What is WND?

"Join Mike and me for Wednesday Night Drinks this Wednesday at:

10th Street Lounge

212 E 10th St

NYC

Cross Street: 2nd Ave"

That was the first, scintillating, heart-stopping email I sent about wnd back in October of 1998. My buddy, “Iron” Mike, had suggested we start a casual get-together at a bar on Wednesdays since people usually have plans on the weekend and it's nice to have a mid-week break. The idea was that he and I would host, showing up to said bar where some of our friends would join us and... well, that was pretty much it. Sometimes 30 people graced us with their presence; sometimes it was just Mike and I catching up on the last 15 seconds. Whatever the turnout, it was always fun and a great way for our friends (and hated enemies) to meet each other.

We began at the 10th Street Lounge in the East Village, believing that to be a nice spot. I just calculated that from October 24, 1998 (the first wnd) thru July 19, 2000 (the 76th wnd), we never switched bars. That's 76 times at the same bar. If I could go back in time, I guess I'd tell Mike and myself... How about a little variety, guys?! Switch it up, for god's sake! Is this some kind of Skinner Box experiment? Open a yellow pages. Something.

Amazingly, and without the help of my time travel, we started mixing in other bars. We kept wnd going though the beginning of 2005, at which time I moved to Los Angeles. I then solicited the help of my buddy, "Iron" Jay, to continue the tradition out west, where it has now flourished for nearly 4 years. Jay's most notable contribution was spearheading the idea that we never repeat a bar (with some very special exceptions) which is now the policy. Since he's the Bar-Czar, in charge of finding new locales, you might say that was a dumb idea. Way to think that one through, Jay-Jay.

In the early days, I'd send a brief email invite (see above) for purely informational purposes. As you can imagine, that got boring real fast, and worse, started to resemble spam. So the challenge became, and remains to this day, how to craft an email that won’t elicit the response, “Unsubscribe! Unsubscribe!” It’s not enough simply to avoid pestering: people actually have to look forward to the reminders. Since it's now been nearly 10 years, I figured it was time to put all my idiotic work in one centralized place where people can mock me more efficiently. That said, peruse these many invites, each listed under the very date that particular wnd took place, so that you can determine for yourself the exact moment that you would have blocked my email address.

That tingle you now feel is anticipation.