Okay, "Hell" might be pushing it. But it was no Seven Heavens, no Arcadia... hell, it wasn't even Limbo. Maybe Acheron? Yeah, Acheron...
So I'm going down the escalators of the Ballston station and before I can even get to the gates, there's a sea of people mulling around. If you've ever taken Metro, that's Not a Good Sign. Then the announcement came.
Trains backed up. Both directions. Broken choo choo at Clarendon. A constipated man's bowels will move before the Orange Line will.
So I'm walking back up the escalator thinking I'll put in a half day or something, and then I remembered the 38B. This bus route pretty much mimics the path of the Orange Line downtown, only it's aboveground.
Sure nuff, by the time I get topside, the 38B's packed to capacity. Thankfully, another one comes 15 minutes later, and I'm one of the first in line.
So the bus is packed tighter than a brick shithouse, but we're on our way. That is, until we get to the first scheduled stop. What happened next is so surreal (well, as far as surreal shit happens to me) that I wouldn't believe it if even one of my closest friends told me.
We're at the stop, which just happens to be right before a stoplight. People outside are banging on the bus to get in, and the driver's naturally trying to tell them there's no room. Well, this wasn't good enough for one woman. She decided to stand in front of the bus.
Yes. You read that right. She stood. in. front. of. the. bus. Playing chicken with about 5 tons of steel (that's a guess. I've no damned idea how much a bus weighs). The bus driver was growing more and more exasperated. "Lady, where am I gonna put you?!? The bus is full!"
The fact that someone would get all Tienanmen Square over her commute is just astounding. To the point where she'd risk life and limb just to get to work (either getting run over, or getting ripped limb from limb by a busload of GS-12s). There's only one job I can think of right now that would make me that desperate to come to work, and truth be told, I'm really not that keen on finding out if they have sex in Heaven.
Meanwhile, there's another woman tapping on the windows trying to get on. How tapping on the side windows is gonna help, I don't know. The bus windows sure as hell don't roll down, and she wasn't svelte enough to pull a Luke and Bo in any event. For some weird reason she was trying to plead her case to the passengers, as if busting out riffs from her 10th grade persuasive speaking class is gonna make people's bodies, I dunno, have less mass or something so she can squeeze in (through the window).
Eventually, someone on the bus got fed up and got off so Ms. Molly Makeapoint could get on. Thanks dude! You definitely took one for the team, and I hope you win the lottery soon :)
The actual bus ride itself was fairly painless after that (except for some stupid person who had to yammer on her cell phone about OMG how totally messed up is this the entire ride to her multiple vacuous friends). And since we were already running late, we shaved off some time coming through Georgetown only because it was past 9:30 at that point.
Years ago, Greyhound had a commercial jingle that ended with "Don't Miss the Bus!" I think this woman took that message just a little too far :)
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
This year's model
Over the past two months, I've had several friends ask me about the modeling I do for an art school. Turns out people are intrigued by the idea of standing still and getting paid for it :) Plus there's the fact that doing all this in the buff, and in front of an audience, has just the slightest taboo to it.
At first, I had composed a massive email that I shot out to people wanting to know more. Then I figured I could easily post it here and expand on it a little.
First of all, it’s harder than it looks! You’ll find muscles you never knew you had, and you’ll discover the joy of having various parts of your body go to sleep on you. It’s definitely work. I happen to like art, but I also suck royally at it, so the fact that I can do something to actually contribute to the field really excites me. It’s intangibles like this (along with getting paid for it!) that drive me. If you’re just looking for a quick paycheck alone, there are probably easier things you could do, and you’ll probably get bored quickly.
I think if you’re a guy, it’s more of an uphill battle to get that first gig. Given the limited experience I've had, I'd say that there are more male than female models, so naturally women are going to be in more demand. And let’s face it: women are more fun to draw! And while it’s never happened to me, I’ve heard that homophobia isn’t exactly unheard of, especially if you’re modeling for a large, university Intro to Art class. Someone once told me that they got up on the podium on several occasions and he could see one or two males in the classroom pack up their materials and walk out. He basically said that if someone’s homophobic, that’s their cross to bear, and it shouldn’t affect you in any way. It’s their problem, and they have to deal with it. Don’t let it get to you. Frankly, they’ve clearly got a whole host of issues.
Pretty much all of the models I’ve seen by me are white, so you’re at an advantage, I think, if you come from a diverse background. If I had to make a random generalization about the models in my city, I'd say they're a mid-20s to late-30s officeworker, in decent shape, but starting to get some of the rounded edges that come with a desk job.
