Picking a venue that doesn't let you talk

Loud bars with thumping music. Action movies where conversation is impossible for two hours. Crowded, noisy restaurants where you're shouting over ambient noise. All of these sound like valid date ideas and all of them undermine what a first date is actually for: finding out whether the two of you can fall into rhythm together in conversation. You can't discover that if you're spending the whole time straining to hear each other. Pick something that allows for two hours of low-volume, uninterrupted conversation. A quieter bar, a restaurant with decent acoustics, a walk in a good neighborhood, a coffee in the afternoon. The activity should be a backdrop to talking, not a replacement for it. The best first dates happen in places where the world doesn't intrude, where the two of you are in enough physical proximity and enough quiet that the conversation can actually go somewhere. Make it easy to hear each other. Everything else will follow from there.