The first thing that hits you is how you’ve probably never wandered into this part of 30th Street Station unless you had to go to the bathroom and that this city is full of weird, cordoned-off little wonders like this: Rooms you’ve never been in, relics of a sparkling age, and all of that F. Scott Fitzgerald stuff Bader used to get really into. The room alone at the opening night party for the AAN Convention — that would be the Association Of Alternative Newsweeklies, which wins no points for rolling off the tongue — was impressive enough, and the fete, thrown by GPTMC, lived up to its environment. Alma de Cuba, Buddakan, Continental, El Vez, Brasserie Perrier/Le Bec Fin, Lacroix, Sonam, Pearl, Kildare’s, Park Grille, Oceanaire, John’s Water Ice and Tastykake were all represented to the nation’s alt-weekly editors and brass. Pretty fabulous, right? One problem: The crowd wasn’t. Surveying the room last night was a study in how the cool/fabulosity fortunes of alt-weeklies have fallen in recent years. No one was dressed up. In fact, we saw a few dudes in shorts, sandals, backpacks and unkempt he-fros. In fact, we even saw a girl wearing a chain wallet. And sure, some people left the house like we had somewhere to go, but the overall vibe was casual to the point of not giving a fuck, and if that doesn’t mirror the tenor of the business right now, well, nothing does.

After the jump, more words and a few snaps.

Back in the 1990s, working at an alt-weekly was one of those movie-type jobs where young people found themselves in the midstream of art, culture, music, politics and city life. This kind of looked like just another Saturday afternoon at the mall. But still, it was a nice party, even if the crowd was a little out of touch, a little lost. When speakers Paul Curci (publisher of host City Paper, totally dreamy), and Meryl Levitz (CEO of Greater Philadelphia Marketing & Tourism Corp.) took the podium for the welcome speeches and big reveal that none other than Ed Rendell would be presiding over Saturday evening’s festivities at the National Constitution Center, it went over the way a lot of opening-party speeches went: Into a soft pad of chatter. “I could have been reciting the alphabet,” one of the speakers whispered to us after the fact. It’s cool. They’ll all find out about Rendell soon enough. Meanwhile, we finally met CP founder Bruce Schimmel — he was like, “You’re a legend!”; we were like, “No, YOU are!” — and Most Gregarious Party People Paper People has got to go to YES! Weekly. They have to be; they’re from Greensboro, North Carolina. (For the idea bin: Start calling PW the NO! Weekly!) As the party wound down, you kind of wanted to save the crowd: Any and all Philadelphia Weekly employees were given strict marching orders that they must go to the PW party at Lucky Strike Lanes and drag as many people with them as possible, seemingly giving no thought to the notion that here are the nation’s most ground-level cultural pundits, and here PW is, dragging them to the Olive Garden of Bowling Alleys on a Thursday night in Philadelphia. For shame. Meanwhile, AWN (the Alternative Weekly Network, an ad group) pulled everybody else — or maybe just everybody period — over to Pearl, around the corner, to their to-do. We blew ‘em both off for M.I.A., knowing full well that the strangest bit of AAN partying was before us: That would be tonight’s “Northern Liberties Pub Crawl.”
Previously: The Nation’s Alt-Weekly Editors Now At Convention Center To Determine The Exact Date And Time To Give Up Completely

This entry was posted on Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 11:40 am.