Debates, lecture series cater to couples' craniums

NEW YORK -- The hot spot du jour of Manhattan nightlife looms large over Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, where crowds of stylish YoCos -- young cosmopolitans -- were jostling inside one evening last week for the right to pay the $15 cover. Rather than crossing the velvet ropes for a rave, house party or disco, the hip patrons were packing into a controversial lecture at the New York Public Library on the modern meaning of feminism.

"We've both been going to bars and clubs less because events like these are more provocative," said Paul Torres, 30, an MTV producer holding hands with his girlfriend of eight months, IT manager Amy Stemmler, also 30. Recent dates have included the Museum of Modern Art and a discussion titled "Was the 20th Century a Mistake?" by German director Werner Herzog. "Maybe we'll agree, maybe we won't. But at least we're getting inside each other's heads."

In New York and other cities, gray matter is the new black of the hip social scene. Thousands of young singles and couples are eschewing the perfunctory dinner and a movie for a growing circuit of late-night museum prowls, Oxford-style debates with pre-feud cocktail parties and book readings with cash bars and after-hour bands.

It is, observers of the trend say, a visceral backlash to life in a Paris Hilton world. It's a chance to impress a date by flexing a body part that has lost ground in recent years to biceps and pecs -- the brain.

"Let's face it, there really is nothing more sensual than caressing someone's mind," said Paul Holdengräber, who launched the library's live lecture series, which is now a staple of New York's "intellidating" scene. Two years ago, the average age at library lectures was 68. It is now 41 and falling, driven down partly by a new crop of cutting-edge guests including underground cartoonists Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb and director Jonathan Demme.

"Our ears are a very sensitive place," Holdengräber said, "and lectures give our crowd not only something to listen to but something to discuss all evening long. You say a lecture isn't romantic? I say but of course it is."

"Intellidating," coined in England in 2002, sprang from "Intelligence Squared," a live discussion series launched by a couple of British moguls whose professed aim was to make debating "sexy."

The concept leapt across the pond to New York last year with the American version of Intelligence Squared -- IQ2US -- launched by philanthropist and businessman Robert Rosenkranz.

A 45-minute cocktail reception precedes each IQ2US debate, after which comes a cranial lucha libre where, on one night, author Michael Crichton sparred with other panelists on global warming.

"The debate itself was far more heated than I'd expected, and Kate and I disagreed completely," said Andy Criss, 28, who took Kate Lauber, a 25-year-old Columbia University American-studies major, to an IQ2US debate titled "Is America Too Damn Religious?" for their second date.

Criss said they argued during the 40-minute subway ride back to Lauber's apartment. "It's not like we were just fighting. We were interacting, sharing thoughts, and that was far more satisfying than if we'd gone out to see the movie of the week."

With matchmaking Web sites designed for all sorts of people, finding like-minded singles has become easier. Brainiacs are no exception.

A Web site called "The Right Stuff," which advertises that "smart is sexy," bills itself as a place where lonely-heart Ivy League graduates can find their match. IntellectConnect, a Washington-area company, launched in August 2005 and has 6,000 members, according to co-founder Cindy Embleton.

Over the past two years -- but particularly in the past 12 months -- dozens of cultural institutions have seized on the demand.

At Housing Works Used Book Cafe in SoHo, Friday-night book readings have become loungelike events with live bands and cash bars. Last year, New York's Museum of Modern Art began PopRally, an event aimed at young couples and singles that mixes cocktails, music and art.

Makor -- a Manhattan social center popular with a young, Jewish crowd -- has created a singles spelling-bee night with categories including "sex," "medical conditions" and "uncomfortable things."

"I just went there to do something fun, but of course, this is Manhattan, and the Jewish community, so everything is really a singles event even if it's not," said Dorron Lemesh, a software writer who attended his first Makor spelling bee three weeks ago.

"One guy had to spell 'chlamydia' and then 'erectile dysfunction' -- and he got both right," Lemesh said. With a chuckle, he added, "But then the women have to worry about a man [who] knows how to spell 'chlamydia.' "