We’ve often remarked on this site how, in so many ways, City Paper, bless its soul, is/has been/might always be irretrievably stuck in the 1990s. Now, a large portion of this is tied to the alt-weekly medium itself — few alt-weeklies nationwide have been successful in bringing themselves into The New Overwhelming (And Often Horrible) Now — but in the case of CP, it’s also a staffing/generational issue. We don’t say this today (as we definitely have in the past) necessarily to hurl some kind of out-of-touch epithet at the paper (Philadelphia Weekly will trump them on that shit any day of the week anyway), but more as a rubric for understanding the way CP’s hive mind works. And with the retro clock timed just right for us all to begin reconsidering “The Long Nineties” — coupled with the fact that, with so many of us out of work and just as screwed and listless as we were back in the 90s — it might just be that, by holding out so long, City Paper could get a second go-round on its cultural moment all over again. But that doesn’t make this email that went out to CP’s mailing list this morning any less funny:

Hello City Paper Reader,

Do you feel like you’re filling out a job application when signing up for a new dating site? Having a hard time finding a person who shares your interests? Well, Philadelphia’s own City Paper has come up with the solution to your frustration…Love Lounge!

Love Lounge is a new online personals site for people in Philadelphia. Love Lounge doesn’t launch to the public until July 15th, but since you’re a City Paper reader we are giving you exclusive access to the new site. Sign up before July 15th and we’ll give you a free, no-strings-attached membership through August 30th. [...] Looking for a spicer encounter? City Paper has also created Lust Lounge. You get all the same benefits with a little more…well…intimacy.

You are the first to be invited so join today at lovelounge.citypaper.net or lustlounge.citypaper.net. Create your advertiser profile , and help us get our new sites off the ground!

Good Luck!
City Paper Staff

Good luck, indeed! I mean, you saw Single White Female, didn’t you? But don’t get your Polvo records out just yet. CP’s Love Lounge, whether it wants to or not, harkens straight back to CP’s earliest days on the Web, but modified for these times: CP personals are clearly geared towards people who think they’re gonna get stabbed or human-trafficked if they respond to a Craigslist ad. Which, you know, happens. And what the Love Lounge — or its saucier counterpart, the Lust Lounge — will have to reveal to us is how this is any better or worse than Craig, or Match.com, or myriad other social networking sites. But if it helps us finally find someone who loves Melrose Place, Beck and The Khyber as much as we do, well, hell: Just like City Paper, we’ll try anything twice.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 2:27 pm.