You gotta love a good solid pop culture backlash.

Seems a club called Republic in New Orleans has had enough of beefy fish-witted dudes, with way to much greasy product in their hair and those ridiculous “to-tight” T-shirts with all the wavy-swirly pattern nonsense printed all over them showing up every night to get their energy drink & vodka freak on (and then get in fights).

They’ve posted a sign that says, “If It’s On The Jersey Shore It’s Not Coming Through The Door.”

Specific brands mentioned include No Affliction and Ed Hardy, but Thomas [Nick Thomas, Director of Programming] clarifies that, “The dress code isn’t limited to those brands, those are just the most obvious of the Jersey Shore-esque attire.” He includes “any other knock bedazzled tee shirts or hideous foil inks. The dress code isn’t about the brands, but the people that wear those brands. If a big beefy guy, over worked-out with way too much hair gel is copping an attitude at the door or anything within that realm, he’s not getting through. Ultimately if the clientele in the club isn’t starting fights or disprespecting women, everyone in the venue can have a good time.”

[via Huff Post]

We’re stoked to be a part of Savannah’s first ever Ignite event, which is coming up this Monday evening.

We’ve been digging the Ignite format for quite some time. If you’re not familiar with Ignite, it got started a few years ago by some smart Seattle geeks who were looking for a fun way to network and share ideas. Since then, Ignite has turned into a global phenomenon with chapters in cities across the globe.

Speakers at Ignite events get five minutes and 20 slides to share an idea, a format that keeps presentations moving along and fun. No death by powerpoint!

That will be the format for Savannah’s Ignite event, which is also part of Global Ignite Week. Events like Savannah’s will be going on all over the world next week.

The Savannah event will feature nine speakers on a range of topics from how rap and country music intersect to Foursquare ethics and the future of food.

We hope you Low Country creatives will join us. Here are the event details:
What: Ignite presented by Social Media Club of Savannah and SEED Eco Lounge, with support by BFG Communications
When: Monday, March 1st, 6-8 pm
Where: SEED Eco Lounge, 39 Montgomery Street, downtown Savannah
Cost: FREE
Click here for more details.

Do you ever step into a bar or club on a busy night and groan when you look at the mob stacked three or four deep at the bar? Sometimes it seems like half the night is spent trying to get the attention the bartender just so you can get your drink and go back to your friends. Do you ever wish there was another way to do this? Well, some bar owners in Amsterdam came up with a solution. They’ve created Mini Bar, “the world’s first bar without a bar.”

The idea for the new bar was conceived by a trio of Dutch friends who wanted to create a nightlife offering that was “more like inviting your friends to hang out in a hip hotel room, than standing in line waiting for a drink at a regular bar.”

Once patrons enter, they give a credit card to the front desk and are issued a key to the 45 different mini-bar’s full of libations that line the wall. When you leave, you pay for what you pulled out of the mini-bar. No standing in line waiting for some surly bartender grace you with his or her presence and more time to spend hanging with friends or meeting new ones.

One commenter said that if they wanted to get their booze from the fridge, they’d stay at home. Well, if your home looks like this place and is full of your friends and others, then that might be a good idea.  The next time I’m twiddling my thumbs in some long bar line, I’ll think of this place.

While there are at least 1700 known bands playing showcases, bars, clubs, living rooms, hotel ballrooms and wherever they can plug in at SXSW this year that doesn’t mean all the action’s inside behind some doorman at a badge only venue. Austin’s famed 6th Street is a thriving and bustling kaleidescope of sights, sounds and “only in Austin” type of action. The street musicians are out in full force: there is nothing like a couple of beat up guitars, a tambourine and a harmonica to bring people together.

Everyone likes a sing-a-long.

Since many of the streets are blocked off a lot bands have to find creative ways (pedicabs work nicely) to move their gear around but in the end it usually means lugging it by hand around Austin’s downtown grid from gig to gig (many bands have set up two or three shows a night).

Everyone here seems to be pitching in and doing their best at keeping Austin weird (and twistin’).

What would it sound like if you composed “music” out of every blip, bleep, squawk and squeak that emanates out of the multitude of gizmo’s that keep us company these days? It would probably sound pretty cool and better yet, you might be able to dance to it! At least that’s what the organizers of New York City’s 2nd annual Blip Festival 2007 are thinking.

The Blip Festival is a four-day international cultural event taking place in New York City this November into December, focusing on the 8-bit scene - musicians and artists who use low-bit videogame and computer hardware as their creative tools. The festival is the widest-reaching event in the history of the form, boasting a roster of over 40 international artists performing and exhibiting from places as diverse as Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Argentina, and across the United States.

