From trading stocks to trading snark, Walker Ward has never been afraid of a bold pivot. The ex-Wall Street exec turned viral social media satirist has built a cult following with his pitch-perfect impressions of the wealthy and clueless, from Palm Beach dads to preppy interns and influencers. Now, Ward is taking his talents to the streets – literally – with Pedicab Connections, a new digital series from the team behind 90-Day Fiancé, Love After Lock Up, and Match Me Abroad.
Part matchmaking experiment, part comedy, and part social commentary, the show follows Walker as he pedals through New York City in a love chariot, offering free rides, hot takes, and unexpected romantic encounters for singles braving the brutal world of modern dating.
We caught up with Walker to talk about joining the Sharp Entertainment universe, what Pedicab Connections says about NYC’s dating scene, and why comedy might be the missing link between love and logistics.
How did you get to be this viral video sensation?
Well, those are such kind words. I don’t know if I’m quite a sensation yet, but between us girls, I moved to New York in July of 2018, and I took a sales job on the sell side of Wall Street. I had that job for about six years, until July of 2023 and then I was let go from that job and once I was let go from my job, I started to make videos on social media because I’ve always loved entertaining and performing.
When I was little, I was in plays and that kind of thing and when I was in college, I did some theater, so I’ve always loved to entertain. I was the class clown classic in high school, that kind of thing and when I was at work in my Wall Street job, I found myself really gravitating to the times and the opportunities in which I could entertain my coworkers, whether it was emceeing a company offsite or, during COVID, making fun videos to kind of keep company morale up through HR. So, anyway, I knew that I kind of really liked it and I wasn’t scratching that itch that I had to really perform at my day job. I think the firing was kind of a blessing in disguise because then I sort of knew my girlfriend really was like, Walker, you should just take a step back. Maybe start making videos on the internet and kind of see what happens. I’d love to end up being in movies and TV one day, but that’s kind of the long story short.
How did you get involved with Pedicab Connections?
I guess I’ve been doing the content for about two years now and I actually knew Matt Sharp, who runs Sharp Entertainment. I knew him personally through a family connection. Prior to any of this. I actually interned for Sharp Entertainment back in 2015, so this has felt like a really fun, kind of full-circle moment, because I remember when I was – I’ll use the word – a measly intern, I guess. Not that there’s anything wrong with interns, of course, they’re so important and we need them, but I was the bottom of the barrel showing up to work every day at Sharp Entertainment, being handed at a stack of clothes from a production assistant, being like, “Okay, your job today, go to Macy’s and return all these clothes.”
And then, luckily, I got to work my way up a little bit that summer to where I could work on a set and I worked on some reality shows of theirs. It’s been a really cool full-circle moment to have the retrospect of where I was during my internship at Sharp literally 10 years ago today and I remember seeing some of the hosts of the shows that I was working on. I was like, God, that’d be really cool to do that one day. And now I am one of the hosts.
I got a phone call from Sharp and they were like, we love what you’re doing, because I also make a lot of New York-related humor and content. I do a lot of different things, some of which is New York-related, so I think that they liked that. I’m also kind of familiar with the city and I know people who work there, who own small businesses and that kind of thing. And so, they were like, “Would you want to get involved with this Pedicab Connections show that we’re cooking up?” and I said, “for sure”. So, here we are.
The show blends comedy, connection and a little bit of chaos. How would you describe the show to someone who’s not seen it yet?
I would describe Pedicab Connections to someone who hasn’t seen it as high level, it is a dating show. I would call it a dating show, but with a little bit of a twist. The way I explain it right now is I am driving around my pedicab, the Mingle Mobile, and I am driving around trying to help single New Yorkers find love. That’s the very brief elevator pitch.
If we go into the next level, I think the dating apps today have become so obsolete, like just dating in 2025, not just in New York, but in general. I hear a lot of people talk about the fact that it’s just it’s hard. You might think with the technological advances and all the dating apps, it might be easier, but I think it’s made things more complicated and then culturally, people are kind of buried in their phones. You get kind of sucked out of a normal life and into your screen, and you could be walking on the streets of New York, right by someone who, if your head was up and not down, you might think was super cute, or you might even have the courage to strike up a conversation with, and you never know.
It always sounds like a long shot until you meet your person, and then when you’re telling the story to your kids or your grandkids, you know, 30 years down the road, that was the time where it actually worked. So, so long story short, it’s a dating show where I am the captain of the Mingle Mobile and I basically was driving around, pulling up on strangers on the sidewalk and asking them if they’re single and trying to give them a little 20-minute respite from their day and, you know, you give me 20 minutes, I could give you the love of your life – and that’s basically how it works.
What kind of people have you most enjoyed interacting with in the pedicab?
Yeah, good question. I mean, I’m a very social person, so I love having anybody in the back of the pedicab. I will say this, from a time of day, success rate perspective, evenings have been working the best. You know, it’s obviously tough to pull up on someone in the middle of a workday because schedules are fuller, that kind of thing. When you have a group of people who are, dining alfresco, eating outside, I’ll pull up – and they’ve had a couple drinks or that kind of thing.
Usually, the most success I’ll have is when it’ll be a group of, usually girls – guys too – but group of gals and the girls in the group who are not single, either married or have boyfriends or whatever, they will very heavily encourage the single girls in their group to get in the cab. So, they’re kind of like doing my pitch job for me, which is great. Then I hopefully get a nice gal in the backseat and then we drive around, get to talking, and then try to find somebody for them in the backseat.
