So five years ago this month, I packed up a handful of things and moved to Philadelphia.

I found a horrible, filthy apartment on Craigslist in West Philadelphia. I only had one day to visit Philly before moving here and as crazy as this sounds, the apartment that had crack needles littering the stoop and a third roommate sleeping on a bare mattress in the living room was the best choice. It was a toss up between that one and living in a house in South Philly that regularly got raided by the FBI, as a past inhabitant was on some sort of wanted list. The tenants once had a raid happen in the middle of a party. They thought this was hilarious. I did not.

I didn’t have much. My entire life fit quite comfortably into the backseat of a 2006 Ford Focus. I had to sell two guitars, my entire DVD collection, all my video games, my soprano sax, and my beloved vintage tenor saxophone to afford to move here and have some funds to live off of until I found a job. I bought a futon on Craigslist the day I showed up, and thought I was going to get stabbed in a Chinese restaurant when a man demanded I give him a hug. One of my best friends, who had driven me to Philly in my parents’ car, was hesitant to leave me here.

I told him I’d be alright.

And five years later, I’m doing just fine.

However, these past five years wouldn’t have been nearly as successful and fulfilling without certain people. Whether they were pushing me forward career wise, encouraging me to be a better writer, or educating me culturally, these are the folks that, without them, I probably wouldn’t have gotten this far.

Five awesome people. Five awesome years.

Tim Quirino: I was trying to limit this list to solely people I’d met in Philly, but creating this sort of VIP list is impossible without mentioning Tim.

I’ve known Tim for nearly a decade, but we only became close friends these past five years. He did design work for bands, I took their pictures, and we ended up working together on some stuff. Fast forward to me moving to Philly, and he was living in a house in University City while wrapping up his undergrad at Drexel. I was attending grad school and knew no one in the city.

Let’s forget for a moment he’s one of my dearest friends and that he moved me from apartment to apartment over the course of several poor living choices. We launched Geekadelphia together, a site that, much to our surprise, changed our lives quite a bit. A majority of the people I spend my time with, I met directly and indirectly through the website. They came to our events, were friends of friends, local writers, etc.

Tim and I inadvertently helped build our own social circle together. Quite sure that my social life is the direct result of our friendship and the project we built.

He designed the cover of my book, built almost every iteration of this personal blog, and also, he pressured me to get the Master Chief suit built. And we all saw what happened as a result of that.

—

Brennen Lucas: When I moved to Philly, I had zero job prospects. I dished out my resume to dozens of retail shops, publications, etc. I was turned away constantly. On a whim, I applied for a blogging job on Craigslist. Despite the fact that I’d only been in Philadelphia for two months, Brennen gave me a chance, hiring me at my first “real” job at a non-profit called GPTMC. Philly folks know them better as the Visit Philly people.

I was working in Philly tourism, and at that point, I’d yet to go the Liberty Bell.

Here, I managed a website called Uwishunu for a little over three years. As the original team behind the project left, leaving me the only one from my department there, I slowly grew to dislike the gig… but without it, a lot of things wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have been able to pay for graduate school. I probably wouldn’t have started Geekadelphia or met many of the people I spend time with these days.

In fact, several people who I met because they wanted to write for me, are now some of my closest friends here in Philadelphia. Kishwer, Gino, Ben, my darling Britt Miller (she was an intern there!)… never would have met them without this job.

Him taking a chance on me was the catalyst that launched my life in Philly. And I’ll never forget that. These days, you can catch him at Fishtown’s Whipped Bakeshop, creating delicious wonders with his talented wife, Zoe.

—

Marisa McClellan: As my dislike of my old job grew, Marisa was my rock. We constantly supported each other when it came to our pet projects and grustles (hustles that you work on during your daily grind). Me, it was my blog and my novel. Her, all her freelance writing and Food in Jars (soon to be an awesome book with Philly’s Running Press). But before we were sitting next to each other in an office, we actually met at a blogger meetup at Ten Stone in Philly, where I went with the intention of recruiting bloggers.

Oh man, did she teach me a lesson.

Marisa taught me a lot about working with bloggers. And not just the whole pay scale / editorial side of things, which I’ve seen applied to Geekadelphia, but how to talk to them, something I do every day now at Quirk. Without meaning to, she taught me the importance of short press releases and pitch letters, when (and when not to) follow up regarding a review, and that bloggers should be treated as legit journalists and media outlets… not just blogs.

This sort of stuff just came up in casual conversation, whenever we were sent a product we didn’t want or were getting harassed by marketing people. Those small annoyances are lessons in themselves, but talking about why they were wrong in our cubicle taught me even more. Marisa prepared me to be good at a job that I didn’t even have yet.

And Marisa, sorry I spelled your last name wrong in the Acknowledgments in my book.

