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NEW YORK — It's an enchanted evening, but Fred Baldassaro only thinks he has seen a stranger across a crowded room at Red Sky lounge. In fact, at this, the first Hook-a-Sister-Up party, the three single women Baldassaro has met are friends of a friend, or friends of a friend's friend. Some of the 100-plus guests are even exes of a friend's friends. 'It's what New York is all about,' says Baldassaro, 29, parked by a ledge strewn with empty highballs and martini glasses. 'Different people, different backgrounds' — in this case united by two common threads, the event's hosts, Khrystine Muldowney and Melissa Schweiger. They are sisters in singlehood, frustrated by the bar scene. So what if Charlotte's used-date party during Sex and the City's third season wasn't exactly a success? (Her would-be paramour ended up making out with his former flame.) The concept has spurred a new method of matchmaking practiced at parties across the USA. It's a compromise between the predatory throngs raging at, say, Red Sky's main bar downstairs and the far-too-intimate atmosphere that overtakes many urban dinner parties, where a tiny apartment means a small guest list — and low coupling odds. 'We're taking Friendster offline,' says Schweiger, 30, referring to the popular Web site that links communities of acquaintances, sometimes romantically. (Between them, Schweiger and Muldowney, 29, e-mailed invitations to 45 people, who forwarded the details to folks in their circles.) Their party also is an offline version of GreatBoyfriends.com and, virtual sources for vetted and vouched-for exes. And it's reminiscent of a wedding reception, where love often blooms and where everyone is connected by one degree or three. 'We're paying it forward, exactly,' Schweiger says. The goal is to strip singles events of their veneer of cheesy desperation and remove the creep factor as much as possible — to foster friendships and, ideally, relationships in 'a controlled environme
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