There’s two kinds of modeling I’ve done: portrait modeling and figure modeling. I’ll talk about portrait modeling first. At least where I work, they pay the same.
Portrait modeling: you’ll generally be seated and will keep the same pose the entire session (usually about 3 hours in length, and you’ll go about 30 minutes, take a quick break, and then resume for another 30 minutes until the session is over). Once the prof has you in a pose he or she likes, you’ll find a spot on the wall and focus on it. Doing so helps you hold your pose. Make sure that you’re not focusing on something like an easel, someone’s head, etc. Not only is it distracting to the artist, these things move, and if they do, so will your head. The trickiest thing about this is coming back into pose after the break, since you need to get into the exact same pose. It becomes easier with practice, and of course people in the room can help guide you back into position. If you’re booked for several sessions, make sure to find out before you leave if they’ll be doing a new pose or will continue to work on that same pose. If it’s the latter, you need to remember what you wore that day, because you’ll need to wear that exact same outfit for the rest of the sessions you’re booked for.
The hardest part of portrait modeling (at least from my perspective) is that it’s real easy to drift off after the first hour or two, especially if the lights are bright. Aside from some short breaks, there really isn’t anything to break up the monotony. Fortunately, they’re only drawing you from the chest up, so at least you can adjust your legs. Since they’re not doing your hands, sometimes I’ll take the knuckles from one hand and drag them against the flat of my other hand. Hurts a little, but it also helps to keep me awake!
Now I'm getting to the part I'm sure you've all been waiting for: figure modeling, which is done in the nude.
Usually I'm on a small, elevated stage that's flush against the wall. But one time, I was in a small room and was on a podium that measured about 2X2 feet. And it was in the center of the room, so everyone definitely got a damn good look at me. You've just gotta be able to shrug it off and realize it's art, not smut. The students in class have probably seen enough naked people by their senior year than most people see their whole lives. It's totally professional. And no, you don't need to have a 38DD rack or be hung like a horse or have rock hard abs or anything. Students need a wide variety of body types to draw in order to gain experience.
Once you check in with the artist or professor, you’ll be shown to an empty room or bathroom for you to get changed in. Then it's a matter of awkwardly hanging out in a bathrobe until the class is all ready to go. It's kind of weird the first time this happens, since everyone knows it's coming off in a few minutes, and you've gotta just nonchalantly hang out and maybe bury your nose in a book until kickoff.
Usually, the professor will have the class warm up with some gesture poses. These are poses that are 1-2 minutes in length, and you’ll generally do about 10-15 of them. You’ll count both the length and number of poses off in your head. I like doing these the best because you can get really creative, and because you’re only holding poses for a short period of time, you can really have some fun. From there, you’ll often do two 5-minute poses and a 10-minute pose. For these, you’ll need a timer (your cellphone may have one built in). These are often reclining poses. The person you’re modeling for may have some suggestions for poses, especially if there are certain concepts or techniques he or she is teaching. After that, you’ll either do one long pose for the rest of the class, or a few 20 minute poses and then some more gestures to close with. You’ll usually work for 20-30 minutes at a pop and then take a 10-minute break.
You’ll want to adjust your poses so you’re not facing the same direction all the time. When I go into a new pose (especially with the gesture poses), I make sure to adjust my body so that I’m not standing in front of the same people all the time, and so others aren’t stuck drawing the back of my head.
Basic tips:
If you do decide to go the figure model route, you’re going to want to assemble a model kit. First thing you’ll need is a cheap bathrobe. Get the flimsy kind that feels like it’s made out of pajama materials. Don’t spend a lot of money on it, as it’s going to get paint or charcoal on it at some point. You'll also be using this to drape whatever chair or stool you sit in. Get a cheap pair of flip flops, as most studio floors are dirty and attract an inordinate amount of thumbtacks. You’ll want a medium sized gym bag to hold all your stuff, and I keep a little kit with some bandaids, hand/foot wipes, Kleenex, etc. Get a cheap timer. And toss in a paperback you’ve never gotten around to reading, since you’ll have frequent breaks.
Don’t wear your best clothes to a modeling session… in most cases, they’re coming off anyways. Don’t wear anything you’d be pissed if you got paint on.
Be prompt. I usually get there 15-20 minutes early so I can talk to the professor and find out what he/she is trying to accomplish with their class that day. I did a class one Saturday morning and the prof stated that the week before, the model was an hour late. Running late seems to be a habit for a lot of models, so if you get a reputation as “that guy/girl who’s always early,” you’ll probably get recommendations to other artists and professors.
