It’s hard to beat ice skating for a date. If you’re good at ice skating, you can show off your moves. If you’re terrible at ice skating, it’s cute and endearing. Win/win! Plus you get more use out of your winter clothing, even off season. The Snoopy connection and all the cool memorabilia makes for a great conversation starter: Chat about your favorite Peanut’s movies and practice your impression of what the adults sound like.

You get a super fancy full course meal in a cute restaurant along the water. You get to cook all your own food in little pots of oil. You get to eat delicious chocolate. It’s really a can’t miss proposition. The Melting Pot’s menu changes frequently, so if there’s a special soup or meat combination that you dug the last time you went, it may not be there again.

This cute little Italian restaurant overlooks beautiful Rincon Valley, giving the illusion that this is an expensive restaurant. It’s really not. The prices are pretty reasonable, and there’s a 2 for 1 coupon in the paper every week that you can slip to the waiter when your date isn’t looking. This was a popular place to go before the big dances in school, and it never fails to impress.

I’m not going to lie to you. The old location out at the Cliff House was better. However, unless you have a time machine, the new place is what you’re stuck with. While it’s not an ideal location for this collection, the Warehouse at the end of Taylor St. in Fisherman’s Wharf is a pretty cool (and totally odd) place to take a date. Featuring a collection of coin operated novelties, this is no video arcade. From “movie” machines (really a glorified flip book) to macabre moving dioramas, this place is a great look at old timey fun. And, if you’re lucky, you’ll find a mechanical fortune teller who will turn you into Tom Hanks. Bonus!

There are a lot of places you can go out to a nice dinner and a few drinks. There are also lots of places where you can go to the circus. However, there’s only one place in San Francisco where you can get a fancy dinner in the middle of the circus. Teatro Zinanni is that place. It’s a combination of acrobatics, song, audience participation and vaudeville. They change up the show (and the meal) every few months. You buy your tickets ahead of time and it covers a fixed menu dinner (though you do have a choice of entree) and the show. Drinks, pictures and face painting are extra. Go ahead, get the most out of the experience.

Most teens have never, ever been to Chez Panisse. It’s likely that your date has heard of the place, but I doubt they’ve been. Did you know that Chez Panisse has a cafe? Most people don’t! It’s a lot (and I mean a lot) cheaper. An appetizer, two main courses, and a desert is going to get you out of there for less than $100, and they never need to know you didn’t go to the “real” Chez Panisse.

You really can’t miss the spooky fun of the Winchester Mystery House for a unique date. During the day it’s a neat little trip into history if you can look past the obnoxious tourists. However, if you really want a great, totally scary date, try for one of the Moonlight Flashlight Tours. Every so often (Friday the 13th and a few weekend days leading up to Halloween) they open the House at night. If you’ve ever been on this tour and been a bit let down by the lack of scares, try it with all the lights off. They give you a little flashlight, but it’s not going to help make this any less creepy. It’ll give you a lot of excuses to stand close to your date.

I’d argue that there are better steaks to be found in the South Bay (Forbes Mill, for one), but few places make eating out an event like Alexander’s. It tends to be the “go to” place for my girlfriend and I when we want to do something special, and it never feels routine. If you let the staff know you’re there for a special event they will go out of their way to make it a night to remember.

Giorgio’s may not look like much on the inside (and it really isn’t much on the inside. It is not the most fancy Italian place around). However, they do take out well. Get the order to go and then head out to a park for a picnic, and your date will have no idea the food didn’t come from someplace super fancy.