Are you in the Albany group?

“Are We Dating The Same Guy” is a network of private Facebook groups, each one tied to a city or region. Women join the group for where they live, post a photo or a screenshot of a man they’ve met or matched with, and ask whether anyone else knows him. Here is how that works in Albany.

Three older cities and the 518

The Capital District isn’t one city so much as three, Albany, Schenectady and Troy, with suburbs filling the space between them. The main group’s name reflects that, and so does its membership: about 32,000 women from across the region. Alongside it, there are separate groups that use the 518 area code in their names, and some women belong to both. For a man checking on his own, that means more than one place to look and no obvious way to tell which one a post would land in.

State workers and two campuses

Albany is a government town. State agencies employ a lot of the region, and many of their staff commute in from Colonie, Guilderland, Bethlehem or Clifton Park every weekday. A lot of people date within the same broad professional circle, which can make the area feel smaller than it is. A woman who goes on a date with someone from another agency may find that a friend of a friend already knows him.

RPI in Troy and UAlbany on the western side of the city add students and young researchers to the mix, and plenty of them stay on after graduating. Their dating pool and the state workforce’s often meet on the same apps.

Lark Street, downtown Troy and the Northway

In Albany, Lark Street and Center Square are common spots for a first drink. Downtown Troy, with its older streets close to the Hudson, draws its own crowd, and Schenectady has a downtown scene of its own. People drive between all three without thinking much of it. North of the city, the Northway carries a lot of that traffic up to Clifton Park and Saratoga, and the suburbs along it are firmly part of the same dating map.

Saratoga in the summer

Saratoga Springs changes in July and August, when the racing season brings visitors, summer residents and weekend crowds up from downstate. Broadway fills up, and people who wouldn’t meet the rest of the year end up at the same bars. A summer date in Saratoga can involve someone who lives in Manhattan or Westchester for most of the year, which is one reason a post can reach well beyond the Capital District.

How a Capital District check works

We begin with the Albany / Schenectady / Troy group, then move through the 518 groups, the Saratoga County groups and the statewide ones, which are the other places a post about a man here tends to end up. If you work in Albany but grew up downstate or in the Hudson Valley, tell us when you order and we’ll search those areas too.

Then you can stop running through possibilities and deal with what’s actually there, if anything.