Special Secrets and Tips For The Ball 2009
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Free Jewish Dating on Facebook - Now at 8,000 Members
As you may have gathered from the title, we now have 4,500 5500 8000 members on “Tribester Preview,” our Totally Free Jewish Dating application on Facebook. This is a full-featured online dating site with deep searches, rich profiles, “who viewed me,” hotlists, most popular and more.
Tribester Preview has virtually all of the features of the paid online dating sites, all for free and right on Facebook. Guaranteed to meet your soulmate and produce offspring immediately or everything you paid cheerfully refunded!
Check out Tribester Preview on Facebook
And hey, as long as you are hypnotically following my suggestions, please take a moment to pre-register for Tribester.com, our fun, new Jewish Social Network coming in 2010. It’s like Tribester Preview on Steroids and we know you are going to like it (Tribester, not steroids).
The Ball 2008 - The Nation’s Biggest 14 Years in a Row
Just a belated post with a belated thank you to everyone who came out to The Ball 2008 on December 24. Over 4,200 people attended our event in NYC making it the biggest Jewish Singles event in the country 14 years in a row (thanks again!). From what we understand, our event at the Highlands in Hollywood with The Guardians of the Los Angeles Jewish Home for the Aging was the biggest in LA, too! We’ve posted hundreds of photos.
Behind the scenes, we had a number of discussions with The Travel Channel who were kind enough to offer to feature The Ball in NYC on it’s “Most Extreme Party” Series. We ultimately decided that the nature of the filming would make it much harder to operate the event smoothly.
Hope you had a great time at The Ball and stay tuned for details about “Queen Esther’s Ball” - our next big national event coming in March!
Romantic Comedies More Dangerous Than Acrylamide; Gaining on Second Hand Smoke
That’s the rough conclusion reached by the Heriot Watt University’s Family and Personal Relationships Laboratory in Edinburgh which set aside the scientific method in favor of studying the dumbest John Cusack movie ever (nearly an oxymoron there) and concluded that romantic comedies “may actually damage your love life” by raising unrealistic romantic expectations and setting up for a lifetime of disappointment.
More info: Time Magazine, LA Times
Significantly better John Cusack movies:
Waterlogged:
Would be a violation of the Geneva Convention to omit this moment when the cosmic tumblers aligned:
Special thanks to Mark Brooks at http://www.onlinepersonalswatch.com/news/2009/01/the-dangers-of-romantic-comedies.html for the tip.
Have a Ball!
(This is the Final Day of our “12 Days of the Ball 2008” series)
We’re excited for tonight and hope you are, too! We hope you have a Ball and get everything you wish for this holiday season.
P.S. In NYC, we have the best advance sales in our 14 year history - thanks! If you are buying tickets at the door, we have many cashiers working tonight to keep you out of the rain. See you tonight!
1000+ Expected in LA l Support the LA Jewish Home for the Aging
(This is the 2nd Day of our “12 Days of the Ball 2008” series)
Based on advance sales, we are expecting over 1,000 people to join us for The Ball in LA at the Highlands Hollywood. This is the first time we’ve sponsored The Ball in LA and we’re looking forward to a great event and the start of an annual tradition.
We are proud to be teaming up with The Guardians of the Los Angeles Jewish Home for this event with half of the net proceeds going to support The LA Jewish Home for the Aging. The Young Divisions of The Guardians sponsor upscale fundraising events for young Jewish professional at locations like Harry Houdini’s Estate and The Playboy Mansion.
Over 600,000 Jews live in Los Angeles. But there is only one Home that offers kosher food, a warm Jewish environment and Jewish holiday celebrations for our elderly, no matter what their financial situation. Each year, nearly 1,000 frail seniors are fortunate enough to have a wonderful place to call “Home”.
We hope that, even beyond The Ball, you will continue to support these fine organizations.
Jeeves for Jewsus
(This is the 3rd Day of our “12 Days of the Ball 2008” series)
Since 2001, we’ve offered complimentary limousine service between the multiple venues that comprise The Ball in NYC. We are frequently asked if this service really works and how we can chauffeur more than 4,000 people efficiently.