Be upbeat. This is something that you’ll hopefully enjoy doing, so keeping a positive, upbeat attitude will translate to better poses. Plus, if you get their early and the professor sees someone who’s got a good attitude and is taking this seriously, you’ll get a reputation as someone who’s mellow and easy to work with.
Plus, students can usually tell when someone’s enjoying themselves, and I think it helps them to bring out the best in their work. There have been times where I just finished cinching up my robe or just left class for the day and people came up to me and thanked me for modeling that day. That's a real rush, and it's a good way to find out you enjoyed yourself enough to the point that other people picked up on it :)
Don’t criticize anyone’s work. This is a major no-no. Also, if you’re really vain, this isn’t the job for you. Even if you’re buff and studly, I guarantee you someone will exaggerate your features or flat out draw them “wrong.” I like to think of it as a way to keep me humble.
Don’t do this to stroke your own ego. You’re there as a tool and an inspiration to the artist. If the professor has a suggestion for a pose, do it (unless it’s causing you to be extremely uncomfortable or in pain, in which case speak up).
Carry your cellphone with you (most people do this anyways, but I’ve never been much of a cellphone talker and have to constantly remind myself to keep it on me). Models are always going to get sick or have family emergencies, and you can often get a booking out of the blue if they can get a hold of you in time.
Don't quit your day job. I had about 12 bookings last semester, and absolutely zero this semester (one's coming up in the next few days, and the other sometime in May which will be done with another model). Even at $20 per hour (which seems to be the max in the area), you'll most likely find this an enjoyable way to augment your income or pay back your student loans as opposed to a fulltime job.
At first, I had composed a massive email that I shot out to people wanting to know more. Then I figured I could easily post it here and expand on it a little.
First of all, it’s harder than it looks! You’ll find muscles you never knew you had, and you’ll discover the joy of having various parts of your body go to sleep on you. It’s definitely work. I happen to like art, but I also suck royally at it, so the fact that I can do something to actually contribute to the field really excites me. It’s intangibles like this (along with getting paid for it!) that drive me. If you’re just looking for a quick paycheck alone, there are probably easier things you could do, and you’ll probably get bored quickly.
I think if you’re a guy, it’s more of an uphill battle to get that first gig. Given the limited experience I've had, I'd say that there are more male than female models, so naturally women are going to be in more demand. And let’s face it: women are more fun to draw! And while it’s never happened to me, I’ve heard that homophobia isn’t exactly unheard of, especially if you’re modeling for a large, university Intro to Art class. Someone once told me that they got up on the podium on several occasions and he could see one or two males in the classroom pack up their materials and walk out. He basically said that if someone’s homophobic, that’s their cross to bear, and it shouldn’t affect you in any way. It’s their problem, and they have to deal with it. Don’t let it get to you. Frankly, they’ve clearly got a whole host of issues.
Pretty much all of the models I’ve seen by me are white, so you’re at an advantage, I think, if you come from a diverse background. If I had to make a random generalization about the models in my city, I'd say they're a mid-20s to late-30s officeworker, in decent shape, but starting to get some of the rounded edges that come with a desk job.
There’s two kinds of modeling I’ve done: portrait modeling and figure modeling. I’ll talk about portrait modeling first. At least where I work, they pay the same.
Portrait modeling: you’ll generally be seated and will keep the same pose the entire session (usually about 3 hours in length, and you’ll go about 30 minutes, take a quick break, and then resume for another 30 minutes until the session is over). Once the prof has you in a pose he or she likes, you’ll find a spot on the wall and focus on it. Doing so helps you hold your pose. Make sure that you’re not focusing on something like an easel, someone’s head, etc. Not only is it distracting to the artist, these things move, and if they do, so will your head. The trickiest thing about this is coming back into pose after the break, since you need to get into the exact same pose. It becomes easier with practice, and of course people in the room can help guide you back into position. If you’re booked for several sessions, make sure to find out before you leave if they’ll be doing a new pose or will continue to work on that same pose. If it’s the latter, you need to remember what you wore that day, because you’ll need to wear that exact same outfit for the rest of the sessions you’re booked for.
The hardest part of portrait modeling (at least from my perspective) is that it’s real easy to drift off after the first hour or two, especially if the lights are bright. Aside from some short breaks, there really isn’t anything to break up the monotony. Fortunately, they’re only drawing you from the chest up, so at least you can adjust your legs. Since they’re not doing your hands, sometimes I’ll take the knuckles from one hand and drag them against the flat of my other hand. Hurts a little, but it also helps to keep me awake!
Now I'm getting to the part I'm sure you've all been waiting for: figure modeling, which is done in the nude.
