The Marina Girl

The first one is the notorious Marina Girl. The stereotypical Marina Girl hangs out with ex frat-boys. They are transplants from colleges all over the US that have since moved to the upscale neighborhood. Walking around the Marina on a Saturday night, I felt like I was at Toys R Us, in the Barbie section. There were all types. Brand-whore barbie, sports barbie running back from the gym, Legally Blonde barbie walking her chuwawa, and cougar barbie walking to a charity event with free drinks and an optional $10,000 donation.

In a well written definition from Urban Dictionary:

“The stereotypical Marina girl parties hard, shops casual yet high end fashions including Juicy Couture, Seven Jeans, Ugg Boots, and Banana Republic while never being employed in any tangible profession, other than receptionist, office manager, or booth babe. The Marina Girl maintains her high quality of life through a series of arrangements with older gentlemen in neighboring Pacific Heights. In recent years on weekends, Marina Girls tend to gravitate around the area dubbed by Herb Caen as the “Bermuda Triangle”: a collection of bars and restaurants on the corner of Fillmore and Greenwich streets. In recent times this area has become known as Gavin Newsom square with a collection of Newsom-owned businesses dominating the triangle. Mayor Newsom’s Matrix-Fillmore, Plumpjack Wine, Balboa Cafe, and Plumpjack Cafe are all Marina staples that dominate the landscape. During the week, the Marina Girl can be found looking for companionship at the popular Marina Safeway. When a Marina Girl turns 30, she is no longer known as a Marina Girl, but as a “Cougar”. A few places in the Marina with a high saturation of Cougars are Balboa Cafe, Cozmo’s, the California Wine Merchant, and the Marina Safeway (AKA DateWay).”

In PUA terms, the Marina girl represents the blondies of LA quite well.

Pros:

• There is always an abundance of sets in the Marina to approach. The best thing about these girls is that they are usually very nice and there is always a group of blonde girls that are down to fuck. You just have to find the right one. I personally think that rich girls from this type of background tend to be nicer, because they have always been treated nicely by other people
• They usually have very good style and generally have a lot of money. Getting drinks from Marina girls is relatively easy
• They are easy sets to open
• If you can pull, usually has very clean and nice smelling bedroom with ridiculously high rent or rent control.

On the negative side,

• There is a bit of race and class separation that inherently comes with this group of stereotypical girls. As a non-white person, if you let it get to you, it will. White people hate being called out on racism so as long as your frame comes from one of understanding and indifference, this shouldn’t be a big issue. There is more class separation than race, if you sit and ponder it.
• The average “Marina Guy” is a tall, 6 foot ex-frat / jock boy who never made it big in sports, but is still relatively rich and now works at a startup in San Francisco post tech boom. Think Josh Heartnick in 40 days and 40 nights. The good news is that these guys usually have very lame game, because they have always depended on their frat social networks and their looks to get laid. A semi-competent PUA should have no problems here.

The Mission Hipster Girl

The Mission Hipster is a twenty-something self-proclaimed ‘artist,’ usually seen drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon at dive bars when not riding up and down Valencia on their track bike. They take pride in their relative poverty (though more than a few have wealthy families), working jobs as baristas or bike messengers. Their signature look includes a fauxhawk (male) or short bowl cut (female), aviator sunglasses, an ironic t-shirt, ripped jeans and Chuck Taylors. They can be found in great number at Slim’s or the Bottom of the Hill on any given weekend where they prefer the sounds of acoustic guitars played by troubled singer-songwriters and upbeat post-punk-pop. They often avoid the upper Mission on those same nights, complaining that it’s overrun by ‘slumming yuppies from the Marina.’

On visiting the mission this weekend, we (some PUAs and me) found a strong dislike of anything Marina-related when out clubbing in the mission. I also found mission social circles to be more in tune. In other words, opening cold sets in the mission requires more congruence and game. The good news is that these mission girls, although not as “pretty” in the traditional sense of makeup, highend style and barbie-like hair, have character. Some are artists. Another girl I met was a fashion designer. Girls who study art at the Academy of Art San Francisco who play video games with their guy friends on weekdays and party hard on the weekends.

Mission Girl Pros

• Into something other than themselves
• Usually has some drugs or weed at least if you’re into that sort of thing
• Has less makeup and a sense of natural beauty (less makeup, no implants, variety of fashionable styles)
• Is down to earth and real once you get past bitch shield

Mission Girl Cons

• In general, does not flaunt sexuality as much. Hard to spot physical 10s unless you look closely.
• Can have high bitch shields if you are not part of the group
• Has some weird hobby that you just don’t get and a cat at home
• Lives in a small apartment with loud neighbors

I love both types of girls. I find the Marina girls more fuck-able and the Mission girls more interesting to talk to.