—

Christopher Wink: Back in New Jersey, I always had playful rivalries with my best friends. My pals Darlene, Miguel, Dario… the closest of us would always mess with one another, bragging about accomplishments, whether it was salary, degrees, etc. It was all in good fun though. We loved one another, and the jabs kept us all trying harder.

I met Chris when I was working on Uwishunu and he was a student at Temple. Him and a handful of his buddies were writing for me, and we became fast friends over the Internets. Fast forward two years, and we were hanging out pretty regularly. And he was launching his own hustle. Technically Philly.

When Chris launched Technically Philly with Brian James Kirk and Sean Blanda, I was thrilled. They were covering local tech news in a way I could never with Geekadelphia (plus Geekadelphia is more about the pop culture side of being a Geek), and at long last… I had someone to mess with. A rival. Finally.

Without realizing it, Chris had finally given me the greatest gift of all… playful competition. I love being able to throw a jab at him now and again via Twitter or on the blog. Mocking him when I see the buzzwords flying… I should list that as an interest on my Facebook profile. I’m thrilled when I hear about a local PR firm thinking Chris and I (aka Technically Philly and Geekadelphia) hate each other. When he gave his keynote speech during the first Philly Tech Week, I ruined his moment with a tweet (this was an accident though!). When he received an award at the Geek Awards, he slammed the hell out of Geekadelphia, and I loved it.

But despite the joking around… Chris makes me want to be better at what I do.

When he started seeing real revenue from ads, I built Geekadelphia’s BlogAds network and started offering up serious ad space. When him and his crew launched Philly Tech Week, that was the punch I needed to finally get the Philly Geek Awards in gear. When I spent some time reading his personal website, I relaunched my own.

No single person in Philadelphia inadvertently pushes me harder than he does, and I love him for it. He’s an inspiration.

—

Robin Black: I stole this picture from Philly.com. I probably talk more about Robin on my blog and Twitter more than I should, but whatever. She’ s awesome. And you just have to deal with it.

Over the course of my year and a half at Arcadia, where I earned my MA in English, Robin helped shape me into the sort of writer and professor I always wanted to become. My first two published essays, one of which is appearing in Philadelphia’s Apiary this month and the other of which is all about Master Chiefing… those are the direct result of having worked with Robin.

As I start work on my second book and revel in my career in publishing, I constantly find myself thinking about Robin and her bits of wisdom.

—

And to all my many friends in Philly, my current coworkers and colleagues, I love each and every one of you. Thanks for making these past five years so very, very awesome. Can’t wait to see where the next five take me.

So last weekend was interesting.

My pal Glen Tickle, a guy I went to college with (and took a monster road trip with last year), is one hell of a funny stand up comedian. Once a month, he hosts a show called Pretending to be on TV. It’s a late night talk show without the actual television, hosted at a gorgeous theater in Bethlehem, PA. He’s been talking about it for quite some time now, but as much as I fancy myself a good friend, I couldn’t figure out what the hell it was.

Until this past weekend.

Glen had me come on to chat about the Master Chief suit and essay, my book, my love of Skyrim, and just some general stuff about myself, like work and what-not. I was joined by celebrated blogger (and former college classmate) Jill Pantozzi, who oddly enough I pitch a lot of Quirk titles to. She spoke about comics, why she writes about them, etc. All in all, it was a fabulous time, and was actually the first time I’ve gotten to hang with Jill outside an industry event. Which is a shame, cause she is fabulous.

Jill wrote about her experience being on Glen’s show, here. She’d actually read about the Master Chief story, but didn’t know it was me. Ah, small world.

There’s a video clip of my talk over on Pretending to be on TV’s official website / Tumblr, check it out here. And of course, some (terrible low resolution iPhone 3G) photos below. Thanks for having me on Glen. I’m super proud of you.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Another year, another fabulous Friendsgiving… even though one of the co-founders greatly dislikes that name.

2011 was a pretty stellar year, save for a couple of hiccups. Good times at work, great students at Peirce, awesome events with Geekadelphia (especially the awards back in the Summer), some success with writing… and through all of these awesome happenings, these folks here in Philly have played quite the integral part.

Yes, even with work, considering one of my bloggers is my current intern and all my friends come out to my local events (what’s up Broetry slam).

Anyhow, I’m lucky to have so many fabulous people in my life here in this big city. Especially when these are the sort of people who purchase several turduckens just because, spend twelve hours creating Companion Cube dessert cakes, and quote Ron Swanson in huge chalk letters on their kitchen walls.

Couple of favorites after the jump, all taken by Linzy and Mikey. Have a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Laughs

Give me all the bacon and eggs you have!

Bringing out the turkey

Everyone made their own hand turkeys.

Everyone made their own hand turkeys.

Cube

Cutting into the Companion Cube.

Turkey supplies

High fives + intern.