Originally I did not foresee the number of DMs and people sending direct messages and people that were going to hit us up on the internet. I didn’t foresee that it was going to be that popular. We have this sort of inundation of people on the internet asking us to pick them up. I was expecting it to be more, we’re just going to ride around and pick up complete strangers on the street, which we’re still doing. But we’re getting some good traction on social media where people are seeing these episodes and they’re messaging us saying, “Hey, I’m single, can we set up a time for a pickup?” We do some of that now too, where the person is a stranger and they are single, but they reached out to us and I know I’m going to find them somewhere in the area. We’ll have set up pickups too.
What’s been the most surprising moment or match so far?
We had one ride maybe a week ago where this couple was in the backseat. They were probably in their mid-twenties. I guess I feel older now that I’m 31. I’m not the youngest of everybody walking around the city, but I was talking to them and I’m riding my bike – sometimes it’s a little bit difficult to hear the conversation in the back and I think sometimes they have a hard time hearing me a little bit. And then I turned around and they were making out in the backseat. I was like, okay, alright. We have a little tonsil hockey in the back of the Mingle Mobile. Okay, we’ll take it. We’re doing our job.
The most surprising match…we have an episode that just came out our second episode where we had a guy named Matt and a girl named Selena and the reason this was surprising and fun is because I had picked Matt up earlier and we went around earlier in the day and we picked up a single gal for him on the street and they were talking, and there was a little bit of chemistry I thought, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t a match, so they both ended up getting out and leaving. And then later in the day, I picked up this girl named Selena and when I’m driving people around, I like to think of it as I’m a sales associate and we’re shopping for love on the floor. Everyone’s different.
So, I’m asking her what do you like? What’s your type? What are you into? And everything Selena was saying was this guy, Matt, who I had earlier that day in the cab. And so, I was like, all right, Selena, hold on. I need to pick up the phone and call this guy Matt – because I always get people’s numbers because sometimes we don’t get them a match. That’s just how life works. But when I see someone or meet someone who I think might’ve been good for someone who’s currently in the cab, I’ll call them up and see if they’re free. Matt was still in the area, so we picked him up and they hit it off.
What is your personal take on dating right now, in this day and age?
I mean, I have a girlfriend of almost four years who’s great, but that doesn’t mean that I’m obviously not plugged into the scene. I think it’s hard because, not to sound like a broken record, but the dating apps play a role in today’s world dating climate, and I think that they make it easy for people to feel complacent. I think you can get kind of lazy. It’s like, oh, like I don’t need to go to a bar tonight or go out, maybe someone will message me on an app or that kind of thing. I don’t need to go out and buy groceries. I can just like order DoorDash. I don’t need to go out and like meet someone in real life. I’ll just check the apps and see what happens.
The lowest common denominator that everybody is talking about is that dating right now is very difficult and a lot of women are saying that guys – this is obviously a generalization – but they don’t make the first move anymore. The traditional masculine element of going for what they want. If a guy sees a girl or a guy, you know, whatever, he is not putting himself out there and going up and talking to them and initiating the conversation.
I think there is a lot of potential love – not to be dramatic – that’s being lost or not even discovered because of that. I see it all the time with my friends. You’re at a bar and it’s like, oh, that girl, those girls over there look super cute. But it’s like, oh no. I’m not going to go talk to her, I’m fine. I feel like back in the day there was more of, “I’m going to go talk to her. This is the only time I’m going to see this girl.” I could see maybe social media playing a little bit of a role.
Now there’s kind of a running joke that when you see a picture of a beautiful woman on the internet or something like that, people will say, this is the kind of woman that men used to go to war for or something like that. And now when you’re online you can just be scrolling through your Instagram feed and you see a hundred beautiful women or men a day and I think it is kind of changing our, maybe brain chemistry is too strong of a word, but like our sense of urgency to go say hi to that person at the bar or in the airport or wherever you are because it’s like, yeah, that woman was beautiful, but I just popped open my phone and here three other women who are just as gorgeous.
As far as tropes on dating shows, are there any that you’re intentionally leaning into?
I think what we are trying to do is make the show as simple as possible in the sense that I think a lot of dating shows will have all kinds of bells and whistles and you have like shows like Love Island or Bachelor in Paradise, where people are in love and then it’s more of a social experiment. You enter another beautiful person in the mix and let’s see what happens, or let’s see how strong their love is.
With this show, I think we want to just keep it as simple as possible and it’s like, look. The chemistry is kind of out there in the streets floating around. Can I, in this ridiculous Mingle Mobile, find two people and just let it unfold naturally in front of our eyes on camera? I have a little basket of treats in the front with fun questions and that kind of thing and we’ll have little paddles at the end with green and red, stop and go signs that they’ll pick up and determine whether it’s a match or not. But like, I think we’re trying to stay away from the most part, from any sort of traditional dating show tropes or anything like that. We want it to be as simple as possible. We just want to get two people in the backseat and let them get to know each other and if I feel like there’s a little bit of a spark or chemistry, we try to build that and try to make them a match.
Besides the show, are you working on anything else?
I am actively still making my sketch comedy reels and videos on my social media channels, walksauce42_, shameless plug, and as I mentioned a little bit or briefly at the beginning of our chat I want to make it onto the big screen into movies and TV and that kind of thing and I’m trying to leverage social media to get there as opposed to 10 years ago when you’re kind of just bartending or waiting tables and going on auditions. Now you can really get your name out there and make a little bit of money too, doing it by making videos and stuff on social media. So, I’m going to continue make my videos, build out my character arcs for all my different characters that I do that’s kind of it for right now, for the foreseeable future. Just kind of stay consistent with everything that we’re working on and now we have Pedicab Connections, which is super exciting and I’m going to try to help singles find love as well.
Check out Pedicab Connections on YouTube and Instagram. Follow Walker on Instagram.
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