Part of this is due to Accutane. 60 mg a day does takes it toll on the body. For the most part, the drug was considered a miracle drug when introduced over 2 decades ago, as the only “cure” for acne breakouts. While there has been no conclusive scientific study that links depression or suicidal thoughts to the drug, many patients have acknowledged a known depression curve when on high doses of Accutane. For me, this feeling just means that if you do nothing or have nothing exciting going on in your life, you will feel a little “blue”. Thus, a normal person with a healthy social life need not worry for the most part.

The medicine, at best, is a slight influence on how I feel. It tends to enhance any negative thoughts that you currently have. Behavior and conscious thought is still personal choice, as we deliberately control and direct them.

One of the challenges I have been dealing with is how I can reach my goals. The barriers seem insurmountable. Too hard. Too many obstacles. Impossible. I wished that I wasn’t so ambitious, and that my dream to build my own playboy mansion and have a shot at becoming really, model good looking was exactly that – a nice dream to which I can hang my hopes and dreams by, and pretend to really care about it when I talk to people that asked. But it is so much more than that. It is becoming a burning desire.

One of the problems, as correctly noted by friend and PUA Serum is that my goals are too high. As such, I go on spurts when I would go out and go “sarging“. When I don’t get the girl I want, or I end up closing a girl that I think is below my standards, I will get really angry/depressed/in denial. See Kubler-Ross model for more details.

After this “wave”, I go back to my normal routine. While I consider myself rather successful being in “normal mode”, this person, this version of AlphaWolf will not get me to where I want to go – building my own version of the Playboy mansion. To achieve this, I must become someone else. In this sense, the lessons in pickup and entrepreneurship are very real. How can you become a sexy worthy guy, if you have never actually BEEN sex worthy?  How do you develop a rich person’s mentality, when you’ve never BEEN rich?

On a deep level and to a large extent in the artist’s exterior, he or she will have to fundamentally change who they are. Being politically correct, people will always say, “become attractive! become confident! But while doing so, remember to retain your best qualities and who you REALLY are!!!”

But the truth is not that simple. I believe that on a very deep level, for a non sex worthy guy (non-natural) to become sex worthy, something in him fundamentally changes. I am starting to understand this now. As you work on this, something clicks. You no longer “value chase” girls. They chase you. You chase them for fun, not becasue you are seeking value. It is an equal exchange. There is no fake it til you make it. No bullshit. No lies. No elaborate tricks. It simply is.

YOU. ARE. A. SEX. WORTHY. GUY.

The truth shall set you free.

A word of wisdom came from an unexpected source: a shy Indian guy at work, who needed a ride home today. He is a stand up guy, but I always thought that he wasn’t very interesting. I asked him for his view on life and our goals, given our workload at the office. He said something really interesting:

“Sometimes you make ‘long term’ goals, but the long term is hard to predict and hard to see. So you have short term goals, and you work to get there within a reasonable amount of time, and short goal after short goal, hopefully that allows you to move towards your longer term goals.”

I still have not figured out how to take this mindset, and create a disciplined lifestyle around it. Too many times, I have said “fuck it” to picking up girls because I cannot take the rejection, and also because my PU skills, while it gets me laid with (let’s be frank) a decent amount of effort, it always feels like I am the one doing the “chasing”. I have seen guys who do not chase. The girls choose them. There are 2 extremes, the rich guys, who get the gold digging girls (these are broad generalizations, I know hang with me).

The other type of guy is just the “sex worthy guy”, as we describe in pickup as a guy who you know, on an exterior and subtle level, understands attraction and can trigger it in woman, and can sexually escalate to a close. The thing PUAs and the community often misses is that this guy has his inner game down. He understands who he is. He has a strange, almost untouchable sense of confidence in himself.  The inner game is the essense of the fire, and the techniques are simply ways to manipulate the flame.

AFC Adam notes in the under 21 convention, that becoming a natural requires 3 things:

1. Confidence in yourself: without confidence, you have no hope

2. Abundance: you need women in your life

3. An ability to sexually escalate

At the end of the day, pickup is pickup. It is a skill set and mindset of picking up girls. It is nothing more, nothing less. The 3 pillars of your life, wealth, health, and love must be in order in order to feel truly happy. This beings me back to my original points:

1. I don’t want to “pickup” girls because I feel like I am not at a point where my inner game and passive value traits are allowing me to be, at a base frequency, the sex worthy guy.

2.  On the same note, while I love working on business and work, doing this 100% of the time does make me depressed, because I know I am not living up to my full potential. And the reason we are running with this was to have more free time and financial resources to pursue our passions in pickup and the arts! Guitar, Martial Arts, Dance, Art.

I will continue to post my conflicts in the personal life section, in hopes that others can benefit from reading about my experience.