Usually I'm on a small, elevated stage that's flush against the wall. But one time, I was in a small room and was on a podium that measured about 2X2 feet. And it was in the center of the room, so everyone definitely got a damn good look at me. You've just gotta be able to shrug it off and realize it's art, not smut. The students in class have probably seen enough naked people by their senior year than most people see their whole lives. It's totally professional. And no, you don't need to have a 38DD rack or be hung like a horse or have rock hard abs or anything. Students need a wide variety of body types to draw in order to gain experience.
Once you check in with the artist or professor, you’ll be shown to an empty room or bathroom for you to get changed in. Then it's a matter of awkwardly hanging out in a bathrobe until the class is all ready to go. It's kind of weird the first time this happens, since everyone knows it's coming off in a few minutes, and you've gotta just nonchalantly hang out and maybe bury your nose in a book until kickoff.
Usually, the professor will have the class warm up with some gesture poses. These are poses that are 1-2 minutes in length, and you’ll generally do about 10-15 of them. You’ll count both the length and number of poses off in your head. I like doing these the best because you can get really creative, and because you’re only holding poses for a short period of time, you can really have some fun. From there, you’ll often do two 5-minute poses and a 10-minute pose. For these, you’ll need a timer (your cellphone may have one built in). These are often reclining poses. The person you’re modeling for may have some suggestions for poses, especially if there are certain concepts or techniques he or she is teaching. After that, you’ll either do one long pose for the rest of the class, or a few 20 minute poses and then some more gestures to close with. You’ll usually work for 20-30 minutes at a pop and then take a 10-minute break.
You’ll want to adjust your poses so you’re not facing the same direction all the time. When I go into a new pose (especially with the gesture poses), I make sure to adjust my body so that I’m not standing in front of the same people all the time, and so others aren’t stuck drawing the back of my head.
Basic tips:
If you do decide to go the figure model route, you’re going to want to assemble a model kit. First thing you’ll need is a cheap bathrobe. Get the flimsy kind that feels like it’s made out of pajama materials. Don’t spend a lot of money on it, as it’s going to get paint or charcoal on it at some point. You'll also be using this to drape whatever chair or stool you sit in. Get a cheap pair of flip flops, as most studio floors are dirty and attract an inordinate amount of thumbtacks. You’ll want a medium sized gym bag to hold all your stuff, and I keep a little kit with some bandaids, hand/foot wipes, Kleenex, etc. Get a cheap timer. And toss in a paperback you’ve never gotten around to reading, since you’ll have frequent breaks.
Don’t wear your best clothes to a modeling session… in most cases, they’re coming off anyways. Don’t wear anything you’d be pissed if you got paint on.
Be prompt. I usually get there 15-20 minutes early so I can talk to the professor and find out what he/she is trying to accomplish with their class that day. I did a class one Saturday morning and the prof stated that the week before, the model was an hour late. Running late seems to be a habit for a lot of models, so if you get a reputation as “that guy/girl who’s always early,” you’ll probably get recommendations to other artists and professors.
Be upbeat. This is something that you’ll hopefully enjoy doing, so keeping a positive, upbeat attitude will translate to better poses. Plus, if you get their early and the professor sees someone who’s got a good attitude and is taking this seriously, you’ll get a reputation as someone who’s mellow and easy to work with.
Plus, students can usually tell when someone’s enjoying themselves, and I think it helps them to bring out the best in their work. There have been times where I just finished cinching up my robe or just left class for the day and people came up to me and thanked me for modeling that day. That's a real rush, and it's a good way to find out you enjoyed yourself enough to the point that other people picked up on it :)
Don’t criticize anyone’s work. This is a major no-no. Also, if you’re really vain, this isn’t the job for you. Even if you’re buff and studly, I guarantee you someone will exaggerate your features or flat out draw them “wrong.” I like to think of it as a way to keep me humble.
Don’t do this to stroke your own ego. You’re there as a tool and an inspiration to the artist. If the professor has a suggestion for a pose, do it (unless it’s causing you to be extremely uncomfortable or in pain, in which case speak up).
Carry your cellphone with you (most people do this anyways, but I’ve never been much of a cellphone talker and have to constantly remind myself to keep it on me). Models are always going to get sick or have family emergencies, and you can often get a booking out of the blue if they can get a hold of you in time.
Don't quit your day job. I had about 12 bookings last semester, and absolutely zero this semester (one's coming up in the next few days, and the other sometime in May which will be done with another model). Even at $20 per hour (which seems to be the max in the area), you'll most likely find this an enjoyable way to augment your income or pay back your student loans as opposed to a fulltime job.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday
Well, I finally did it. Something I've been meaning to do for a few months now, but could never fully bring myself to do.
