remember the guy that messes up the drinks hit this add up." Making a connection via the ads isn't easy. First of all, the person that the poster seeks would actually have to see the ad. Tat means they'd have to check missed connections frequently because an ad's shelf life is only about a month. I know a lot of people who peruse the ads occasionally, but I'm the only person I know who reads all of them every day. (I actually even started a Facebook page, Dear Ms. Missed Connections. It started out as a fake advice column for grammatically challenged Louisville posters, but now I just post ads that I think are especially funny, dirty or endearing. I'm hoping that, one day, one of my readers will be the subject of a post, will respond, and things will work out.) Second, a person would have to recognize that the ad is about her. I've actually seen a poster say he was looking for a lady standing on the corner of Bardstown Road and Eastern Parkway on a Saturday night. No physical description. Did that guy not realize how many women stand at the corner of Bardstown and Eastern Parkway on any given Saturday night? Most important, someone has to be interested enough in the poster to reply. And not be creeped out. Tanks to consistent trolling, I've spotted ads written about two of my friends. A guy from Sunday trivia night at Zanzabar wrote one about my friend Norah. In the ad, he referred to her as "the girl with the large glasses" and called her "super cute." She was fattered. "Who doesn't like hearing that a random stranger found them attractive?" she said. But she didn't reply. She said he should have at least tried to approach her in person before posting a missed connection. Te other was about my friend Sam. She was sitting in Ri Ra, the now-closed Irish pub at Fourth Street Live, and a guy with a mustache started chatting with her. He said he was an English teacher. He asked her questions like, "What was the frst book that made you cry?" He mentioned her name in the ad and said he'd started the conversation because she looked bored. Despite my encouragement, she wasn't interested in replying. I had a successful missed connection once. Sort of. One morning in June 2011, I was sitting on the patio at Vint (then Java Brewing Co.) on Frankfort Avenue, looking aimlessly at my laptop. Tere were two guys having cofee a few tables over. I smiled at them, because I'm generally friendly toward strangers. A few days later, I saw the ad: "Girl at Java's (M4W) Frankfort Ave." Te poster described a girl with short hair who'd smiled at him. On the same morning I was there. Slooooowly, it hit me. He was talking about me! I'm not kidding when I say I was giddy. I'd read missed connections for fve years at that point, wondering if I'd ever make enough of an impression on someone to warrant an ad. Finally, here was my moment. I was a little shaky as I replied. I included my name and wrote, "I think I might be the girl you posted about." Turned out, I was. He said he wanted to say hi that day on the patio but didn't want to be awkward. He said he'd written the ad not expecting a reply and was surprised when he got one. We corresponded via email for a few weeks, talking about where we grew up (me in Bardstown; him in Southern Indiana), what we did for a living (I had a temp job grading standardized tests; he was a doctor), and our mutual interests (working out and trying new restaurants in town). We decided to get together at the cofee shop where we'd frst seen each other. (I know all the horrible stuf about meeting people from the Internet, but I didn't get a creepy vibe from this guy.) In my seven years on the site, I've only heard of one successful relationship resulting from a missed-connection ad. I read about it in a New York Times article about a Brooklyn couple who had missed their connection at an ATM and later reunited. Mine didn't turn out the same way. We met a few more times, and he was good-looking, educated and a fne conversationalist, but some things just aren't meant to be. I lost touch with the guy (whose name I'll never tell) when I started dating my boyfriend Jeremy. We met by more standard means — at a book club.