Got an iPhone? You may have a hookup waiting.
Grindr, a free application available for the iPhone, uses GPS to locate other gay men who are nearby. The BlackBerry application will be fully released by month’s end.
Grindr creator Joel Simkhai said his “little private network” gets more than 2,500 new users daily from across the globe and D.C. is ranked No. 14 globally in users.
“I see it for users who can’t be quite public about it,” Simkhai told Yeas & Nays. That’s why the application doesn’t require personal information — anybody can download and join anonymously.
Daniel Ruben Odio-Paez, co-founder and chief operating officer of iPhone app developer PointAbout.com, said he sees buzz about the app in D.C. because it’s a city where men want to meet in “unlikely places.”
“It exposes information that used to be hidden,” he said.
Yeas & Nays visited three of Washington’s power centers — Capitol Hill, the White House and the Pentagon — to see if the application is truly being used everywhere.
There were pages and pages of men on Capitol Hill. Just outside the House gallery, we were 393 feet away from an attractive 27-year-old Georgetown grad. On the White House lawn, only 17 gay men were within our reach, but once inside the press briefing room, the application identified many more options.
On the Pentagon grounds, the device offered several pages of available gay men. That could be a problem for military workers in the building — even though the House voted last week to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell,” it’s still being enforced.
“Being out anyway, including on Grindr, is still a risk under ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ ” said Aaron Tax, a legal director at Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.
But for some, signing on anonymously might be worth the risk. They don’t have to ask or tell, just grind.
