Dartout throws one random NYC event at you. That's it. There is no ranking, no "for you", no learning what you like. The pool is what the city publishes about itself — NYC Parks, the Permitted Events list (street fairs, block parties, parades, markets), the public library, The Skint — pulled straight from the feeds and refreshed every few hours.
The rules: one dart a week. Mulligans exist because randomness occasionally hands you a toddler story hour or a rally you want no part of — take as many as you need, but they're counted, and the count goes on the feed. Lock the dart in without one and you get a gold star. Wherever it lands, you go.
One night in early 2009 I was at the ballet, on a date, having been dragged there. Somewhere in the second act I noticed I was enjoying it, and it occurred to me that it never would have occurred to me to buy a ballet ticket on my own. Which raised a question: what else was out there that I'd like and would never choose? Probably a lot. At intermission I bought the domain on my phone.
Being a data nerd, I decided random was the way to go. Rather than let my biases and petty preferences creep in at the edges and flavor my decisions, I'd take the choice away from myself entirely. And since I suck at darts, that's about as random as it gets. So I drew a grid, threw a dart at the grid to pick a page of Time Out New York (the paper magazine — it was 2009), opened to that page, and threw again. Whatever it hit, I did, and then I wrote about it here. One activity and one restaurant a week, for 52 weeks.
The first thing it hit was the Jonas Brothers movie. In 3D. After that: off-Broadway shows, Irish pubs, burlesque, a lot of things I'd never have bought a ticket for, and I mostly had a great time.
In 2014 the dart went digital: a scraper, a random pick, and an email every Monday from a team of chimpanzees. That version ran until 2022 — 156 people, 57,788 darts — and died when the sites it scraped changed their HTML. This is the third one. It goes to the primary sources instead, so every dart carries its provenance: which source, which URL, when we last checked. The chimpanzees are fine.
| Can I choose my event? | No. |
|---|---|
| Can I narrow it down? | By when, which borough, and free. Not by what. |
| Can I filter out things I don't like? | No. That's the point. |
| Can I take more than one mulligan? | Yes. Everyone will know. |
| Can I pay to include my event? | No. |
| Can I contact support to complain? | No. |
"Us" is a misnomer. It's just me. We feel compelled to refer to myself in the plural so you'll get the impression we're bigger than we are. We aren't. That's why there's no support.
"When I was young, I hated spinach. So I ate lots of it until I liked it." — Ammon Brown, Principal Author, Dartout
While you're here, you should share the site so we can go viral, sell it to Google, and buy a helicopter. We don't sell your email, so this is the least you can do. Don't you want us to be happy? In a helicopter?
RSS and JSON feeds are public.