April 12, 2006 - Place, Win, and Show Up

For those of you who don’t know, Cellar 205 is a local cooperative winery located just down the street from Red’s, in what is sometimes called the Funk Zone. Several small local winemakers share the equipment and the tasting room that populate the space of an old tire store. It’s a refreshing dose of uniqueness in a world (town) that’s turning more homogenous every day.

Ironically, this most local of places is popular with tourists, but doesn’t get its fair share of local traffic. Yesterday evening’s event was no exception. Pretty much the only people who showed up at Cellar 205 for the March Ed-Ness Award ceremony were the winners. All the other people who had toiled and suffered, trying to figure out the locations of the pictures all month, decided not to show.

Maybe our dedicated Edhat subscribers didn’t show up because the opportunity to meet the Ken Jennings of Santa Barbara wasn’t great enough motivation to risk the weather and the fight traffic to get to the ceremony during the happy hours of 5 to 6 in the evening.

Maybe our subscribers didn’t feel comfortable crossing the line between the anonymity of an online community to the underwear-on-the-clothesline openness of the real world.

Or, maybe the crowd is beginning to realize that Ed never shows up for these public events. Yesterday was the same old story. He said that he was counting BMWs in Isla Vista, but he has yet to produce any numbers.

For those of you who weren’t there (i.e. most of you), it was short, intimate, and friendly. The three winners, two of whom the dedicated staff of edhat.com had never met, were kind-hearted and friendly. They were presented with trophies and goodie bags full of great stuff from our sponsors. While proud of their performance in the month-long contest, they all were open to the notion that maybe they had taken it a bit too seriously. The word “obsessive” was spoken a couple of times.

Although there were only a handful of people at Cellar 205 yesterday, counting them proved problematic. Should the dedicated staff be counted? And, what about the people associated with the Cellar? Were they there for the ceremony, or just there?

Ed decided not to count the staff, and only to count the Cellar 205 person who was there to tell us that Doc (4th place) and Bargs (6th) wanted to come, but couldn’t. We also decided not to count Goodstix (5th) and LinnyG (11th) who showed up late. So, the final count was seven.

In yesterday’s contest, most contestants guessed way high. Johnny B, however, guessed seven exactly. He wins an Edhat t-shirt, just like the t-shirts we gave away to the winners of the March Ed-ness contest.

Finally – in addition to Cellar 205 who kindly provided the venue yesterday and bottles of wine for the winners, we would also like to thank the other sponsors of March Ed-Ness: