The seldom-seen Benny Philebrity mugs for the cameras at the Philebrity Launch Party,
Autumn ‘04, at Club Aqua.

Yesterday, quietly — and with a greater degree of humility than you’d probably expect — Philebrity.com turned five years old, which is like 135 in blog years. And we owe a colossal debt of gratitude to everyone who’s ever read us, forwarded us, linked to us, advertised with us, interned with us, helped us out (there are so many of you!) or damned our names to hell (it truly is the best word of mouth there is). Along with all of the other usual stuff, we’ll be looking back today on those early days of Philebs. If you’ve got a Philebrimemory to share or would like a where-are-they-now on any old post or contributor, give us a shout today at tips[at]philebrity[dot]com, and we’ll see what we can do. Really, tho: You should see the rest of the Launch Party pics, they’re pretty hilarious. It’s also comforting to know that even then, people were already talking about how Philebrity jumped the shark. Oh, Internet, we love you, too.

UPDATE: OK, OK, slideshow (and memories) from the Launch Party after the jump!

Fun facts about this party: Apparently, 2004 still somehow counted as the 1990s. Jersey Dan, spotted in at least one of the photos here, totally hooked us up with cases upon cases of Miller High Life, which I suppose you could count as the first of many times that Philebrity, like, totally sold out, man. This party was at the late, great Aqua on Girard Avenue, and was the first time we met Aaron, literally the most handsome bartender in the city. V.I.P. were the guest DJs (and we think the guys from Spaceboy DJ’d, too?), and after this, there was a big Making Time (we forget who the band was) at Transit. Sweeney’s mom and aunts came (to the Launch Party, not Making Time). One of our present-day BFFs, Amanda, was totally at this party, too, but we didn’t know her at all. We’re pretty sure this was around the time Sweeney, in the middle of getting a divorce and living on like $75 a week near the Italian Market, invented his “Hungry Heart” look, which, unfortunately, he does not rock often enough (too bad for you he’s not in any of these pics, he looked great that night). All in all, we remember how crazy it was that people showed up at this party: Philebrity had been online for all of like three weeks (it might have even still been a Typepad site, oh my God, remember when people did things on Typepad?) and at that point, it was like a big big day on Philebrity if there were like five posts. And two out of those five were about Amanda Kimmel (more on all of this a little later). All of our friends thought we were completely crazy. This was before everybody in traditional media totally got laid off. They thought us quaint.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 10:53 am.