At long last, here’s the Commonwealth Club’s panel discussion on “The State of Sex and Dating in San Francisco.” I took part and so did three other insightful San Francisco thinkers Ethan Watters (Author, Urban Tribes); Nicole Daedone (Founder, OneTaste; Author, Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm) and N.W. Smith (Contributor, The Bold Italic).

One big theme was the sense of disconnection that people often feel in a big city now that we are all staring into our iPhones on public transportation. The moderator Violet Blue joked that’s how geeks flirt. I miss good old-fashioned eye contact.

After the panel a woman came up to me and told me she wanted to start a movement where people identify themselves as available for human contact and chatting in some way on BART trains (BART is the Bay Area’s subway system). As in wearing a feather, a handkerchief, a button. Something like that.

I’m open to all kinds of ideas because I think random contact with strangers is the most effervescent part of living in a dense area.