Tuesday night’s social activities at ad:tech New york began with a trip to the Hilton Hotel Lobby Bar in search of What’sNextOnline’s B.L. Ochman but, instead, we ran into Gawker Media’s Nick Denton and Christopher Batty with whom we discussed the over-hyping of blogs and agreed they’re pretty much just a system that allows people to publish a website really easily. OK, there’s some other good communal consumer stuff about them too. We never found B.L. but we did check out the Bridges Bar which was packed as the exhibit hall had just closed and there weren’t many early parties except for the Industry Brainpower Awards and Soire, which we missed, and the WhenU Official ad:tech Wrap Up Party over at WhenU’s Penn Plaza offices.
WhenU put out a great spread with the best snacks of any party this week including delicious, gigantic shrimp. We ran into Tacoda CEO Dave Morgan for a brief chat and both marveled that Mr. “I’m a Web Copywriter” was there handing out business cards as he had to every booth on the exhibit hall over the course of two days.
After enjoying some good food, intelligent conversation, we headed over to the Eyeblaster Awards Show at Show to meet Unicast’s David Berkowitz and Cory Cronengold (I butchered your name, I know). We were joined by Catallano, Lellos And Silverstein’s Alice Anda, and three of her friends. Interestingly, the Eyeblaster Awards party turned out to be the best party of the night at least for those of us who chose to stay until the bitter end (10PM) dancing on the stage. Probably not so much for those who watched us wondering what we were on.
After leaving Eyeblaster and after trying to hail a cab, unsuccessfully, for ten minutes, we opted for the subway to get us down to Soho 323 where the Innovation Ads party was held. It was dark, loud, crowded and watered-down drinks seemed to be the norm. But that wasn’t a bad thing. We amused ourselves watching three very playful woman fall all over each other, hang on guys and, well, act playful. But it’s a party so it’s all good. We know. We’re easy to please when it comes to evening entertainment. We thought we’d share. There’s plenty to see in the evening’s photo album.
Next, we headed to Quo which, hands down, had the worst bar service in the history of ad:tech parties. To wait 15 minutes for a beer is, well, just dumb. Anyway, Alice, her “friend” and the rest of us met up with Primary Ads’ Tia Fix. After fighting the plentitude of human flesh to score a few beers, we walked over to a more open area of the place to, at least, get all that human plentitude off of us and wonder at the establishments intelligence at assigning two bartenders to a crowd of 500. Alice and her friend were nowhere to be found, likely sick of standing in the crown of human plentitude waiting for a beer.
We ended the evening with a stop at Stone Creek on 27th for a nightcap, conversation that didn’t require ripping a vocal chord and a few Brooklyn Pennant Ale ’55 baseball caps. It was 2AM. Time to go home. There’s plenty of pictures of last night’s events here. As always, the quality is just not all that professional. It’s really hard taking pictures with a beer in one hand and a camera in the other. Out.