Truth be told, the first year we tried this, I had no idea if it was going to work as well as I hoped. But it has worked (nearly) flawlessly and people usually do not have to wait more than five minutes for a limo to their destination.
Sit back and relax. Our shofars don't blow.
The main reason that the service works is that we don’t have to transport 4,000 people. Rather, we just have to transport the number of people who want to party-hop at any given point on the space/time continuum. And, except for the very peak of the event (maybe 12 am - 1 am), that usually isn’t that many people. And since we have 8 limos running at any one time, each seating 20-24 people, we can normally handle the demand.
The other key is that we have the limos only travel prescribed routes i.e. Marquee to Hiro or The Park to Marquee. We assign more limos to longer routes and less limos to shorter routes. It’s really quite devious.
Of course, you may have noticed that I wrote above that our limo service has worked “nearly” flawlessly. Can’t slip anything by you. “Nearly” refers to what transpired at The Ball 2006. Two of the venues that night - Duvet & Slate - were located on W 21st St. Duvet’s security personnel, citing their good relationship with the local police, asked me if I wanted them to ask the police to close off traffic on W 21st except for our limos. A jolly good idea, I thought.
But, alas, an idea that bloody well backfired: the police, instead, closed off W 21st Street to our limos, asserting safety concerns because of the large number of people out on the street entering and exiting the limos. This, as Fred Rogers was fond of saying, made “zero friggin’ sense.” Because on W 21st St we had (as we always do) “dispatchers” to ensure that people entered and exited the limos in an orderly fashion and to make sure the limos were never overcrowded. When the police closed W 21st St to the limos, the limos were forced to detour to much busier Sixth Avenue where people were running out into traffic, sans dispatchers, to catch a ride. The situation, which had previously been very safe, was now perilously unsafe.
I spent almost off of The Ball 2006 on W 21st st trying to prevent people from running into traffic on Sixth Ave, trying to reroute our limos, and pleading for common sense from the police. Batted .666 that day.
Incidentally, speaking of “re-routing”: if you are planning to attend The Ball in NYC this Wednesday, you should know that, during the course of the night, we may occasionally stop sending limos to a particular club if that club is already at capacity. When that situation arises, we will change the route of the limos to help distribute the party more evenly. Of course, The Ball is an 8-hour party (8 pm - 4 am) so you’ll have plenty of time to visit all the venues and to leave with more stories from the road than Jack Kerouac.
Attractive Girls Union Refuses To Enter Into Talks With Mike Greenman
(This is the 4th Day of our “12 Days of the Ball 2008” series)
Many great relationships - and marriages - began with friendly banter at The Ball. It’s for this reason, that we suggest Mike Greenman purchase a Jewniversal Pass.
Courtesy of The Onion:
The Song That Semi-Outed Harrison Ford
(This is the 5th Day of our “12 Days of the Ball 2008” series).
In the spirit of the Second Day of Hanukkah, to get you primed for The Ball and, more meaningfully, in the interest of getting a post done quickly, here is the song that sparked a Hanukkah revolution and semi-outed Harrison Ford:
The Curious Case of Schmebster Schmall
(This is 6th Day of our “12 Days of the Ball 2008” series. Problematically, if you are a student of mathematics, The Ball is now 2 days away)
Our decision in 2001 to move The Ball in NYC from one mega-club to multiple smaller venues (”small,” being relative - The Park, for instance, holds 1200 people) was one inspired more by necessity than divine inspiration. And it was occasioned, largely, by the experiences we had in working with the mega-club where we held The Ball in 1996 and in 1998-2000.
We brought that nightclub 3,000 or so people each year. We took all the risk, paid for all the advertising, promotions, music and event staff and, other than running the nightclub on the night of the event, did all the work, which was considerable. My understanding is that the nightclub would generate approximately $65,000 in bar sales from one of our events there and I had heard that our event was their 2nd biggest night of the year (after New Year’s Eve). “Not too shabby” for a day on which the club would otherwise likely be closed.
And yet, of the ten most outrageous things I’ve experienced when working with nightclubs, this nightclub has a stranglehold on the top three.