As any of my friends can tell you, I take Halloween pretty seriously. Just look at that serious expression, as Alex and I dish out the trophy for best mustache.

Ever since I moved to Philadelphia and found myself living on my own, I’ve thrown some sort of Halloween bash, whether it was for my birthday or the actual holiday. This past weekend’s Halloween celebrations were quite possibly the best yet, and I managed to keep my “stay out late and stop being an old man” promise that I made to myself.

Look at all these people. Over 100 folks came to the Tattooed Mom bash!

For the parties, I brought my Lieutenant Arcot “Thorny” Ramathorn costume out of retirement (I wore it for my 25th birthday), and had myself a lovely time with great friends. Scope out some snaps below, or just browse through on my Flickr page. I’ve also uploaded a video of DJ MUSTARD playing some remixed Zelda. Dude, I love you.

Big thank you to Alex Hillman, the Indy Hall crew, Whipped Bakeshop, NextFab Studios and Rob from Tattooed Mom for making our annual Geekadelphia / Indy Hall Halloween celebration such a success.

Presenting the Mustache Madness award

Geekadelphia co-founder Timmy Q, Melissa, Melissa’s cute friend

Will from Cipher Prime

Dancing at Jay’s

Chris Wink of Tech Philly, whose mustache inspired the theme

Thorny & Carrie

RON BURGUNDY

RON BURGUNDY

PAN AM

NYAN CAT

Ladies

Ladies @ Jay’s

Jo looking cute and horrifying at the same time

Hulk Hogan

DJ Mustard in the House

]]> http://ericsmithrocks.com/2011/10/31/halloween-2011-in-philadelphia-photos/feed/ 2 http://ericsmithrocks.com/2011/10/27/a-bucket-list-for-the-last-year-of-my-20s/ http://ericsmithrocks.com/2011/10/27/a-bucket-list-for-the-last-year-of-my-20s/#comments Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:42:43 +0000 eric http://ericsmithrocks.com/?p=2769

Well, I turned 29 this week. I celebrated appropriately. I spent a weekend in Atlantic City with my best friend, had a bros’ night at Gunners Run in Northern Liberties on my actual birthday (Tim and I are still haunted by the fllet mignon sandwich we had there), and I plan to spend this weekend partying Halloween style, thanks to the traditional Geekadelphia & Indy Hall bash at Tattooed Mom (over 120+ people are coming!) and my pal Jay with his annual costumed celebration at his apartment.

At work (where we had a fancy hat party), two of my coworkers asked me how I was planning to enjoy the last year of my 20′s. I hadn’t quite thought of it that way. I’d mostly been stressing about hitting 30, but not how I’d actually spend my final year.

So, here’s a little list I’ve made for myself. Hopefully I stick to it.

1. Make One More Epic Costume: I’m concerned that my obsession with awesome costumes (shared with Geekadelphia co-founder / eternal BFF Tim Quirino) may seem a little more ridiculous once I’m in my 30′s. When people find out that my biggest adult purchase was a full suit of Master Chief armor, I get laughs and nods of understanding, mostly due to the backstory of my heinous ex.

But what about when I’m 30? Admitting that my next biggest adult purchase is going to be a replica Rocketeer outfit, might not be met with the same sort of good humored approval.

Oh, and yeah. The next costume is going to be the Rocketeer. As a kid, I was obsessed with that movie. It’ll be expensive, but I’ll find a way to make it work.

This is a point of mockery in my circle of friends (Allie & Jay, I saw that), so I think I’ll try and work on that.

I’m going to try to make it a point to actually go to one of these shows with him, and tear it up in the pit, whether its a rock concert or a ska show. Most people would be worried, but luckily, Schmidt has arms the size of legs. I’ll be fine.

Note: Google searching for the term “skank” has unpleasant results.

3. Finish the New Book: Unfortunately I haven’t really touched my in-progress manuscript since my vacation. I had to spend a week playing catch up at work, and then spent almost a week at New York Comic Con, followed by another week of playing catch up… sigh. It’s been wonderfully busy. Thankfully, I adore my job and the books I’m working on, so really, it’s not a big deal.

Right now the manuscript is at 30,000 words, and I’m really thrilled with it. My peers seem to dig it as well, which is always nice. But why before 30? Not sure, really. It’d just be nice to say I finished my second book before I turned 30, is all. Plus, it’s nice to have goals set down. Puts the pressure on. You know?

4. Visit Three More Countries: Just so I can round it out to an even five. Already went to Ireland, and come New Years I’ll be staying in Montreal for a week. Though I’ve been to Canada before back in my touring days, I never stayed there for an extended period of time. I think I want to go someplace… old. Like Rome. And not just because I’m currently reading Eat Pray Love.

Now taking suggestions. And not for other books. I freaking like Eat Pray Love. Shut up.

Squee!

