I’m looking for love. I’ve been looking for love.
I’ve had three major relationships and my last one ended in May 2023. I have learned many things about myself and what I want out of a partnership with another human being. I don’t like brunch with 10 of my boyfriend’s closest friends. I don’t want to be chastised for peeling my socks off before bed and throwing them toward the hamper. I want to wake up on Saturday and leave the house by 9 a.m. or else the whole day feels ruined. I want someone who loves my cats. Those are the really important things, but I also want a shared life — I want to navigate through the world in the same direction as someone else. I want someone who looks at me when I’m picking up said socks the next morning and really sees me for me. I could list off 10 other prerequisites rapid fire, but I also know they all disappear the moment you feel “the spark.”
My past relationships began on apps, but I’ve always dreamed of meeting my partner while we both reached for the same tomato at a grocery store. Am I reaching?
I’ve consciously switched my energy to signal to the universe that I’m open for connections. I joined some sports leagues where I met some of my best friends, but none of them were romantic possibilities. I asked to be set up with friends of friends, but that also led nowhere.
I’m 38, and I started sneaking into gay bars at 18, so that’s … 20 years? I’m not good at math, but I know that the number of guys I’ve met in bars is equal to or less than the number of fingers on one hand.
I even left my number at a coffee shop with a prepaid pastry for a cute guy I knew frequented the place. The maneuver worked, but ultimately we weren’t sexually compatible. Cut to my parents reminding me, “Not everything is about sex.” However, some things are … hence my existence.
Recently, I noticed signs on overpasses stretched across highways all over Los Angeles. Often they’re political messages consisting of multiple poster boards, each with a letter on it that, when combined, spell out a powerful or pithy or humorous phrase. That’s when I got the idea: What if I made a sign to find a date? I work in fashion, so using something visual and a little unorthodox to express myself felt oddly on-brand. A few potential messages bubbled up in my head, but one stuck: “IM SINGLE.”
The more I thought about it, the more fun — and potentially successful — the plan seemed.
Dating apps have become notoriously hard to navigate: “Quality” matches are hidden behind paywalls, there are tons of inactive accounts, and there’s somehow simultaneously an overwhelming abundance and a lack of options. I was exhausted by spending my day texting a dozen people just to ask how their days went — and maybe not hearing back from any of them.
I knew there had to be a simpler, bolder way. No apps. No profiles. No algorithms. Maybe my sign scheme was my chance to break out of the algoprison and find a new way to find a viable date.
I realized putting up my posters above a highway would get the attention of the cars passing below, but how would anyone contact me? I wondered if my burgeoning TikTok account, which I started four months earlier and used to talk about being single, was the answer. If I put my heart out in the streets for everyone to see, could I post about it online to get some dates? Would others post or repost to help get my single status some traction?
I woke up on Saturday, Oct. 25, and thought, Today, I’ll stand on an overpass above 101.
I went to Blue Rooster art supplies and asked the woman working there, “What color do you think would be best for a series of letters that spell out ‘IM SINGLE’?”
I spent $30 on poster board, a brush and paint. Fifteen minutes later, the letters had been freehanded and were drying in my garage. But who was going to film me? Leaving my phone on a tripod was too risky; someone might snatch it mid-installation. So, I knocked on my neighbor’s door, explained the idea, and she agreed to film me.
I live 101 steps from Highway 101 — I counted. I gathered my eight poster boards and walked to the closest overpass. I had a moment of terror when I worried that I could end up causing a 10-car pile-up, but my surging adrenaline quickly erased the thought.
I asked my neighbor to stand on an island in the middle of an on-ramp where the overpass was perfectly visible. I’ve seen this spot at least 4,500 times since I moved into my apartment six years ago.
My body went on autopilot — I was no longer thinking, I was just doing. I clipped each poster board to the chain-link fence. I finished putting up the “E” in “SINGLE,” and immediately, I began to hear honking.
That’s all I heard for 30 minutes. Then the wind threatened the sign, so I moved it to the other side of the street.
At rush hour, the cars crawled at 10 to 15 miles per hour, and drivers and passengers stuck their arms and heads out of their windows, screamed, waved and whooped at me. It was incredible. I realized I had struck a chord — not just with potential partners, but with everyone navigating life and love on the 101 that day.
When I came up with this idea, I hadn’t fully figured out what I would do after the posters were up. I hadn’t mapped out how long I would stay on that overpass, if people would come and talk to me or how quickly I’d post the video online in hopes of getting some dates. It was purely impulsive, and I stayed in the moment the entire time while letting the exhilaration of what I was doing rush over me. I ended up dancing my heart out next to my sign for nearly three hours as the chorus of honks continued to play, and I had so much fun. It just felt right.
By the time I got home, I had gotten a notification from the Los Angeles subreddit that someone had posted a photo of me and my sign with the subject heading “This guy was really putting himself out there.” It had thousands of upvotes in just a few hours.