The nightclub has just recently been remodeled and, as I understand it, some of the management has changed, as well. In the spirit of a fresh start then, I won’t name the nightclub by name. Instead, I’ll just call them Schmebster Schmall.
For the 1996 Ball at Schmebster Schmall, we centered our promotion around the venue’s nightly trapeze show. We promised our guests that the show would occur at the stroke of midnight over the dance floor and we even created an invitation that unfolded into a poster-sized enticement for the trapeze show and The Ball. For their part, Schmebster Schmall contractually agreed to provide the performance and I confirmed and re-confirmed that the trapeze artist would appear.
But as midnight approached there wasn’t even a Flying Wallenda in sight. “He’s coming,” I was reassured at 10 pm. “He’s on his way,” I was told at 11. “He missed his flight,” I was told at midnight. “They never hired him to save $1000,” I was told by a source thereafter.
I can’t stand promising our members one thing and delivering another. So I vowed never to return to Schmebster Schmall. But after The Great Coach Check Disaster of 1997, and with no other large and commercially viable NYC venues from which to choose, we had no choice but to return, grudgingly, in 1998.
The weather for The Ball that year was horrible. But people still came out in droves, for which I’m always grateful. At around 11 pm, I was informed by Schmebster’s event director, Schmartin, that we already had 3,000 people in the building. News that would seem to be good.
But Schmartin pulled me into a quiet space in a stairwell and shared this: “Our contract was only good for the first 3,000 people. Now we need to make a new contract for the 3001st person and beyond.” He said that with a straight face. And, to his credit, that couldn’t have been easy.
In our contract, we had estimated (for staffing purposes) that 3,000 people would attend the event. There was nothing whatsoever to indicate that if more attended the contract would no longer be valid and claiming the same was an affront to common sense. But there were people waiting outside in the freezing rain to get in (the first guy in line had flown in from Israel) and we were at a stalemate: the club wouldn’t allow anyone else in unless I paid them $10 per person.
I expressed my displeasure in no uncertain way, as I’m wont to do in those situations, but had no choice but to accept the new terms because refusing to do so would have left people out in the freezing rain all night. But I again vowed never to return. (I found out later that there weren’t even 3,000 people in the building at that time).
But I did return again because there simply seemed to be no other choice: But for the trapeze incident, people liked our events at that venue. And there were no other venues in Manhattan that were commercially viable and large enough to host our event.
In 2000, shortly before The Ball and after all the promotions were well underway, I received a phone call from Schmebster informing me that they had now decided that without another $5,000 they wouldn’t be able to staff the event adequately. With only a short time before the party, I had no choice but to pay once again. But I knew that this was the final straw and that I would rather lose the event altogether than ever work with them again. And I thought to myself that I hoped that obtaining that $5,000 proved worth it for Schmebster, because they had just sacrificed all the ensuing years of $65,000 nights.
Not counting my deicsion to buy lifetime service for my original TiVo, deciding to move The Ball in NYC from one venue to many beginning in 2001 was probably the best decision I’ve ever made. Since that time, more than 25,000 guests have enjoyed The Ball in four or five-part harmony and the complimentary limousine service we provide between parties.
We love the venues we are working with this in NYC year: Hiro, Marquee, The Park, The Cabanas and Earth. If you are in NYC, we hope you”ll pick up a Jewniversal Pass. It’s your Wonka-inspired Golden Ticket to Christmas Eve merriment.
About This Blog
Welcome to our blog. We have some exciting stuff coming up in the next few months, including the release of Tribester.com, our new social network connecting fun, interesting Jewish professionals and, of course, our biggest events of the year including The Ball 2008 on December 24 - the Nation's Biggest Jewish Singles Event.
We’ll use this blog to let you know what we’re up to and also to give you a little “inside baseball” - a behind-the-scenes look at the sometimes very "interesting," things that happen when you work with nightclubs as we do.
We’d also like to use this blog to hear from you, your ideas about our events, about what features you’d like to see in Tribester.com, and about single life in the ’00s and online dating / social networking, in particular.…
Jeff Strank is the Founder of LetMyPeopleGo.com
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