tumblr meetup a complete success
I’m still a little giddy from the night, so excuse the high word count.
I show up at 9:15. I figure if I organize this thing, I should probably be there when it starts. No one is here yet (obviously, this is New York and all). I sit at the bar, fiddle with my blackberry and try to act like I have friends.
It’s 9:30. Still no sign of anyone. Clearly I have no friends. Everyone hates me. I’m cancelling my tumblr account when I get home.
I see two ladies (Jessie and Kelly) and a guy (Jeff) walk in the bar. Instead of approaching Kelly, who I’ve had an email exchange with, I decide to be a scaredy cat and look up her tumblr on my phone. I try comparing the picture on there to the actual human being five feet away. This is the dorkiest thing I’ve ever done. That’s saying something.
Kelly sees me. Taking the bold move of not comparing me to a picture on her phone, she walks up and introduces everyone. What nice people! As it turns out, we’re neighbors! They all promise to cook me dinner soon (right, guys?).
Seconds later, two dudes who look like David and Marco show up with someone who looks like Tiffany. Holy shit. It is the actual people who run tumblr. These are definitely not impersonators. They didn’t say they were coming!
“This is a user only event,” I tell David and Marco. They silently walk away into the dark of the night, never to be seen again. Ok, I lied. They all stayed. And they’re all great people. So glad they came!
At this point I’ve had a few beers (one and a half) so the night becomes a bit hazy. More people show up! Josh, Lauren and Charlie. We took some photobooth pictures and all of us got our asses kicked by Lauren in skee-ball (it’s in the Aussie DNA, I’m told). Charlie and Josh then regaled us with tales of what it’s like to shoot a comedy sketch in Woodstock… when, of course, hippies on acid keep ruining takes by screaming and doing other unprintable things.
Soon after, Peter (and his two non-tumbling friends) showed up and said hello. Peter lost to Lauren in skee-ball, but took it like a champ. All the while David’s been saying he’s going to leave, but instead he stays and tries to explain the concept of tumblr to one of Peter’s friends. One new user at a time (the tumblr user base is approaching 200k, we learn)!
Thanks to everyone who came out! I know a few people couldn’t make it, so maybe I’ll organize another one of these in a few weeks!
*I forgot my camera, so this is what we all looked like if the meetup took place on 3/7/07 and we were all Turkish.
