Why Philly Blogs Tend to Suck; Event Notification

Well, this is going to win me friends, isn't it?

I go to 3 Philadelphia blogs on a daily basis: Philadelphia Will Do, Philebrity, and The Clog. All 3 of them had at least one story about me. All 3 of them will never talk to me again.

The main problem I have with all of them is one thing: NOT TELLING YOU ABOUT EVENTS UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE!

There's a lot of problem with all three blogs respectively, and one day soon I'll go into detail about it. For now, it's this.

When it comes to Philebrity.com, there is advertising for R5 Productions, The TLA, Johnny Brendas, and P.O.P.E., and a few other places you never heard of or could care less about. In turn, your finding out the real problem with the site in terms of informing you of events. The site says it isn't for "hipsters", but the seemingly non-stop parade of bands-you-never-heard-of-but-we-think-are-cool never ends. Need proof? Ever hear of a band called Faux Slang? Me neither., but they seem to think they're worthy of a post. Need info on some band that plays shitty Indie Rock or some funk faux-punk band? Check out their nightly wrap-up of city events! Or don't. Whatever's more ironic.

The main plus is that, yes, there is some advance warning. But if you did want The Pros From Denver play a show tonight, they'll tell you... a good 5 hours before the show.

Philadelphia Will Do? Next to non-existent. It's basically comes down to Dan, if he feels like it, coming to the blog and posting about the event, making jokes about it, and letting it go from there. Sometimes it's before the event, sometimes it's not. The last event I can think of was when he posted a flyer for an event by Philly 52 the day before the thing was supposed to happen. To make fun of it. Classy.

Then you have The Clog. They do a sort of Catch-22; they tell you about the event... when it's too late. For example, there was an awesome story about Home Movie Day... the day of the event. Oh, and the day before an event to protest Prop 8, they mentioned the protest that told people to "Call In Gay". Yep, one WHOLE day!

These blogs, all-in-all, SUCK when it comes to telling you about upcoming events in Philadelphia. These blogs are, frankly, fairly big outlets. Philadelphia Will Do is run by Philadelphia Weekly, The Clog is run by City Paper, and Philebrity has garnered a large, respectable following in it's own right. They seem less interested in informing people about events in the city they would care about than anything else. These aren't entertainment blogs, that's for certain, but they do serve a purpose of informing people since they do have a rather large audience.

Are there places dedicated to informing you about local events? Yes... but they suck. They're hard to navigate, tend to focus on more all-inclusive events, and less on anything interesting. While the local blogs have their problems, they all have their charm. They tend to be fun, not that serious when you want it to be fun, and fairly informative at times. But, really, the details are for another day.

I can't say I've been doing much better; I've ignored some really awesome metal shows coming to town myself. Then again, I'm just some punk who works a 9-5 job and can't afford to go to said shows. I'm going to TRY and change that myself. There's a new year coming, so why not?


EDIT: I want to add that this isn't a dig at any of these guys. I think The Clog has gotten better over the last year, I read Philebrity because it's entertaining to get a decent look at the city, and Dan McQuade is a good friend of mine. This really is more of a rant in frustration and a sort of "Hey, wake up!" thing for them. Thanks to whoever put this on Twitter, and R5 Productions is AWESOME.