Thanks to all who came to the acroyoga session with Sandhi Ferreira & DJ EKO. Photos by Serko Artinian.
SXSW 2013 Event Picks
SXSW 2013 is here again. Most folks from New York are just happy to get a break from the cold weather. With 250,000 people running around (mostly drunk), it can be totally overwhelming. Nevertheless, it’s the place to be in March.
Also bikes are crucial at SXSW! Register here to get your free bike at SXSW. The bike pick up is at the southwest corner on Red River & Cesar Chavez. 
There’s plenty to learn from event marketers who are promoting their brands, even from junk food companies with massive advertising budgets. These free events typically require 15 minutes of waiting in line and giving organizers your email address.
Follow @SXSWPartyList for nonstop updates. For those with enough energy to hit all these events after long days full of panels and workshops, here are some highlights:
Flavorpill is partnering up with Windows (of all brands) and a ton of folks to do cool yoga and active events during the conference. Reggie Watts is a very prolific dude, check out his performance (not sure why its in the middle of the day) on Monday, March 11 1:30pm – 3:30pm) RSVP HERE
Comedian. Musician. One-man experimental theater troupe. And the man with the best afro around. Yes, it’s Reggie Watts, our favorite 21st century polymath — there are few artists more multi-talented and consistently intriguing than Watts, which is why we’re super excited to have him perform at the Flavorpill Sanctuary — along with a DJ set from the always wonderful Neon Indian. Get laughs, snacks, cocktails, fresh juice and tunes, all powered by Windows 8 and General Assembly.
#FEED powered by Twitter hosted by The Meta Agency at AMOA Arthouse at the Jones Center is going hard this year with some major events. I’m always amazed that an experimental artist like Flying Lotus gets so much love. I assume he just blows minds as DJ. RSVP HERE.
The always inspiring Flying Lotus takes the decks at the spectacular @NIGHT event, powered by #FEED. But this is no simple DJ gig (although, even a simple DJ gig from Flying Lotus, on their Funktion One soundsystem, would be pretty rad). Tonight, the artist presents a fully immersive AV show to go along with the music. And if that’s not enticement enough, you also get sets from TOKiMONSTA, Teebs, and B.Lewis.
Very nice souful/housey free mixtape download promoting an undoubtedly upscale NYLON party at the W Hotel, which is not exactly my scene, unless this particular event somehow avoids being pretentious (damn near impossible at the W Hotel). However, if this artist is playing funky soulful house music all night, I’m there! RSVP HERE.
What’s over-the-top marketing without Red Bull? This drink is really bad for you, gets people way too wasted and it’s pretty much like snorting coke. Yet they always come through with ridiculous online marketing campaigns and new underground music showcases. 120 hours drinking Red Bull would definitely kill you! RSVP HERE.
What would the world do without VICE? I sure as hell wouldn’t know about the Columbian Devil’s Breath, ie. the most dangerous drug on the planet that turns people into zombies. Of course, VICE has to be making commotion at SXSW. They just updated their site with two gigantic flyers that have a crap load of logos and artists on them (like Snoop Lion who finally dropped the bitches and hoes crap in favor of “One Love”). I’m sure the line will be 4000 miles long anyway but you still have to try. RSVP info here.
For Reverb’s third party at SXSW we’ve decided to continue the trend of making our bash bigger and better every year with established national acts and the upcoming bands everyone is talking about. In association with our friends at the UMS, we’ve got national music, including the Hush Sound, High Highs, UME, Man Without Country and Slow Magic. We’ve also booked a few upcoming Denver acts like Achille Lauro, the Knew, School Knights and In the Whale to play at the 2013 SXSW Reverb Party in Austin, Tex., on March 16 at the Dirty Dog Bar.
March 02 / 2013
Dumbo Start-up Lab Demo Day
The MERJ team presented at Demo DAY at Dumbo Start-up Lab, our start-up co-working space in Dumbo, Brooklyn. We were very excited to present with gluten-free foods provider, gfreely and event crowd sourcing platform Picatic from Canada. An angel investor from NYC Seed, a VC from FF Venture Capital, (both investors in our competitor) and a journalist from The Next Web were the panelists for the evening.
