First Date

STORY BY BY STEPHANIE ALBA

Vanessa Francone poses for the camera being her true silly self. Photography by Robert DaSilva

A first date can be rough when you realize you have nothing in common.

Vanessa Francone, a third-year Journalism student at Ryerson, had one of those dates when she was 17.

She met her date at Second Cup where she was working as a barista.

“His name was Jacob, he was a regular customer, I made his frozen hot chocolates,” she said.

One day, he came in and left his number with her, which lead them to their first date at Murphy’s, a local ice cream parlour in Mississauga.

First dates are for getting to know someone, and that’s just what Francone tried to do.

“We were just talking about music because that’s just what I usually talk about,” she said.

She didn’t know that she’d be quickly let down with his response.

“He’s like ‘Oh I don’t really listen to music’ and to me right away that was total alarm bells going off,” she said.

Francone is a editor-in-chief at BestFan.com as well as the host of the site’s YouTube Channel, BestFan TV, interviewing today’s hottest actors and artists such as Daniel Radcliffe, MKTO and MAGIC!.

“That was weird, I don’t know, that was a turn off,” she said.

In high school, Francone always participated in extracurricular activities; she was a head Prefect at St. Aloysius Gonzaga Secondary High School, so of course she had to ask what her date was involved in.

She was shot down yet again. “ He said ‘Oh I don’t really do stuff, I just go home after school,’ and in my head I’m like “This guy is, don’t know, not like me at all! He must love his quiet life,” she said laughing.

Though she wasn’t quite impressed with her date, she didn’t give up on him right off the bat.

“That was the weirdest first date. Totally nice guy, but not for me. We went on three dates, I gave him a couple chances but I just wasn’t feeling it.”

Francone is happily single and you can find her on the streets of Toronto working at Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone as the Social Media Marketer, at a concert or reading a new book.