I quit yelp. Never thought I'd type that out.
Well, I'm not quitting per se. But I'm definitely taking a break. For a while. At least until the end of summer. At that point I'll reassess the issue and try to figure out if it'll be a labor of love, or just labor.
Now a lot of you are probably surprised at this. Me too. I remember when I first joined yelp. It was in the balmy June of 2007. I had broken up with a real ballbuster of a woman. To say I was a little "off" would be an understatement. I figured I had to do something besides staying locked up in my apartment trying not to think of her. So I started scoping out restaurants and bars to go to.
Now while google will give you plenty of options, it won't give you any way to make a reliable decision as to whether a certain restaurant is good or not. At least not on its own. So I figured I'd scope out the Washington Post's (now defunct) CityGuide.
Or, as I started to call it when it proved to be less than adequate, the ShittyGuide. Most of the reviews were quite old, and it seemed a lot of them were written either by the owner, or people who had an axe to grind with a given establishment. I wasn't getting the real scoop.
AOL's restaurant listings were a little better, but again, too many of the reviews were dated, and I found a few intriguing restaurants that turned out later to be closed. So clearly no one's minding the shop.
As I started googling restaurants more and more, I kept on getting steered to a site called "yelp." What was interesting about yelp was that the reviews were a lot more credible on first glance than those of other review sites. It was strongly encouraged to have a picture to go along with your profile, and the whole site just had a certain trustworthiness and sense of community that other sites were lacking.
So I started relying on yelp more and more to make informed decisions. And one day it hit me: if yelp's helping me out so much, I ought to contribute reviews of my own so that I can help people make similarly informed decisions. That whole "leave the woods cleaner when you leave than when you got there" mentality. So I dipped my toe into the water and wrote my first reviews. One of which was for a "diner" called Pete's Diner. My ex had raved about this place, and after going here for breakfast with her once, I was... underwhelmed. Nothing special. At all. Honestly the coffee tasted like Maxwell House and the eggs tasted exactly the way I made them. I mean, to me the point of dining out (unless you're feeling lazy) is to get food that's better than you'd make it at home, assuming you actually know how to cook what you're going out to eat for. That's been my guiding philosophy for dining out.
Yet there were yelpers who thought this place was the be all, end all of greasy spoon fare. Time to put my own two cents in! So I did. And then I thought about all the other places I went to recently and started to yelp those too! It became addictive. Moreso when Miriam, the DC Community Manager, sent me my first compliment welcoming me to DC yelp.
And then it finally dawned on me... yelp's as much a social networking site as it is a review site. I started to make (virtual) friends on the site (often to become actual friends, or at least acquaintances). I still remember when Richard posted a thread along the lines of "I'm bored and want to see a movie. Who's with me?" and several of us joined him on a spur of the moment lark to see Once (an incredible Irish film). Soon I started going to trivia nights and gradually expanded my social circle. And started going out to new restaurants just for the sake of yelping them. Hell, I had a bad date, knew it wasn't going anywhere after the initial brunch, and raced home merrily so I could write the damn review while it was still fresh in my head! Yeah, who gives a shit about the date man... I can't wait to get home and write about the scrambled eggs!
Eventually I got my first Review of the Day. For those of you that don't know, each day yelp selects a review (how it's actually selected is a matter of conjecture) and highlights it on the home page of its respective yelp community. So now I'm swimming in compiments and praise (I liked that!) and had even more motivation to craft reviews. Man... how could I have ever been yelping! The rush of gaining new friends quickly, the accolades and praise for writing reviews that were fun to write, the joy of showing off yelp (and shamelessly self-promoting my reviews!)... it was like I was on Cloud 9.
And then it all turned to shit. Right about this time last year. No virtual community is immune from the presence of trolls, and yelp sure got one in the form of S. If you can think of the most narcissistic, rude, self-diagnosed Asperger's headcase that you've ever known, chances are you're thinking of S. No one liked this prick. Moody, self-obsessed, belittled others while trolling for compliments, couldn't get laid in a whorehouse (pretty much by his own admission), this guy should've had his pictures placed on advertisements for RU486. And the pisser was, he never reviewed anything! And everybody (rightfully) hated his guts! So here you have a person who everybody hates (for no other reason than he's a total putz) and doesn't even use the site for what it's intended for.
So of course he got into pissing matches with everybody on the yelp Talk threads. And naturally when that happens, that just attracts people of a similar mindset. Kinda like the broken windows theory: you leave an abandoned car outside someone's house, and it sets off a signal that people don't care about the area. You get vandalism, petty crime, etc. as a result. Yelp would routinely suspend him from the site, but for reasons indeterminable, never gave him his walking papers. Big mistake.