The New York Times calls it the “Woodstock” for chiptunes.

A British survey purports to show the middle class and rich are more likely to regularly consume hazardous levels of alcohol than the poor.

But the highest levels of harmful binge drinking were found in poorer areas, The Times of London reported.

The study is part of a campaign to reduce alcohol use in the country. By the end of 2008, health officials plan to have all alcoholic beverages sold in bottles and cans labeled for how many “units” of alcohol they contain.

[via UPI]

In 2002 Geordon Nicol, 23; Greg Krelenstein, 28; and Leigh Lezark, 23 — self-styled D.J.’s known more for their post-new-wave aesthetics than their turntable skills — started their nightlife careers with a one-off at Luke & Leroy. Since then Misshapes has worn its hipster party mantle as snugly as a pair of skinny jeans. Though the Misshapes themselves will go on, as in-demand D.J.’s (up next: London fashion week), and as a marketing juggernaut (a clothing line is in the works), the weekly party came to a neon-tinged end at Don Hill’s, the SoHo nightclub, on Sunday.

“They came to New York and they set it ablaze,” Jimmy Webb, 50, the wiry manager of the East Village punk boutique Trash and Vaudeville, said of the trio. “I was around for the Studio 54 days, and this is the only thing that ever matched it.”

Added Eri Wakiyama, 20, a design student at Parsons: “I’m sad. I’m really, really sad. When they leave I’ll have nowhere to go.” Next Saturday, she said, “I’ll probably be at home. I’ll have homework or something.”

But since a central tenet of hipsterism is an avowed disdain for all things hipster, and since half the fun of Misshapes has always been making fun of Misshapes, some people were ready for the denouement. Jeremy Lipkin, a short-shorts-wearing art director from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and two of his friends left before midnight. “We’re all adults here,” Mr. Lipkin, 23, said. “It’s time to move on.”

“The new hot party is the dinner party,” he added.

[via The New York Times]

A recent Arbitron study of bars and nightclubs found the average brand recall was 43% for an ad on the Ecast platform, an out-of-home ad-serving network available on 10,000 digital jukeboxes across the country.

“What surprised us was the number of people who use jukeboxes themselves or watch someone like a friend using one,” Diane Williams, Arbitron’s product manager for custom research, said. “They interact with it like they would ads on the internet.”

[via Advertising Age]

It’s no surprise that preppies like to drink liberally, although a feature on the topic in Sunday’s New York Times might come as a bit of an eye-opener, for preppies also value their privacy.

The article is about a new project from brothers and Middlesex grads Anthony Martignetti, 28, and Tom Martignetti, 26. They opened Bar Martignetti, a two-level restaurant and nightclub on Broome Street in SoHo last November, and now it’s the talk of the investment banking set.

We learn that Theodore Cleary, 25, likes to drink here. And that he went to Friends Academy and Haverford College. So does Natasha Iran who went to St. Mary’s High School and Trinity College. A man known as the bar’s “jester,” (Peter Sculco) went to Horace Mann School and Princeton.

Mr. Cleary said, “For some people who see the pink shirts, they ostracize, they say it’s uncool. But just because you went to Princeton doesn’t mean you’re a jerk.”

by David Rae Morris for USA Today

USA Today leads today’s Life section with an article on New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. The 37th annual affair, an American cultural institution known to many simply as “Jazz Fest,” kicks off today at the Fair Grounds Race Course.

With 12 stages of soul-stirring music—jazz, gospel, Cajun, zydeco, blues, R&B, rock, funk, African, Latin, Caribbean, folk, and much more—the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is a singular celebration. The event has showcased most of the great artists of New Orleans and Louisiana of the last half century: Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, The Neville Brothers, Wynton Marsalis, Dr. John, Branford Marsalis, Harry Connick Jr., Ellis Marsalis, The Radiators, Irma Thomas, The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Allen Toussaint, Buckwheat Zydeco, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Better Than Ezra, Ernie K-Doe, Vernel Bagneris, The Zion Harmonizers, Beausoleil and many others.

In addition to the daily lineups at the Fairgrounds, hundreds of bands play in theatres, clubs and bars throughout the city until sunup and beyond. In fact, there are so many shows to choose from, Festers have to consult a database-driven website, Jazz Fest Grids to develop show-going strategies. However, it should be noted that the best strategy in the Big Easy is to roll with it.

Whether you’re in NOLA or not, WWOZ kicks out the jams and keeps you up on the haps. Community radio rules.