What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Attend BlogHer ‘12 in New York

For those heading to the annual BlogHer conference in New York City next week, I’ve compiled a guide to set your expectations. This is based on my experience as an occasional visitor to The Big Apple (I live in Connecticut, the neighboring state trying laughably to steal its neighbor’s tourism business), my being a ‘BlogHer in NYC’ veteran, and a half-dozen gin and tonics:

The smell

The first time I drove through Nebraska during the summer, my olfactory center suddenly seized up like a Boy Scout official stumbling into a Gay Pride Parade. Turns out we had just passed a pig farm/slaughterhouse.

After I mentally retched, My Love told me what her Cornhusker grandfather would say when one of his brood whined about this particular odor: “Smells like money.”

The aroma of Manhattan in August may cause a similar feeling of nausea in New York newbies. But rejoice – REJOICE, I SAY! It leans less toward a manure pungency and more toward a urine acidity. Mmmm.

“Eau de New York City” is a proprietary blend of body odor, rotting garbage, lust, engine fumes, disinfectant, nervous energy, tempting and toxic street food, petty jealously, stray cats, fear, melting asphalt, dreams, lunacy, excess, success, more body odor and rotting garbage, chutzpah and rat excrement.

Aaaah. Smells like life.

The eats

Speaking of “tempting and toxic street food,” you’ll find carts and stands everywhere you walk. Unless Russian roulette is your thing, keep walking with a few exceptions:

1. You have a local with you who can point out which vendors have not been shut down for botulism in the last 78 hours or are not fronts for albino pygmy sex traffickers.
2. The vendor sells soft pretzels heated over a charcoal flame. Not a gas flame. That is the Devil’s fuel firing a soulless conflagration.
3. You are drunk. Which is what many of you will be come the wee hours. I may still not be able to explain exactly what that vendor was selling outside the Hilton at BlogHer ‘10 that had all of us lined up for a block (may have been Middle Eastern cuisine; may have been Tender Vittles in flavorful dead hooker sauce) but after 5 straight hours of alcohol IVs, it was deeeeeee-lish.

The prices

Many visitors to NYC succumb to street food for no other reason, besides drunkenness, than that’s all they can afford. Don’t let this never-ending recession fool you into thinking prices of anything have been cut to boost tourism. You are still going to pay $9.47 for a travel tube of toothpaste at Duane Reade or $13.86 for a warm bottle of Miller Lite at the hotel bar.

Your solution: find some rube conference attendee tourist and steal his/her credit cards. Wall Street brokers and Donald Trump do it all the time!

The crime

No worries. After reading this, you are no longer a rube tourist!

The bloggers

Oh, yeah. You are allegedly going there for the conference, aren’t you?

Stay calm. Most of them don’t bite, at least not in public, but who am I to judge their turn-ons. Not that I know anything about those blogger turn-ons, My Love!

If you see a blogger you admire and want to meet, don’t be shy – say hi. Be polite, friendly and smile. SMILE! No matter how “big” she is in the blogosphere, the blogosphere is not the whole world. Chances are she’ll be as happy to meet you as you are her.

If not, her loss, not yours.

The men

There will be a few of us there. Seriously.

I can’t vouch for every one of us, but those I know are there to socialize with blogging buddies of both genders or do conference-like stuff (networking, find future advertisers, drink heavily then wonder what was in the street food we ate the night before), not to cause a commotion or get into the Sisterhood’s traveling pants.

We support broads who blog, birds who tweet, fillies with followers, etc. and so on. We are one in the blogosphere.

We just pee differently.

+ + +

So, remember, if you are at BlogHer next week and you see this guy:

You didn’t see me. You saw character actor Skip Hinnant dressed as The Boy from The Electric Company skit, "Love of Chair," from the early 1970s. Get his autograph! He plays me in my avatar and blog header.

Look for this guy:

Corn not included.

Who am I kidding? Of course, it’s included.