Other photos and videos started popping up on Instagram and TikTok. I posted the video my neighbor had taken of me, but it didn’t initially gain any traction because, though it was only 22 seconds, the algorithm tends to favor videos that people watch more than 50% of the total length. Mine was hovering around 22%, which meant the video should have been only five or six seconds to get TikTok to give it a push.
Then a TikTok user with 500 followers posted a video that was seven seconds long and it exploded. Meme accounts shared it. Thousands of people flooded my profile. I published another, much shorter, video the next day with different pacing, and it took off.
I soon racked up over 860,000 impressions across all the social media platforms. After 48 hours, there were over 2.3 million impressions. At this point, I’ve stopped counting.
Publications reached out, curious about my motivation. An ABC News affiliate ran the story but called me “Tim.” The New York Post said I was “so desperate for love” for taking a “drastic and potentially dangerous measure to find it.” That’s a bit sensationalized, but controversy drives clicks, and I was happy to have every eye on me if it meant someone might reach out in hopes of going on a date.
I shouldn’t have been too worried about that. I got thousands — yes, thousands — of DMs and comments on TikTok and Instagram, as well as a few messages sent directly to my personal email. Unfortunately, 99% of them were from women.
“Are you really single?
“My cousin is single — I think she would be a good match for you!”
“Can I borrow your sign?”
Sadly for all of us, I’m gay. Less sad: A few men contact me, and three of them seemed especially promising … until one of them confessed he is deathly allergic to cats. Then I was down to just two.
I set up a date with one of the guys, but on the day we were supposed to meet up, he claimed he suddenly had to deal with “car stuff.” I mean, I get it — we live in LA and everyone is always dealing with “car stuff.” So, I was down to just one potential bachelor. He seemed promising … until he got sick and had to cancel. He sent me a voice memo to prove how miserable he sounded, which I appreciated, but I was still bummed. I guess next time I do something like this, I’ll include “Act Fast!” on my highway sign.
Eleven days after my 101 debut, I finally transformed from “man with a sign” to “man on a date.” I arrived first and waited on the sidewalk for a stranger I’d only seen in a few photos and knew very little about.
Before our date, we had texted off and on for a few days — mostly innocent small talk like “How’s your day going?” “How’s work?” “Excited to meet you!” I’d been trying not to ask too many questions up front because I wanted to save them for the date. I felt a small spark while messaging him (and his photos were, admittedly, really hot), which made me genuinely curious to meet him.
Because we met via overpass marketing, the stakes felt especially low, and as I stood there scanning the block for him, I realized I didn’t know his height, his intentions, his hometown or whether he was vaccinated — information dating apps usually reveal almost immediately. This meetup was more mysterious than almost any other date I’d been on — but that was thrilling.
We arrived at the new taco stand with outdoor seating we’d picked for dinner, he looked just like his photos — cute, casually dressed, shorter than I had imagined — and I liked the way his body felt against mine when we hugged hello.
We stared at the confusing menu — both of us embarrassed to ask follow-up questions about the food due to the line growing behind us. We panicked, pointed and said, “Those!” As we made our way to a table, I observed the way he walked, talked and carried himself. There wasn’t an immediate spark, but as we spoke, a connection emerged.
When I blabbed about typical life stuff — work, friendships, trying to figure things out — he was genuinely engaged and encouraging. I haven’t found that to be common in LA. He told me about his family’s migration to the U.S. during a war — while carne asada fries were spilling out of my mouth. I should’ve pointed somewhere else to distract him, but he definitely noticed.
The date lasted an hour and forty-five minutes. We ended with a walk to the corner, a light 10-second kiss, and a “we should do this again sometime.” I think we both meant it.
I’ve spent years looking everywhere for connection — apps, grocery stores, team sports, airports, subways, friends of friends, bars … the list goes on.
Now I can officially add the 101.
Standing on that overpass helped me reevaluate what I want and how to find it. Genuine connection can feel impossible to locate, but I’m not giving up hope. I believe desperate times really do call for desperate measures — it might be the only thing that can truly shake things up and break the algorithm’s hold on our lives.
From my 15-foot-6-inch perch above the 101, I gained a fresh outlook on love. I want to be open to every experience and opportunity that might bring someone worthy into my life — or at least give me a really good story to tell my friends. My sign stunt is now part of that journey.
Ultimately, it wasn’t just about finding a date or getting some attention (OK, OK, maybe a little bit about attention), it was about reminding myself and others that taking a leap, however absurd, can create connection in unexpected ways. With just $30, a bold idea, and a few hours of my time, I reached millions of people, and got a date with a sweet guy. Not bad for a Saturday afternoon.
Eric Jonas is a fashion creative and brand director based in Los Angeles who specializes in concept-driven design, visual storytelling and product development. An eternal optimist (with a realistic edge), Eric tries to create a connection with anyone he finds interesting. When not inventing ways to find a boyfriend, Eric enjoys pickleball, matcha americanos and being out the door by 9 a.m.
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