I'm single. Busy tonight..?
*ahem* sorry... old habits die hard, I'm afraid
Although the "friend zone" is primarily a dungeon inhabited by men, there are occasional women in there as well. Seems that you're one of them, at least from your description of your pals.
As well, what you've been doing clearly hasn't been giving you the results you desire. So unless you make some adjustments - I don't mean wholesale personality changes, just tweaks to fine-tune some things - you'll probably get the same results you've always got. This whole "be yourself" thing is fine but that doesn't mean you can't improve, does it?
To your points:
1 & 2 are basically the same: Where to date and how to go about it? I abhor clubs and bars and whatnot. It's too noisy, there's too much alcohol flying around which means the occasional bad decision, and one's in competition with professional players. Who needs it?
Personally, I had some reasonable success on some online dating sites. I'm not on anymore, but the vast majority of the women I met through them were attractive, successful women who just led busy busy lives and didn't have a lot of time to do a lot of extracurricular stuff.
Of course, part of getting out and meeting people is just simply getting out. Consider taking a course in auto mechanics (yea, really!). Guys wouldn't give it a second thought if a woman wanted to learn how to change her own oil. It's a target-rich environment for you. And as an offshoot you might even learn about fixing your transmission.
Lastly, please don't fall into the age-old trap that, "women don't ask men out." Take the initative. Will you get rejected on occasion? Yea, probably. Happens to guys all the time... and I do mean ALL THE TIME. But so what? Pain is temporary. Glory is forever.
Regarding your actual demeanour or signals, well, it's a bit hard to tell since you and I have never met so I can't really speak to specifics. One thing I saw recently, though, was a short bit on a BBC website that reported that holding a gaze with a member of the opposite sex can increase your attractiveness to them. (Too lazy to look it up right now, but if you do a search on BBC I'm sure you'll be able to find it, it was just a couple of days ago.)
Good luck, and keep us posted!