• by Kelly Samardak , August 20, 2008

MediaPost's Online Minute MashUp, Boat Basin Cafe, New York
August 19, 2008

Have you ever been to the Boat Basin? It's one of those old New York feeling places, almost like an English grotto or The Secret Garden. It's a place where you look around and get disoriented, forgetting you're actually in Manhattan as joggers weave through, sailboats glide by in the glittering, sunset-sparkling Hudson, and media types gather for cheap fermented beverages, good conversation and, in my case, bruised knees from falling up the stairs with fists full of duct tape before the party even started. Yes, Jeremy laughed loudly.

I don't usually like to do a who's who of the hootenanny, but there were so many great people basking in probably the most scrumptious evening weather of NYC so far. Not quite jackets and sweaters, but it was the kind of evening where your jeans and a light long-sleever could have worked. A new phrase has been coined, and should now replace "fashionably late" -- and that phrase is "fabulously first." Ricardo Neto, Sales Manager and Nina Mannion, Sales Planner, both from Salon Media Group, arrived first and smiling, setting up camp under a big blue umbrella in the soon-to-be-teeming media petrie dish. No sense in being late to a happy hour, Granny always said. "Setting the trend," Neto grinned.

Soon after, as the sun slipped further down the horizon and the smell of burgling burgers wafted through my nostrils, Gary Fung (or Gary Acerno, on his nametag), Business Development Manager at acerno, and Don Snellings, Senior Account Executive at Mail.com, trundled, in all smiles. Just from the first handful of people I could tell this was going to be a good crew. Maybe it was the weather, maybe it was the water, but everyone was just... friendly.

Cherilyn Earl of Epic Advertising was hanging with Laura Dempsey of the Dowd Agency and Seth Oilman, super sales guy at MediaPost. Epic Advertising is having a huge party on the same night I'm going to see my girl Adele perform at Webster Hall, but I'm going to try and swing both, that's how I do. Matt Caldecutt appeared again and joined me for a few laps around the media pool. It's always fun talking with that guy, getting his view, and hearing how he manages to work his face off and still fulfil the necessary social (non)obligations that PR folks have to do.

I made my way around the fishbowl, weaving through our own MediaPost-ers, including the Big Boss, Ken Fadner, sporting his own name tag (we made fun optional stickers, that everyone opted into!) "I [drawn bee] Ken Fadner", a little play on the "I [heart] Ken Fadner" printed stickers. I almost tripped up the stairs again while trying to snap the "from above" view only to hear "hey, where'd you get those knee scars?" from three gentleman at the bottom of the stairs. They shouldn't have asked because William Fisher, President of the WIF Company, Allan Kolstein, Director of Sales, Boston Hannah International, and Daniel Boucher, Executive Vice President, same company, had to hear my 3rd grade sliding-across-the-floor-in-gym-class story. It's a doozy.

Things got a little too knee-centric with those guys, so I skittered up the stairs and ran into Jeff Boodie, Business Coordinator, O The Oprah Magazine and Chanel Graham from House Beautiful (one of my old-school favorites... they need to make "apartment beautiful" or, in my case, "squalor beautiful"). While gabbing about this column and the big event O event on Thursday (which I'll be covering!) The BobCar Experiential Media guys emerged from the left.

"You guys can't both be "Bob Car!" I hooted, because they both wrote the company name on their tags, not their names. Bob Car. It was an honest mistake. Either way, Benjamin Cohen, President and founder and Nathan Menaged, EVP, Program Operations are my new favorite people. We need a MediaPost BobCar or something - and I'll totally drive it all over the city. I'm an aggressive driver, so clear the streets.

There are so many people to name, but I have to go now... I just itched my eye with a jalapeño finger, and it's burning like a pile of fire ants.

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