So I've visited my father in Tucson several times before, but have never gone out (I was never single). This trip I'm determined to continue to improve / practice my pickup skills, so I decided to go out to a venue with a live band.

I arrive at the hotel and find the live band hasn't set up yet. It's only 7PM, they are supposed to start at 7:30. So I drop in at the bar and take a seat. Just about every seat in the smallish bar is taken. There is an HB8 (Lets call her Samantha), HB6 and a guy set to my right. The HB8 is getting attention from random men, I decide to ignore her (she's immediately to my right). I sip a beer and chat it up with the bartender briefly, before a guy opens me to my left. He has this really friendly and talkative vibe (alpha?) so we strike it up easily. Shortly after we start talking, his date shows up (they are both in their ~ early 50's). I'll call his date Dawn. Attractive for her age but I'm not looking to make a pass at somebody with a 23 year gap.

It doesn't take Dawn long to start light kino with me, we end up having a 15 minute discussion while her boyfriend chats with somebody else. She compliments me on my confidence level for my age (I'm not really that young, at 29 I'm way behind) and comments on my eye contact: "You clearly are confident, you maintain good eye contact." She says I would like her daughter (lets call her daughter Amanda). Amanda is 22, and Dawns date leans over to tell me that all Dawn's girls are "extremely attractive". I tell Dawn she should call Amanda and tell her to come out and join us. Dawn ends up making the call, gets luke warm signals from Amanda (how often does mom try to set up a daughter she just met at a bar, who doesn't even live there?). So that doesn't work out, but Dawn says she would like to invite me over tomorrow night if I'm interested, says she wants Amanda to meet me. Sounds interesting, we'll see. We exchange contact info.

So at this point I've spent 30 minutes chatting with Dawn and her date. I've completely ignored Samantha to my right, as two men have attempted approaches and generally gotten nowhere. I pivot the conversation at this point over to Samantha, can't remember what I said but it was something mundane. Samantha gave me a cautious but interested vibe to the open, so I plodded on. Asked if she knew the area where my father lived, showed her a photo of Feral Javelina (like pigs) I had taken in our backyard the night before. This segwayed nicely into more photographs from my Smugmug account - which then lead to stories about my April Europe trip (DHV opportunities abound). So as I'm showing Samantha these photos she pops the boyfriend mention (he's abroad right now). I don't react, continue to show her photos and chat.

At this point, Samantha offers to buy me a drink. I think that my not flaking after the boyfriend mention was sort of a test? I also find out that her friends are visiting and staying with her the night, so regardless of boyfriend situation the logistics are not there. As Samantha is the most attractive woman at the bar (so far), I figure that even if she's unavailable I'll gain solid social value from her attention as the evening progresses. Further, she's kino'ing me lightly, which I'm happily accepting. Receiving Kino is still quite new to me and I'm getting used to being comfortable with it (I'm that green). I tell Samantha that I'm in Tucson regularly, and we should exchange contact info. I get contact info, not sure how you guys suggest I leverage such a thing month(s) later. Maybe I'll hit her with infrequent but occasional contact, just to remind her of the fun we had? Ideally she would be interested in taking me out when I'm next in Tucson... We'll see if that's possible.

So about 9:30 PM we hear the 80's music start up (turns out this is 80's music night) and Samantha (having heard me say several times that I love dancing) grabs my hand and leads me to the dance area. At this point it's just a few women, Samantha and I - but I really do dance like nobody is watching, I like dancing. So we get out there and people are watching us. Samantha is a dance instructor it turns out... So she's tearing it up. And she's clearly with me out there, so I'm getting solid attention too.

We pull her friends out about fifteen minutes later, and the dance floor starts to fill.

I'm going to condense the remainder of the night, pretty much repeated opens whenever I caught eye contact. One worth noting: I noticed eye contact from a group of 3 women (HB7 all 3), I bee-lined over and introduced myself, they had been watching Samantha, myself and her friends dance. Chatted briefly with them, then tried to leave on a high note (they were laughing about some dance move a guy was making, which I pointed out - and then I said I needed to get back to the dance floor and I hoped they would join later).

So I bailed at 11:30PM, too early I think (I felt like my alpha was very on tonight, I was opening HB8's without AA by 11PM and generally getting pretty good responses). I think perhaps some of these HB8 may have found me on the dance floor had I stuck around.

Lessons: I often aim to get to bars / clubs just when dancing starts to get hot (post 10:30PM). But by that time, I do feel that it's hard to break in, or get the alpha vibe going strong. Tonight was a good lesson on getting started early, building social value and connections throughout the night, then snowballing that into approaches that women won't find as skeezy (they have been watching you dance / interact with parties since they arrived). I have no idea if anything will come of the Dawn invite out tomorrow. Can't say I've read any advice on mother invites / daughter setups here on seddit. If that's even how it would go down? Tricky!

Follow-up: Amanda emailed me, told me the meetup wouldn't happen this trip but that I should let her know next time I'm in town. E-mail notification seemed a strong indicator that I made an impression. Dawn and Samantha friended me on facebook - I know that's not preferred in this world but given the circumstances I think it might be the best I can hope for (next visit in many months / maybe even a year). I thought Samantha was going to flake on contact, but a day later she accepted the friend invite.