The Brooklyn Blogfest: If You Don't Know, Now Ya Know

Ok, so the Brooklyn Blogfest went down last night at the Lyceum in Park Slope and I was there for the whole shebang.

I'm sort of entertained by the fact that everyone seems to be talking about how the Blogfest, organized by Smartmom herself, totally sold out to Absolut and has turned into nothing but a shill-fest. Mostly this entertains me because I feel like everyone is missing the entire fucking point which I think is this: Absolut didn't ruin the Blogfest, cause the Blogfest already sucked. In fact, the only thing that didn't suck last night, were the free drinks.

Full disclosure: I did a post for Absolut and they sent me a flip camera and a bottle of vodka, both of which I was planning to use for a giveaway on my site. I get this whole full disclosure thing, but also I'm not the NY fucking Times. I don't disclose shit about shit normally (how much my advertisers pay me, the fact that Robicelli's gave me a free cupcake once, blah, blah, blah)--mostly because who the fuck cares. Do I think that Absolut completely took over the event last night? Honestly: I don't think they took it over enough.

Here's my take: its hard as shit to be a blogger. If you've never tried it, give it a whirl. I PROMISE YOU, it will take up more time, effort, energy and wherewithall than you could ever EVAH imagine. So if corporate sponsors wanna dive in and help to support this community by sponsoring events and throwing money at us why not? Fuck selling out....its about making shit happen.

Having said that, I think that the BK Blogfest was about as shitty an event as they possibly could have ever teamed up with. I'm guessing the decision went something like this:

Absolut PR person: We need to team up with all the bloggers! How do we reach bloggers in Brooklyn so that we can announce our new special co-branded Vodka??

[then by some sort of miracle, the Brooklyn Blogfest came up in a google search. I use the word miracle, b/c I googlezed for that shit yesterday and the first few links that popped up were for the event in 2009].

Smartmom: SURE! Sponsor us! You can talk about your vodka all the livelong day!

Bing, bam, boom a partnership was born.

So Lemon Anderson did a cool ass spoken word thing, and Spike Lee awkwardly talked to us all for a few mins standing behind a podium so poorly placed, you could only see him if you were sitting in Smartmom's lap. He told us all that he didn't blog and didn't know much about blogging (great...so he fit in well with the event's organizer). He talked a bit about movie-making, and said he'd try to get some kid off the waiting list at NYU Film school. He told us about Fort Greene, and why he decided to move. It was fine, mostly b/c it was a few mins out of the evening when we didn't have to listen to OTHER bullshit.

The truth of the matter is, and I'm sorry to be blunt, but those of us who consider ourselves down-n-dirty Brooklyn bloggers consider the Blogfest  to be a big fat  joke. I'm not naming names, but I've spoken with many of em, and most agree that the Blogfest is nothing more than a b.s., self-aggrandizing, FOLC (Friends of Louise Crawford) gathering that seems to increasingly (I've been 3 years in a row now) have fuck all to do with blogging. In fact, I sort of feel like they should rename the thing the Brooklynfest instead of the Blogfest since what every one seems most committed to there is the idea that we should all get a pat on our backs because we're smart/cool/adventurous/edgy enough to have figured out that Brooklyn is the place to be.

My friends Rob & Chris started this site recently called IMDB Boner. The idea is that you just add the word boner to any movie title. So like, the Perfect Storm becomes The Perfect Boner or Mr. Holland's Opus becomes Mr. Holland's Boner. I kinda felt like the same thing was going on last night, though instead of the word "boner" the word was "Brooklyn."

"What is it like to be a blogger in BROOKLYN?," "How has writing a food blog in BROOKLYN shaped your experience." Jake Dobkin from Gothamist happily (and very entertainingly) launched into a takedown of all nabes in NYC NOT located in Brooklyn ("If you want to abandon society, move to the UES."). RAH RAH BROOKLYN! YAAAAAY Brooklyn! Look, I love Brooklyn, live in Brooklyn and own real estate in Brooklyn, so I get that this place rules. But what the fuck does this shit have to do with blogging? I love that there are so many bloggers in Brooklyn, and I get that there is a level of coolness and commonality in that fact, but can we skip the dramatic readings, and the rehearsed shoutouts and the mediocre photo slideshows and srsly weird videos with images that don't connect at all to ANYTHING that is going on, and JUST FUCKING TALK ABOUT BLOGGING???

I guess the bottom line is: I consider myself a blogger who lives in Brooklyn, not a Brooklyn Blogger. And also framing my entire existence online around my zipcode, just bores the shit out of me.

So yeah: I would have been fine with Absolut taking over the whole fucking thing. In fact, Absolut: give me a call if you ever want to put together a REAL Brooklyn Bloggers event.