Last night marked the first ever leetUP, the brainchild of G4 creator Charles Hirschhorn, and Attack of the Show host Kevin Pereria, that could best be described as a "Nerd Carnival." The idea was to create a kind of mix of a convention with an art party, encouraging a bunch of nerds (and I include myself in the definition of "nerd," obviously) to get together, drink, mingle, play, and watch their favorite personalities podcast it out on stage. For those of you that couldn't attend, I thought I would lay out the evening for you.
leetUP was held at Club Nokia downtown. While the layout of the space was perfect for this kind of event and could clearly handle the ample A/V needs, there were some major drawbacks as well. For one, the drinks were MASSIVELY expensive. As in 8-12 bucks each for a tiny plastic cup of wine or liquor. I don't drink beer generally, but if I did, it was hardly the cheaper option. The only food available (I assume because those were the rules of the space) were the disgusting refrigerated options from Club Nokia itself. Plus the security was bizarrely tight (metal detectors? I have to take my jewelry off? Really?), I heard Ticketmaster, who sells tix for Club Nokia, had an insane service charge, our parking cost $25, and the line to pick up tickets was unreasonably long, with no separate entry for press. Still, none of this was the fault of the organizers or producers, so I don't mean this as a criticism of the event, but rather as an encouragement to find a more accommodating venue next year.
But on to the good stuff, which was everything else. After the ticket takers, but before entering the space, there was a merch table set up with items being sold by any guests, DJs and sponsors. In retrospect, I really wish I had picked up one of the Tru Protection anti glare iPad screens and taken more of an in depth look at everything else offered.
Inside the doors, to our right was a giant bar that struck us as rather space-shippy. A sign told us we could only have two drinks maximum, but we laughed at it and then had three. Unfortunately, 3 drinks for each of us ended up costing a hefty $66 bucks. That plus parking came out to $91, and for the people that bought tickets off on ticketmaster? Easily $150 bucks for two to attend and drink over the course of five hours. Again, not the fault of the producers, but eff you, Club Nokia.
In the center of the space was the giant general admission area, with a huge stage, balcony up top for VIPs, and huge lightboard. Around the perimeter were the various funzones. To the right, past the bar, was the gaming area. Here there were a bunch of wiis set up, and a classic arcade game section, where my +1 and I had a blast trying to get a handle on Burger Time. We died a lot. But had a damn good time doing it.
To the left of the bar was the step and repeat with a red carpet, a Media Hound booth, and a mini gallery of some awesome pieces from the ACME archives. Any attendee could take their photo on the red carpet, which is always fun, and even cooler, Media Hound would put your photo on their website if you created your own personal movie playlist. Let me backtrack. Media Hound is a new service that tells you how you can access any movie or tv show instantly (legally of course) and at what cost. This would have been handy for my "How to watch all the academy award nominated movie" article a week back! My friend created a 90s Weekend Jam with all TV shows from SNICK and TGIF and the always wonderful @meli_molina came up with "Best original movies that have been or will be remade" - an idea that everyone at Media Hound loved and got lots of love over the course of the evening. There was a whiteboard up for writing ideas for playlists, and computers available for sifting through the playlists created earlier in the evening.
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