Flavorpill: A City Guide to Offbeat and Emerging Arts Scenes

Having thumbed through endless TimeOut Guides in cities around the world, I am familiar with how long it takes to pore over the fine print in entertainment and community event listings. And the promotional space is dominated by advertisers who can afford the most page space.

Instead of following the lead of advertisers, Flavorpill believes in the art it features on its pages. It chooses events and artists that its staff and writers think is cool. Simple as that. This sparely designed guide is a welcome relief from information overload. Having just moved to Miami, I subscribed to receive a weekly newsletter, to get a feel for what's available in this city. As I opened up this week's message in my inbox, the sub-heading read:

A city guide for those with little time, Flavorpill MIAMI features a hand-picked selection of cultural happenings, across art, music, film, theatre, dance, literature, and DJ events.

Portraits of predictable hipsters may come to mind, and those of us who don't care to put in the work required to stay on the inside edge of cool might roll our eyes at the uber-indie aesthetic of Flavorpill. Conformist nonconformists are easy targets, after all. However, I appreciate these suggestions, from the local music scene, in a slowly reviving downtown, in up-and-coming neighborhoods like the Design District. I look forward to the weekly magazine; it tells me as much about Miami, my new home, as it does about specific events that I'd like to attend. This is a city whose thriving arts scene recreates Latin American influences in its own image, blending and shaping a culture in a downtown just recovering from neglect.

The newsletter does have a quirky edge; each week the front page features graphic design and a color scheme that reflects the aesthetic of that particular city. And through Flavorpill's events filter, Miami feels more alive than the predictable tourist attractions and major events featured in newspapers. In other words, it is highly unlikely that this guide will feature the upcoming Jennifer Lopez/Marc Anthony concert - or any concert, for that matter - at the American Airlines Arena.

Created by Sascha Lewis and Mark Mangan in 2000, Flavorpill produces free weekly event guides for New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, London and Miami. Flavorpill publishes eleven email magazines across a range of the arts as well. Headquartered in SoHo New York, Flavorpill has experienced outsize growth since 2000, isince ts first basic text-only email. In 2006 the New York Times reported that "Flavorpill's number of subscribers has been doubling annually since the company started in New York six years ago, and now its family of 10 digital publications has 355,000 readers and projected revenues of $3.5 million this year."¹

Their staff writes the event listings, and their own editors' choice is the filter, not company policy, or even advertisers. Standards for choosing which events to feature are vague, indefinable. In articles about the magazine editors and writers could not articulate these criteria of cool beyond "you know it when you see it." But, this is deeper than quirkiness for its own sake. This week's email does feature exhibits at the Wolfsonian, and the Jewish Museum of Florida, well known museums in Miami. Rather, this is a choice to feature artists and an arts scene that is not conventional, not the concerts and events featured on huge banners along the US1. In this city, the predictable would cost too much for me anyway. Tickets to concerts at the American Airlines arena generally start at $45.

In the NYTimes article mentioned above, Jocelyn Glei, the 29-year-old group managing editor, said, "I would say the primary focus is on emerging culture of all kinds, there aren't really any parameters, the only overriding factor is that we really believe in the artist or the production - we really think something is great."

This earnestness, a belief in quality art - this is as much a committment to quality art as it is a desire appeal to a target demographic, following marketers' rules to do so. Flavorpill does not pass paid promotions or advertisements off as event listings. Other local event guides, such as the Miami NewTimes (a free paper), feature thousands of events, and online versions feature many dead links. This guide offers just enough information to consider; too much choice is overwhelming.

It does select events that fit its own ethos, and perhaps I like Flavorpill because my taste matches the editors'. But as a consumer whose array of available choices is wide, it makes sense that they produce something the target market will enjoy, that reflects my aesthetic tastes. Bland information and a ton of ads - I won't take a second look.

Wondering what to do, and fearing endless neon and reggaetón, I look forward to the Flavorpill e-zine each week. It's like asking friends for suggestions. I realize that it will take a while to settle in. But, instead of trying to cobble together bits of information, in this city where neon goes to die, as Lenny Bruce famously said, I have a guide that will help me venture out to find appealing, interesting things to do.