02138 Maddeningly Difficult to Hate When They’re Pouring Free Cocktails Down Your Throat
For weeks now we've been unable to sleep, horrified that our account of crashing the 02138launch party didn't hate enough on the widely-considered-obnoxious magazine. SexandtheIvy.com offered to cover the mag's Boston launch for us, and we had our fingers crossed that she would better resist the open bar and write something scathing -- or at least bed one of the staffers. Alas. Her dispatch:
When the Head of the Charles Regatta comes around, Harvard locks down.
But 02138 would hear nothing of that last night. While its alma mater slept in, the new magazine dared to party. Hosted at Via Matta (owner: HBS grad), the Boston launch event saw no celebrity appearances, though alumni did abound. With a slew of Harvard affiliates from almost every school and year, the only demographic that could be pegged down were the "fallen type-As." That is, those who prefer the company of anonymous fellow alumni to interaction with normal human beings.
No sightings of The Harvard 100, but one guest did purport to be number 101. He also claimed aspirations to his own publication, tentatively named after his mother, Bertha. I'd get the p.r. people working on that title if I was him.
"Do they teach awkwardness at Harvard, or do we just come this way?" I asked my companion after a forced conversation with an alum several generations removed. And here I thought Ivy League social disability was a recent development.
We spent the remainder of the evening downing mysteriously weak drinks and talking to the only other normal people in the room (relatively speaking). We met the acquaintance of pg. 20's Republican "policy doctor" Lanhee Chen and introduced ourselves to three chicly dressed, refereshingly amiable staffers. Then we found out that two were Princeton-educated, the other a University of Wisconsin grad. That's gotta explain it.
When the clock struck 9 p.m., we took a look around. Via Matta was, by now, a few guests short of a crowd. I thought the undergraduate social scene was lacking, but is this what life holds for us as alums?
Perhaps next week's launch event in D.C. will be more hopping, but for the rest of the evening, I retreated to a more surefire good time: Happy hour at the Crimson.
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October 20th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
Curiously, the man behind the magazine “Bertha,” must have been Howard Dinin, who originally wanted to call his Cambridge-based, lit-hipster magazine … “02138.” He still owns the URL 02138.com, as you can confirm by going to it. This explains why Bom Kim & Co. have the clunky web address “02138mag.com” — because they were too cheap to pay Dinin for his original name.
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:12 am
sorry, you were sent to report on an event and the only quote you came home with was your own? step up your game please!
October 23rd, 2006 at 12:13 pm
this has to be the most boring report in the history of the world.
November 28th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Sorry to weigh in so late, but soon after the party in question I left for our house in Provence… I am supposing the questionable reporting was performed by the two comely young women who looked like they should have been carded on entry and who blatantly interviewed me, fortunately while I was still coherent [hint to you neophyte drinkers on the cuff: straight booze on the rocks]. The claim to having been #101 was, of course, a joke, which I shared with Bom [S. Kim, whose vision as Publisher, not editor, is the guiding force behind 02138]. Having elected not to become embroiled in Federal court over a trademark dispute, I, if not Bom, am relieved to discover my erstwhile adversary is a gentleman of compassion and politesse. This is somewhat more than I can say of the progenitors of this curious blog — whose mission seems to be, anonymously, to legitimize the general opinion of those who bother to have one about Ivy Leaguers that they are self-absorbed amateur libertines, heart-breaking victims of the Ivy League grade-inflation of the turn of the century. The comment about the name of my forthcoming magazine opined by the conveniently unnamed reporter is a huge relief — it gives me permission to believe further in its prospects. I had forgotten that Ivy undergrads were marketing specialists. Better it not appeal on name alone. I wasn’t thinking of recent graduates, untried by life, as my audience. And many thanks to Mr. Charles for clarifying my raison d’etre. However I’d dispute his description (not mine) of the genre of “bertha” [small "b"]. The literary is surely an aspiration. The “hipster,” though quaint, is not a conceit, nor a positioning, of mine. And yes, I’ve owned 02138.com since I conceived of a magazine of that name back in 1998. And “cheap” is not fair. Astute is probably more appropriate. Finally, though I live in Cambridge, I also live in the south of France, and it will be as much based there, as anywhere else. Indeed, 02138.com sits on a server in Sophia-Antipolis. Sorry for all the facts, but they’re meant as an antidote to what appears to pass for substance on this site. Shouldn’t the domain, rather, be Billingsgate.com? Speaking of names, and the people who refuse to put theirs where their words are.