Things kind of spiraled out of control on yelp for the past 8 months or so, and I don't think it was a coincidence that yelpers, heretofore active on the site, started disappearing en masse. So now the solid core of yelp was being dissolved, and in its absence, even more trolls started visiting the site, only with less people to keep such matters in check. I always thought I'd be one of the last defenders up on the parapets, raising the banner and marshaling the remaining forces in the keep to make a last stand in the courtyard. Well... that didn't come to pass.
You see, in the past few months, yelp became a far, far more toxic environment than it had been even a few months prior. For reasons that I have yet to figure out, DC yelp seemed to have become a shingle for people who didn't want to review restaurants so much as they wanted to shit up the talk threads with truly inane commentary. And of course when anybody took issue with it, it was met with a barrage of "hurr... teh intarnetz iz not serious bizness." You'd see the same five or six people start (or hijack) a thread that honestly resembled an IM session.
The straw that broke the camel's back, however... the event that truly disappointed those few old school yelpers who remained, was yelp's decision to let business owners comment on individual reviews. Now, yelp was going to enable individual business owners to comment on individual reviews of their establishment. Reasons why this was not warmly welcomed by the yelp community include:
Compounding this is the fact that yelp's been called out for ethical issues in the past (such as sucking up to sponsors by removing critical reviews, and bullying business owners to pay for sponsorships (and when they don't, good reviews mysteriously get removed and negative ones fill the void). It's been enough of an issue that many of us speculate this new business owner comment feature is yelp's way of playing damage control. To be fair, I can't prove any of these negative allegations (like the aforementioned extortion), and I've always defended yelp on this score in the past. No more.
When I saw yelp's email alert about this new feature, I actually got angry. And I thought about all the other things wrong with yelp:
But no (sigh). I quickly talked myself out of that notion. When I wrote my last review, it seemed like it took forever to write. And I didn't have any fun writing it. It almost seemed like an utter burden. And then I remembered something.
There was an early 80s porn star by the name of Veronica Hart. She starred in some critically-acclaimed movies (as far as smut goes) and walked away from it all in the mid-80s. Her reasoning? It wasn't fun anymore, and she made a promise to herself that she'd stop performing the minute it felt like her job was a job.
And... that's where I find myself now. Will I ever write another review for the site. Perhaps, but not for now. It also remains to be seen if the site will take a turn for the worse in the coming months (I have my suspicions on the matter, but I think the site's headed for a sea change, either for good or for bad, in the next few months).
So why did I call this post It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday? Because the one thing that kept me from abandoning the site completely (I had actually toyed with closing out my account, in which case the reviews would be deleted) were the warm fuzzies I got when I first joined the site. There have been all sorts of things that I would have never done or experienced prior to joining yelp:
I just gotta reconcile myself to the fact that you can never really go back to the way things once were...
I quit yelp. Never thought I'd type that out.
Well, I'm not quitting per se. But I'm definitely taking a break. For a while. At least until the end of summer. At that point I'll reassess the issue and try to figure out if it'll be a labor of love, or just labor.
Now a lot of you are probably surprised at this. Me too. I remember when I first joined yelp. It was in the balmy June of 2007. I had broken up with a real ballbuster of a woman. To say I was a little "off" would be an understatement. I figured I had to do something besides staying locked up in my apartment trying not to think of her. So I started scoping out restaurants and bars to go to.
Now while google will give you plenty of options, it won't give you any way to make a reliable decision as to whether a certain restaurant is good or not. At least not on its own. So I figured I'd scope out the Washington Post's (now defunct) CityGuide.
Or, as I started to call it when it proved to be less than adequate, the ShittyGuide. Most of the reviews were quite old, and it seemed a lot of them were written either by the owner, or people who had an axe to grind with a given establishment. I wasn't getting the real scoop.
AOL's restaurant listings were a little better, but again, too many of the reviews were dated, and I found a few intriguing restaurants that turned out later to be closed. So clearly no one's minding the shop.
As I started googling restaurants more and more, I kept on getting steered to a site called "yelp." What was interesting about yelp was that the reviews were a lot more credible on first glance than those of other review sites. It was strongly encouraged to have a picture to go along with your profile, and the whole site just had a certain trustworthiness and sense of community that other sites were lacking.
