1. Align your chakras
Visit a psychic: Who wants to leave things to chance? Your time is valuable. Pick up your date and head straight to your corner clairvoyant for a prediction of where “this thing” is going. Consider checking out the Body, Mind and Spirit Expo, taking place Friday through Sunday at Healing Earth, a spiritual supermarket specializing in crystals, incense and yoga paraphernalia. The three-day fair features walk-in tarot card and palm readings — along with everything from reiki healing to animal communication — at bargain rates. If the psychic is struck by a vision of the two of you gazing into each other’s eyes in mutual admiration, fabulous. But if she sees the date involving public humiliation or vomiting, say adios while you can still salvage the night. 2570 N. Lincoln Ave. 773-327-8459.
2. Get squeaky clean
Do your laundry: You and your date have at least one thing in common: You both have dirty clothes that need washing. At the Laundromat attached to the Newport Bar and Grill, you can make judgments on your date’s character based on how he or she sorts laundry (“Whites and darks in the same load? Who is this person, some kind of maniac?”), then stroll over to the bar to throw back a few beers and eat some better-than-average pub grub. Even if you don’t make a love connection, at least you’ll have clean underwear. 1344 W. Newport Ave. 773-325-9111.
3. Hoof it to a honky-tonk
Hoof it to Carol’s Pub, one of the city’s few remaining honky-tonks. It’s about as impossible to have a boring time at this Uptown bar as it is to get a martini. Carol’s Pub neophytes may feel some trepidation upon arriving outside the brick building at the shadowy corner of Clark and Leland. Once inside, though, you and your date will quickly warm to the wise-cracking bouncers, no-nonsense bartenders, lively house band that plays old (read: good) country music, cheap beer and large dance floor crammed with one of the most diverse crowds in the city. 4659 N. Clark St. 773-334-2402.
4. Take a dip
Eat at a fondue restaurant: You + your date + hot, bubbling cheese in a pot. Only the lactose-intolerant wouldn’t get weak in the knees from this Midwestern aphrodisiac. Conversation will flow as you move on to the main course, which involves spearing raw meat or vegetables and plopping them in a pot of oil until they’re done. We like Geja’s in Lincoln Park. One piece of advice: Don’t use the skewer as a fork after it’s been sitting in boiling oil. You’ll get an unsightly heat blister on your lip the size of a dime. I speak from experience. 340 W. Armitage Ave. 773-281-9101.
5. Keep ’em in stitches
Go to the International Museum of Surgical Science: If ancient speculums and forceps aren’t enough of an icebreaker, then how about an old drawing of a man with elephantiasis of the scrotum? Those and other ghastly artifacts are on display at this beautiful mansion-turned-museum on Lake Shore Drive. You’ll be laughing too hard in horror to remember you’re supposed to be nervous. 1524 N. Lake Shore Drive. 312-642-6502.
