BEFORE WE GET STARTED…
Welcome back to another week, I hope the semester (or whatever you might be up to) is treating you well :)
This week we are featuring:
five dollars for something on campus you have walked past a hundred times
a race around Center Street
a haunted house that charges nothing, every single night of October
Don’t forget to reply with your favorite date idea this week.
THREE DATES, TWENTY DOLLARS TOTAL
Five Dollars for a Telescope
Stargazing · $5
On the fourth floor of the Eyring Science Center at BYU there is a 119-seat planetarium with a full dome. On Friday nights the BYU Astronomical Society runs shows at 7:00 and 8:00 that are open to anyone, student or not. Tickets are five dollars, which makes this ten dollars for the two of you. Upstairs is the Orson Pratt Observatory, where the department keeps a 24-inch telescope in the campus dome and five more on the observation deck.
Tickets go on sale at the planetarium door at 6:30 and they are first come, first served, card only, no cash and no reservations.
Lead with the telescope (I mean… it sounds pretty dope right?). This Friday, October 2, is confirmed on their calendar for both times, so you are inviting someone to a specific hour rather than to the general idea of astronomy.
Text them and say: “There’s a planetarium on the fourth floor of the ESC, five bucks, Friday at seven. Random thing to text you about. Want to come?”
Sometimes... we hear crazy things.
I feel like he kisses me an awful lot for not wanting to be my boyfriend.
Featured Single: Get Your Own Card
We’ll feature you as a single in an upcoming issue, using your photo and a few lines about you, so other readers can reach out and ask you out, all for $5. Think a one-person profile card that goes to the whole list instead of doom scrolling on Mutual.
How it works:
(1) Venmo $5 to me, @hamiltonpr,
(2) reply to this email with a photo, your first name, age, year and major, what you are looking for, and how you want people to reach you.
Ask for Thursday, Not Tonight
Money · Dunn & Norton
In Happy Money, Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton spend a chapter on a finding that is annoying if you sell things but useful if you are broke: money spent on doing something gets some of its value from waiting.
Which is a strange piece of luck for a student budget. The five dollars for Friday’s planetarium show buys you Friday, and it also buys you Wednesday and Thursday, because from the second she says yes you have somewhere to be. Ask for a named day that is a few days out, not for tonight. A plan three days away gives her time to actually say yes, and it gives you seventy-two hours of something to look forward to that costs nothing extra.
Guest Star in our Next Edition
Send us a selfie and you could be a person in next week’s date pictures. We drop you right into the scene using AI, so you and a friend can go looking for yourselves in the photos.
Ready, Set, Provo
Racing · under $10
Write five things on a piece of paper, split up (not from your date you silly, from other pairs in a group date), and see who finishes first. Ours: a photo with the lion statues outside the Provo City Library at Academy Square, something out of a vending machine in the Startup Building, a leaf off the ground in Pioneer Park, a receipt from anywhere on Center Street, and back to the library steps. The whole loop is about eight blocks and costs only if you wanna spend money at the vending machine.
Park in the library’s free lot and do the rest on foot; every stop on that list is inside a fifteen minute walk anyways. The library closes at 9, so if the lions are your finish line, start before eight.
Most first dates end because somebody decides they are ending, and saying that out loud is the single most uncomfortable thirty seconds of the night. Here you touch the library steps, somebody won, and the night is over at a moment you both picked in advance. Ending a little early on purpose beats making things awkward.
When you see them in person, say: “I’m doing a five-stop race around Center Street Saturday afternoon. Loser buys fries. You in?”
The Price Is Fright
Haunt · free
A family in Spanish Fork turns their house into a walk-through haunted house every October and charges absolutely nothing for it. Haunted Halloween Haven is at 1641 Oakview Lane, about twenty-five minutes south, and it runs 7:00 to 10:00 PM every night of the month, starting October 1. There is also a 25-minute projection mapping show on the house itself, also free, also every night.
It runs regardless of weather and it is open all thirty-one nights, which means a Tuesday works exactly as well as a Saturday.
Pick a weeknight and say the night out loud, because “sometime in October” is thirty-one nights of nobody doing anything.
Call them and say: “There’s a haunted house in Spanish Fork that’s completely free and open every night this month. I’m going Thursday. You free Thursday?”
Advertise With Us
Want to put your business in front of hundreds of students in Utah Valley who are looking for somewhere to go or something to do? Reply to this email and let’s talk.
UPCOMING DATE OPPORTUNITIES
BONUS EVENTS
Hosting something in Utah Valley?
Wednesday, Sept 30: Orem Farmers Market & Food Fest
Orem City Center Park, 293 E Center St · free · around 200 vendors and the county’s biggest weekly food truck roundup
Text them and say: “There are about forty food trucks in Orem tonight. I’m going after work. Come with me?”
Thursday, Oct 1: Opening night at the Haunted Forest
6000 W 6400 N, American Fork · 7:30 to 10:00 PM · $34.76 each · the first night of the entire season, and new this year are a collapsing mine shaft and a sideshow act who eats fire
Call them and say: “The Haunted Forest opens Thursday and it’s the first night of the year. Tickets are online only. Want one?”
Saturday, Oct 3: Provo Farmers Market
Pioneer Park, 500 W Center, Provo · free · October 3 is the day the hours shorten to 10am-2pm, so the mornings get short from here
Text them and say: “The Provo market goes to winter hours this Saturday. I’m going before it gets cold. Meet me there?”
Saturday and Sunday, Oct 3 and 4: General Conference
free · sessions Saturday and Sunday, morning and afternoon · nobody has church on Sunday, which is the part that quietly rearranges your whole weekend
Text them and say: “I’m making way too much breakfast before the Saturday morning session. Want to come over for it?”
Through Saturday, Oct 10: Noises Off at SCERA
SCERA Center for the Arts, Orem · Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 PM · $16 each · a play about a play falling apart, and it closes the 10th
When you see them in person, say: “There’s a comedy at SCERA that closes next weekend, sixteen bucks. I’m going Thursday. Interested?”
Friday, Oct 9: BYU football vs Iowa State
LaVell Edwards Stadium · 8:15 PM on ESPN · a Friday night home game, which almost never happens
Call them and say: “There’s a Friday night home game against Iowa State on the ninth. I’m going either way. Want in?”
Just reply to this email!
From the Editor
Thanks for making it to the bottom.
Twenty dollars for three dates feels like cheating, and then I remembered that the money was never the thing stopping anybody.
Until next time,
— Two Tacos & a Hike