So I started relying on yelp more and more to make informed decisions. And one day it hit me: if yelp's helping me out so much, I ought to contribute reviews of my own so that I can help people make similarly informed decisions. That whole "leave the woods cleaner when you leave than when you got there" mentality. So I dipped my toe into the water and wrote my first reviews. One of which was for a "diner" called Pete's Diner. My ex had raved about this place, and after going here for breakfast with her once, I was... underwhelmed. Nothing special. At all. Honestly the coffee tasted like Maxwell House and the eggs tasted exactly the way I made them. I mean, to me the point of dining out (unless you're feeling lazy) is to get food that's better than you'd make it at home, assuming you actually know how to cook what you're going out to eat for. That's been my guiding philosophy for dining out.
Yet there were yelpers who thought this place was the be all, end all of greasy spoon fare. Time to put my own two cents in! So I did. And then I thought about all the other places I went to recently and started to yelp those too! It became addictive. Moreso when Miriam, the DC Community Manager, sent me my first compliment welcoming me to DC yelp.
And then it finally dawned on me... yelp's as much a social networking site as it is a review site. I started to make (virtual) friends on the site (often to become actual friends, or at least acquaintances). I still remember when Richard posted a thread along the lines of "I'm bored and want to see a movie. Who's with me?" and several of us joined him on a spur of the moment lark to see Once (an incredible Irish film). Soon I started going to trivia nights and gradually expanded my social circle. And started going out to new restaurants just for the sake of yelping them. Hell, I had a bad date, knew it wasn't going anywhere after the initial brunch, and raced home merrily so I could write the damn review while it was still fresh in my head! Yeah, who gives a shit about the date man... I can't wait to get home and write about the scrambled eggs!
Eventually I got my first Review of the Day. For those of you that don't know, each day yelp selects a review (how it's actually selected is a matter of conjecture) and highlights it on the home page of its respective yelp community. So now I'm swimming in compiments and praise (I liked that!) and had even more motivation to craft reviews. Man... how could I have ever been yelping! The rush of gaining new friends quickly, the accolades and praise for writing reviews that were fun to write, the joy of showing off yelp (and shamelessly self-promoting my reviews!)... it was like I was on Cloud 9.
And then it all turned to shit. Right about this time last year. No virtual community is immune from the presence of trolls, and yelp sure got one in the form of S. If you can think of the most narcissistic, rude, self-diagnosed Asperger's headcase that you've ever known, chances are you're thinking of S. No one liked this prick. Moody, self-obsessed, belittled others while trolling for compliments, couldn't get laid in a whorehouse (pretty much by his own admission), this guy should've had his pictures placed on advertisements for RU486. And the pisser was, he never reviewed anything! And everybody (rightfully) hated his guts! So here you have a person who everybody hates (for no other reason than he's a total putz) and doesn't even use the site for what it's intended for.
So of course he got into pissing matches with everybody on the yelp Talk threads. And naturally when that happens, that just attracts people of a similar mindset. Kinda like the broken windows theory: you leave an abandoned car outside someone's house, and it sets off a signal that people don't care about the area. You get vandalism, petty crime, etc. as a result. Yelp would routinely suspend him from the site, but for reasons indeterminable, never gave him his walking papers. Big mistake.
Things kind of spiraled out of control on yelp for the past 8 months or so, and I don't think it was a coincidence that yelpers, heretofore active on the site, started disappearing en masse. So now the solid core of yelp was being dissolved, and in its absence, even more trolls started visiting the site, only with less people to keep such matters in check. I always thought I'd be one of the last defenders up on the parapets, raising the banner and marshaling the remaining forces in the keep to make a last stand in the courtyard. Well... that didn't come to pass.
You see, in the past few months, yelp became a far, far more toxic environment than it had been even a few months prior. For reasons that I have yet to figure out, DC yelp seemed to have become a shingle for people who didn't want to review restaurants so much as they wanted to shit up the talk threads with truly inane commentary. And of course when anybody took issue with it, it was met with a barrage of "hurr... teh intarnetz iz not serious bizness." You'd see the same five or six people start (or hijack) a thread that honestly resembled an IM session.
The straw that broke the camel's back, however... the event that truly disappointed those few old school yelpers who remained, was yelp's decision to let business owners comment on individual reviews. Now, yelp was going to enable individual business owners to comment on individual reviews of their establishment. Reasons why this was not warmly welcomed by the yelp community include:
- the potential to shit up reviews. Imagine an endless back-and-forth pissing match in the reviews section between a yelper and a business owner. "You suck. No, you suck! No, YOU suck! No, YOU"... you see what I'm getting at here? If I pull up yelp because I want to read reviews for a new steakhouse and see a catfight, guess what? I'm going to go to another website.
