So I began the night meeting my sister, her co-workers and a friend of mine at Rodeo Bar, which calls itself "NYC's Longest Running Honky Tonk" as well as "NYC's Premier Southern Roadhouse." Located at 27th St and 3rd Ave in Manhattan, the bar is a fun venue and apparently features live music performances every evening beginning at 9. After enjoying out $4 ($6?) margaritas, delicious quesadillas, and mediocre service, my friend and I said our good-byes to make it to a mediabistro networking party on the L.E.S.
Full of quesadillas and each of us with a margarita buzz, we shared a taxi to the bar, Katra, arriving around 7:45, a little more then half way into the scheduled networking event (advertised as happening from 6:30-8:30). My friend, who works at Condé Nast, and I were nervous about networking ourselves effectively and successfully, and we entered the bar to find ourselves surrounded by a very tightly-packed crowd. A note about my professional history: I have never worked in media. My professional background is primarily in teaching, and I am looking to get into editorial and/or publishing work. The creation of this blog was, actually, inspired by a piece of advice made at a mediabistro workshop I had attended, to write blogs and to write in general. So, with my badge falsely declaring "Editorial Assistant" as my title, my friend and I worked our way through this tangled mass of media people.
Though Katra is a beautiful bar, as evidenced by its website, it is narrow for a large networking party; immediately after making our way further back in the bar, we realized it wasn't really especially full at all, just packed like a can of sardines towards the entrance. And it was rapidly clearing out. It soon became rather clear to my friend and me, at least in our experience of the evening there, that this event was really more for the teachers to network themselves; and indeed, huge discounts for registration (and free premium membership to mediabistro) to classes were offered if we registered that night. While the two workshops I took with mediabistro were very well-organized and informative, in terms of ongoing classes, I decided to take some Publishing courses at NYU instead. The credentials of the latter seem a little more notable, no? But this is not to diss mediabistro; it is an invaluable source for media connections that I hope to utilize in the future.
My networking, as well as my friend's, proved to be haphazard and not that fruitful. Ironically, one of the girls I chatted a lot with also went to Oberlin. Oh, Oberlin! If only all networks always immediately provided such a sense of connection and built-in networking. So... happily saying our goodbyes to our ill-fated networking plans, we continued our explorations of L.E.S. nightlife.
Making our first stop at Home Sweet Home, a very middle-America, rural-themed hipster dive bar (with both chandeliers and several pieces of taxidermy), we continued the night at Happy Ending: and this is where the party started. (see flyers below). I'll let the flyers speak for themselves. It was dancing, drinking madness, a crazy party for any day of the week, no less a Tuesday.
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