Last week I made an appearance in New Book Day, a webcomic here in Philly written by David Goodman. Dave regularly writes on Geekadelphia, covering comic books, graphic novels and more than occasionally scooping up local event posts. He managed to capture my serious professionalism in selecting writers for the blog.

Thanks David. So awesome.

New Book Day #209 [NewBookDay.com]

Not too long ago, my friend Allie exploded when she spotted these awesome Portal inspired prints on Etsy. And with good cause.

Printed on heavy, high-quality glossy cardstock, these 11×17 posters are just fantastic… and look awesome framed behind my desk at Quirk. The Things Nobody Did Before You Showed Up… print makes me giggle and reminds me fondly of the game, while the When Life Gives You Lemons… print reminds me to keep cool in the wake of poor reviews and dealing with difficultly marketing.

Ah, Cave Johnson. You were a wise, wise man.

My prints aren’t as elegantly framed as the ones pictured (I took these images off of the Etsy store’s page). I need to make a note to hit up Ikea to pick up better frames, as they are currently housed in $5 K-Mart frames. Bleh.

If you dig these prints, hit up Blimpcat’s Etsy shop. They’ll run you $20 a piece. Worth every penny.

So that gigantic peach rose out of the sky like… like… well like a giant orange booty along the highway. To get a real sense of its size, you can see Kishwer and I waving our hands around in the lower left hand corner.

As fate would have it, we actually showed up on the very last day of peach picking season. With a storm on its way and the last of the season’s peaches currently ripe to the point of bursting, we were fortunate to show up when we did. We got “big reds” according to the sign in the stand.

I’m not sure what my favorite part of peach picking was. Climbing trees? Kicking rotten fruit at one another? Finding out that out baskets were made by prison inmates down the road? It’s a serious toss up.

You can check out all the snaps on my Flickr, but I’ve posted my favorite shots from the lovely afternoon in a South Carolina peach orchard below.

On our way to get peaches!

Jess holds her basket, made by prison inmates from down the street.

Our baskets sitting in the orchard.

Millions of peaches, peaches for me.

Plucking a peach.

Jess climbing a tree.

Kish believes she can fly.

Dan plucks a peach.

Michelangelo painted this at some point.

Oh hai!

Jess’ haul.

Trunk loaded up, ready to go!

So my pal Jessica Anne, Kishwer Vikaas and Dan Hafner hopped in a car early Saturday morning (4am!) and made our way down to South Caroline, 600+ miles away from Philadelphia.

We all spent most of the driving part of the trip listening to comedy in standup (I discovered the joys of Doug Benson), audiobook (thank you Neil Patrick Harris for reading The Bro Code), and musical (Flight of the Conchords!) form.

When we weren’t driving, we were exploring local bars, running around small towns (Greer, NC is wonderful!), and eventually, picking peaches. I’ll write a blip about that later.

All the pictures are up on my Flickr, but these are my favorites from the trip. I think I’m going to make it a point to travel someplace with Jess every single year. That gal rocks so hard.

REAVERS!!!

Cute park in Greer, SC.

Local brewery in SC. Amazing.

600+ miles away, can’t get away from Philly. Vintage shop in SC.

Tin ceiling in a cute diner outside Richmond, VA.

Safest place ever?

In late December, in the midst of one of the worst snowstorms EVER, I hopped on a plane to Ireland with one of my close Philly friends, Jessica Anne. The whole trip was a wild idea brought up by my old college friend (now celebrated actress) Jenelle Sosa. Try not to swoon at her headshots should you visit her website. I warned you.

I was hesitant at first. When I go someplace, there are things I want to do. I like to power walk everywhere. I don’t want to listen to tour guides yapping. I don’t want to spend a half hour looking at the same building. I want to meet people. Explore on my own. Not hit the tourist traps.

I’m a bit of a brat.

But traveling with Jess was amazing. We both love meeting new people and making immediate friends, visiting new places (for a few minutes!) before moving the hell on, etc. And somehow, after over a week together in another country, we still couldn’t get enough of each other. Two days after we came home, we were hanging out again. I think its a rare thing, finding a travel buddy you don’t get sick of. It was awesome.

So when she brought up the idea of taking a road trip to South Carolina to go peach picking, of course I said yes.

Photo by Marisa McClellan, who I will bring peaches back for

Sure, we’re driving over 600 miles. And I have to pick my own fruit and PAY for the privilege to do so. And then afterwards, I’m going to be eating fruit. FRUIT. But still. It’s going to be one hell of a fun trip, and a lovely way to spend Labor Day weekend.

Now accepting road trip music suggestions. I’m planning for lots of happy Summer pop punk. Number one on my list? Yellowcard’s latest, When You’re Through Thinking, Say Yes. Probably my favorite CD released this year. Sorry Jess. Prepare to hear that CD a lot.

Pictures next week. Later!