Recapping last night's sports blogger-con

Readers through the Buffalo sports blog network undoubtedly caught bits of info about the blogger party at Fat Bob’s last night, to hang out together, tip a few, watch the Sabres and share our mutual passions for Buffalo sports and our role in this still-emerging ever-changing dynamic media entity that we call the blogosphere.

Suffice to say it was a totally kick ass time, both renewing old friendships and meeting up with people for the first time who until last night were just fellow online personas.

Here are some of my highlights, takes, observations and overall anecdotes about the night that was:

-From the “It’s a Small World” category: Dave in Rocha from Bfloblog actually attended high school in Pembroke and took classes with my cousin Greg Kinal who is a long time teacher there.

-Kate Holzemer, a violist with the Buffalo Philharmonic dropped in late after their concert and was the life of the party. Anybody who is so engaged in the arts and can still be a sportsbabe earns a mancrush from me… big time!

-Spotted in the (very) crowded bar. A somewhat hot babe wearing a Bills Gibran Hamdan #10 jersey. Everyone in the group was convinced that this has to be the only fan Hamdan jersey in existence.

-Ryan from The Goose’s Roost doesn’t drink. OK OK he’s only 20. But trust me, he is a total boy scout. We promised Ryan an invite to our next USRT run to PNC Park in Pittsburgh. He is totally there.

-Thanks to my buddy Matt Pearl, I am sooooooooo into Northwestern and their date with Big Ten glory and their run to a postseason bowl. In fact I will not sleep well until I see them leave the field in triumph come January late December. So seeing the highlights of their shellacking to Ohio State on TV last night, we sent Matt a text message for his take. Most of us gathered there awaited his reply, but all he sent was a note demanding to know “who is this!”. Matt, Matt… you dissing the blogosphere won’t help earn you a berth in next year’s Buffalo Media Showdown. Unless, of course, we convince Tedd Getman to slot in two #16’s into a “play-in” round.

-Bloggers are demanding more respect from the Sabres PR department. We are doing what we can to advocate the cause.

-Meeting Anne and (don’t call me Zdeno) Shara from Sabretooth’s House for the first time, I learned something that totally escaped me. And that is how many female Sabres bloggers there are out there, and how many of them deal with issues like “Gaustad is totally hot” or catty remarks about so and so’s wife/girlfriend on the team. I checked out their site today and added them to our blogroll – Fortunately these two gals put out some good stuff.

-Speaking of female bloggers, we missed Heather from Top Shelf, who had a death in the family and could not attend. Hopefully we will meet in person down the road.

-I never did end up ordering any mac and cheese.

-Tedd Getman is fast becoming Buffalo’s uber-coffeebarista. When you start seeing Spot Coffee locations in Singapore, New Delhi and the West Bank, I will be proud to say I knew Tedd when he was one of the little guys.

-Can’t finish without mentioning Matt (twoeightnine), Nathan (FTLT) and Kevin P (Bfloblog) all great guys.

Oh, did I mention that the Sabres lost? So FTLT organized blogger-cons drop to an 0-1 record.

But nevermind. Everyone was having just too much fun to care. We enjoyed the evening of sports talk, camaraderie and booze and hopefully for another gathering real soon.