- the potential to have reviews that are less than 100 percent honest. If you're afraid of getting negative feedback by the owner of a restaurant that you had a bad experience at, are you now going to come out with both guns blazing? Or are you even going to bother writing a review at all?
- the potential to water down reviews because people are afraid to be as creative as they once were. Hmm... maybe you liked a particular restaurant, and you want to write a funny review. It'll be positive, maybe even 5 stars, but you want to jazz it up a little. Maybe one or two F-bombs or some adult humor. What if now you're censoring yourself because you're afraid someone'll take it the wrong way?
- the fact that it's too "corporate." One of the big selling points of yelp was that they didn't try to suck up to the business community. You were free to be honest and not worry about being censored due to sponsors or a given business not liking what you had to say (key word being "honest"). This just reeks of being co-opted by the business community.
Compounding this is the fact that yelp's been called out for ethical issues in the past (such as sucking up to sponsors by removing critical reviews, and bullying business owners to pay for sponsorships (and when they don't, good reviews mysteriously get removed and negative ones fill the void). It's been enough of an issue that many of us speculate this new business owner comment feature is yelp's way of playing damage control. To be fair, I can't prove any of these negative allegations (like the aforementioned extortion), and I've always defended yelp on this score in the past. No more.
When I saw yelp's email alert about this new feature, I actually got angry. And I thought about all the other things wrong with yelp:
- It seems yelp's a beacon for every person who can't be assed to use the search function on yelp and instead post useless threads like "Halp! I want a steak for dinner. Where should I go?" Seriously, a lot of them were about this inane.
- Moderation on the talk threads was near non-existent. Too many trolls allowed to run rampant. And if someone did get flagged or suspended, too many people turned it into a witch hunt to find out why anyone would find a comment like "get the fuck out of here asshole, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about" offensive. FREEDOM OF SPEACH AMIRITE RAAAARH!!!1!
- Too many serious, long-time yelpers (okay, long-time being a matter of perspective) being turned off by the direction of the talk threads, which devolved into the same five or six people (some of whom I believe are truly a little "slow") bantering back and forth.
But no (sigh). I quickly talked myself out of that notion. When I wrote my last review, it seemed like it took forever to write. And I didn't have any fun writing it. It almost seemed like an utter burden. And then I remembered something.
There was an early 80s porn star by the name of Veronica Hart. She starred in some critically-acclaimed movies (as far as smut goes) and walked away from it all in the mid-80s. Her reasoning? It wasn't fun anymore, and she made a promise to herself that she'd stop performing the minute it felt like her job was a job.
And... that's where I find myself now. Will I ever write another review for the site. Perhaps, but not for now. It also remains to be seen if the site will take a turn for the worse in the coming months (I have my suspicions on the matter, but I think the site's headed for a sea change, either for good or for bad, in the next few months).
So why did I call this post It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday? Because the one thing that kept me from abandoning the site completely (I had actually toyed with closing out my account, in which case the reviews would be deleted) were the warm fuzzies I got when I first joined the site. There have been all sorts of things that I would have never done or experienced prior to joining yelp:
- Hung out in Georgetown (thanks Kathleen, Stef, Kevin, Michelle, and of course Jeff, for whom we were trying to find at least one comfortable pair of jeans!)
- Played trivia with a group of complete strangers (thanks Craig!)
- Rode a city bus (I had a serious distrust of buses for years)
- Modeled in the buff in front of a roomful of strangers (thanks Mikkela!)
- Gotten a Brazilian wax (thanks Jade!)
- Found the one decent barber shop in DC (thanks Venu!)
- Eaten at two Peruvian chicken joints. Back to back (thanks Su and the Carnivore Crew!)
- Gone out for a group manicure and pedicure (thanks Karman!)
- Eaten sushi. And discovering I liked it (thanks Armenoush!)
- Gotten excited about going to Target. Yes... Target (thanks DC!)
- Braved the inexorable crowd at Matchbox for some of the best food in the city (thanks Kathleen!)
- Liked it so much that I came a goddamned week early to a UYE and will never live it down (thanks Kevin!)
- Hiked about a mile to the Metro with a heavy box, working up a sweat on a cold day, but giddy that I finally found a place that carried all my Belgian beer favorites (thanks Jim!)
- Discovered that if I want Mexican food in the District, I know exactly who to go to for recommendations (thanks Mary Kay and Laura!)
- Found out that I really had the inner strength to walk away from something that gave me all these experiences, knowing that it's the people I met along the way that are truly important (thanks Stef!)
I just gotta reconcile myself to the fact that you can never really go back to the way things once were...
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