Keeping the Flame Alive

Have things dried up a bit since LBK (life before kids)?

Here’s the thing: you need to have dates with your beloved. We’ve found some destinations, around the city and online, that might just hit the spot.

Where to head first? That choice can be made on a new site for couples called Tokii.com, where you can reveal your desires to your partner through playing games and bartering for things you really want from each other (like washing dishes in exchange for football TV time). Launched recently by a Canadian couple, Tokii (translates into ‘hopeful’ or ‘sometimes’) aims to leverage the fun and excitement we experience by connecting with our friends online through social media (think teenage texting addictions) and applying it to couples. It’s a social media site for busy couples. Then you can take that fun offline for date night. It can be as risqué, or as relaxed as you make it, and you might even find out something you didn’t know about yourself and your relationship.

We can pretty much guarantee anyone with a sense of fun—and especially a love of sports—will be ready for a roll down the lanes at The Ballroom, the two-floor urban bowling mecca located downtown. With room for over 900 people, about 60 LED screens, ping pong on the premises and gastronomically-pleasing food (along with the expected gutter balls), The Ballroom will be an anything-but-boring for a much-needed night out.

The venerable Hugh’s Room is a groove destination in the city for live music lovers. It’ll be worth the sitter, the late night and the morning after to get a little adult time in Hugh’s Room. One of the best places in the city to enjoy every type of music almost seven nights a week, you can have dinner before and during the performance and recapture the romance in a setting that offers amazing ambiance.

If you want to feel like you’re having a clandestine affair with your beloved, arrange to meet for drinks at Goodnight—but make reservations first. Notoriously underground when it first opened, Goodnight Bar has been the hip destination for visiting actors and musicians, and its dimly-lit locale along Richmond (hint, west of Spadina) may bring you back to those early dating days, if only for one night.

Timing is everything. Make some extra-special time for one another sometime soon. Tested by Alison R., Toronto

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