There are a great many posts regarding this on the lair forums, among PUAs in the States and also all over the world. There seems to be 2 extremes of thought:

One one hand, showing the general public about MM (Mystery Method) will dilute the effectiveness of the routines, especially for newbies.

On the other, PUAs believe that this general awareness has nothing to do with game. Just like Bruce Lee made material arts famous worldwide, there is still a steep learning curve and those that are committed will travel that path regardless.

There is some general consensus, however, that public releases such as “The Game” by Strauss in 2004 and the premier of The Pickup Artist: Season 1 in August 06 of 2007 has create a general awareness of the game by the mainstream, even if only temporary. This also helps others who are searching for the Game to find it, as I did with Strauss’ book. A Google Trends analysis shows some interesting results:

Before August of 2007, the term “Pickup Artist” was a relatively secluded term on Google.com. After the show’s airing, search patterns went up dramatically. It eventually lowers in Nov 2008, but at a slightly higher level than before is now maintained as the “consistent norm”. In this case, those that were originally looking and become devoted to the art probably benefited from the show’s airing, and was able to latch on to the community and its lifestyle. Meanwhile, the rest of the general public lost interest, as fads come and go.

A search for “fast seduction” shows a slowing trend

And a search for “seduction community” shows even lower searches.

It is for this reason that I believe that with The Pickup Artist, Season 2, a slow but sure incremental increase will occur for people searching for the pickup community, however general interest will wane again, as it did before in late 2007 after the show ends.

One of my old diary entries, I thought it was insightful in describing the beginnings of my journey into Game:

July 2004 – I embarked on a journey from Ottawa, Canada to Stamford, CT to start my new life. I was going to be a Project Manager! Awesome! Excitement turned to stress, as I coped with the pressure to perform in management consulting and with senior partners as our firm. Many nights, R ((my then roommate and fellow Wharton graduate) and I would talk about how hard it could be, and where we would be in the future. My love life suffered. Although Stamford, thinking back had lot of out of college girls, I had no game! I remember hitting the bars and seeing lots of beautiful women, just waiting for us to talk to them. I regretted many of these incidents, though; I had no skills back then.

One day, one of R’s friends from NYC visited us. He was a good looking guy. As a matter of fact, he was a slightly “meaty” version of Ben Affleck. I was, being a hater, called him, “Fat Ben Affleck”. That was mean, because in all honesty, he was a good looking guy. On Friday, Ben (I forgot his real name) picked up probably one of the cutest girls I have ever seen at that time. She was very pretty, albeit a bit shy. I, like I was back then, in denial, “Oh, it must have been luck, she’s just hanging out with him for fun”. I remember Ben walking around the bar hitting on girls, while we were working the female co-workers.

And though I thought he was being stupid, a part of me wondered if I should be doing the same. This is when I started downloading and reading David DeAngelo’s Cocky and Funny. A lot of the inner game theory worked well, but most of it was too mainstream to get me a girlfriend.

The next night on Saturday, I decided to go to bed early. R, Ben, his girl and few other guys went out. Ben and his girl came back early, and I heard them kissing and eventually full-closing on the air mattress. Her moans were loud! And I could not sleep that night. This was a “spoon” moment in the Matrix. I didn’t think it was possible! How could such as seemingly nice girl give it up so quickly! At my apartment living room, at that! Wow! I couldn’t believe it, but that events sparked in me a desire to learn more, because realized how little I knew. My reality was just shattered, and I had a choice to make. I could continue to live in denial, or I could start building the foundation to do something about it. It was then where I started seeking out Serum, and planning my move to California.

Some morals to the story:
1. R was loyal, intelligent roommate. Without sex and female attention, I did few things I was not proud of, mainly, I was hater to him. It was my loss, because he was a good friend. Don’t be a hater like me.

2. Ben was one of the guys who did not care what we thought about him. For the first time in a very long time, I realized that I was once a hater. I was once the guy who was the “hater” – they guy that I now find annoying when he’s trying to hate on my game. This is a humbling experience. Also, I am so glad that happened to me, because it prompted me to make choice to confront my romantic reality.

3.I realized these days that a lot of guys live in DENIAL – that is, when I pick up girls or k-close on a cold approach, I see the old me in the guys I hang with who are not “PUAs”. They will make comments like, “Oh, she was just drunk!”.

4.If you are lucky, or you go out enough with guys that are good, you will come to a cross road: you see that ivy-educated, good girl who will fall for the lady’s man and fuck him like a dirty whore (when I say this, I don’t mean to insult women, rather, the ability of the seducer to bring out lustful, dirty side of women in general). And you have a choice to make. You can choose to make up denials and excuses for why the girl, the guy or situation turned out the way it did, or you can start your journey to figuring the truth about the true nature of men, women and human dynamics.

Don’t be in denial. “Free your mind, Neo”.