Our esteemed editor, in his Libertines phase, off his tits at Hollertronix sometime in 2005.The very earliest days of Philebrity are (perhaps not) sadly lost forever. However, The Wayback Machine at Archive.org does pick up our story in November 2004, about a month after Philebrity first went online. Let us paint you a picture: Hating George W. Bush was still something not everybody did, and this guy called John Kerry was really gonna show people what was up come Election Day. Philebrity was being run out of a three-bedroom dude palace near 13th and Dickinson in South Philadelphia. Every two days, there was either a Koncerts For Kerry or Stay Loose (Philebrity’s first weekly DJ night that nobody came to) Upstairs At The Khyber. We really did drink Sparks. And Johnny Brenda’s only had two rooms, and they were both on the first floor. Let’s see what the Wayback can tell us…
Week of November 11, 2004: The first bubblings of East Passyunk becoming cool prompts us to call it “SoLibs.” Needless to say, it didn’t stick. We linked to the R.U.B.A.’s Friendster page. Bart Blatstein was trying to hipster-ify The Jewish Exponent? We tried to help Bader save the Fishtown Duck Pond. (It didn’t work.) We ran photos of Interpol playing ping-pong at the R.U.B.A. It’s important to note that this is before anyone at Philebrity ever tried cocaine, if only because it makes the shit we saw fit to post about even more mysterious. Oh, and look, our first paying advertiser: Valanni! What were you thinking?Week of November 24, 2004: OK, now it’s maybe starting to look like something. Our first post trolling Jennifer Weiner’s blog for LULZ. “This Evening” and “Rumblings” in a more or less organizable form. The first tremors of Diplo/M.I.A. fever. Martnet is our host.Week of December 15, 2004: We introduce Dr. Philebrity, our advice column, which we loved writing, but nobody ever asks Dr. Philebrity for any advice anymore, because it’s 2009 and everybody thinks they know everything. Pressler’s Miscellany is linked to. We had a Christmas party with the long-since-gone fashion site BewitchedBy.com. Philebrity still made no sense whatsoever.Week of April 20, 2005: Five months down the road, Philebrity’s daily post count grew, and thus began our unfortunate era of cut-and-paste blogging, where we first begun to dig into the Inky/DN and realize that hey, wow, these papers are not really that good. (Looking back now, though, cutting and pasting from them, with a salty quip thereafter, was even worse.) We run this picture for the first time ever. And, uh… “Finally, yes, the future is now. Philebrity is on MySpace.”Week of September 30, 2005: OK, now we’re starting to smarten up a bit. Philebrity starts to have some great events (that party for No Direction Home was a stone groove), we’re actually beginning to dip our toes into the media scene (calling out PhillyMag dickweed Noel Weyrich and, hell’s bells, Steven Wells). But the cut-and-paste continues. Bummer.Week of January 6, 2006: We dig some band called Blood Feathers. Anthony DiMeo’s disastrous NYE bash provides great fun for all. And weirdly, Philebrity still does not have comments. TOP 10 MYSPACE SLUTS OF PHILLY 2005!… and, well, it just kinda rolled on from there. Ruthie Carpenter, then Kelly White showed up. And then there was the whole Jonathan Valania unpleasantness. Eventually, we opened comments. We got some more advertising. And slowly, but surely, we began to use the “blockquote” button less. We started covering more civic issues. And, you know, we grew up. But only just a little. You know the rest.
This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 12:33 pm.
October 5th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Congrats on Making it 5 years. To 5 more years!
October 5th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
The lack of Dr. Philebrity has resulted in Danny Bonaduce: Life Coach
http://www.myspace.com/dannybonaducelifecoach