February 27 / 2013
March 22nd MERJ AcroYoga Session with Sandhi Ferreira + DJ EKO
Join us for another playful group yoga session with Sandhi Ferreira + music by DJ EKO rescheduled due to the blizzard to Friday March 22nd from 8-10:30 pm at Om Factory in Union Square, NYC.
The MERJ Acroyoga event offers a very casual and relaxing group experience. If you love yoga, you’ll love doing it with a partner. We had a blast at our first group Acroyoga session in November. Check out the photos here.
This event is FREE for singles who sign up as NEW MERJ members. Just sign up to RSVP @ www.merj.us!
Couples are $25 for two tickets. Purchase tickets here>
About the Instructor:
Sandhi Ferreira has been practicing Yoga for the past 16 years and aerial acrobatics for the past 6 years. She is an advanced certified Jivamukti Yoga teacher as well as a professional aerial dancer. She experienced her first Partner Yoga workshop in 1998 and then met her Acroyoga family in 2001. What attracted her most to Acroyoga is the depth of supported playfulness that the practice offers. Through this practice, she has discovered the perfect way to share her love of the healing strength of both yoga and acrobatics.
DJ EKO is a SF Bay transplant and has DJ’ed at lots of yoga parties and dance music events.
What is AcroYoga? It is a physical practice which blends elements of yoga, acrobatics and the healing arts. These three ancient practices form the foundation of a practice that cultivates trust, connection and playfulness between partners.
January 02 / 2013
It’s not OK, OK Cupid
One of my favorite sites (that miraculously still believes in legitimate journalism) Salon.com, recently wrote a funny article called “The World’s Worst Online Daters” about annoyed singles documenting the worst of the worst from the online dating scene through various blogs and social media. Anti-dates & the Annals of online dating are putting some pretty sad excuses for men on blast. Maybe they’ll get word that their half-ass attempts at attracting someone are providing some quality entertainment to the rest of the world. You got to wonder if they will learn from this and try a tiny bit harder next time.
Awesome dudes from Antidates
The Salon article may be bad press for OK Cupid, but they could also use it as free market research. The tumblr blog called “Its not OK, OK Cupid“, asks users to submit their horror stories - ”I know I’m not the only one getting wack messages from people on OkCupid. Send me yours too, or, as one douche canoe put it - I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”. You also have to wonder if OK Cupid is going to start blocking certain people, I mean, that might help their situation. Though I’m not sure if they really care about their rep at this point. The few weeks I was on OK Cupid I racked up at least 3 horror stories. It was by far, one of the biggest wastes of my time, next to my junior high “Texas History” class. (Remember the Alamo!)
Here at MERJ, we are tasked with creating a tool for a community of singles tired of this kind of worthless cheeseball crap. I’m here to remind you, don’t give up, there is always hope. For those who have outgrown the bar scene and are really looking for a positive experience, try activity based dating. Its definitely something different. Although we are just getting started, through word of mouth and fun events, and a little bit of TLC we can build a community that connects passionate people.
December 07 / 2012
Photos from the MERJ Launch Party + AcroYoga Event
Photos by Jess Jackson of the AcroYoga Session with Sandhi Ferreira with music by DJ EKO
Like us on Facebook and/or Join the MERJ meetup group to receive info about our next event and discover fun activities + a partner in NYC & San Francisco.
November 20 / 2012
MERJ Launch Party Nov. 17th
Sat. November 17th, 7pm-11:30pm
MERJ + Alphabet City Sanctuary
Invite you to The MERJ Official Launch Party!
AcroYoga Session with Sandhi Ferreira 8-9:30
Music by DJ EKO
Doors at 7pm
Located at the Sixth Street Community Center at 638 East 6th Street NY NY 10009
F train to 2nd Ave, walk east
Continue to the launch event page to get the details!
October 08 / 2012
Pinterest is Brilliant
Blogging for your company is challenging (unless you have great content to blog about like Soundcloud ). If you read the blogs about what you are supposed to be blogging about, its generally supposed to be a topic that your audience would find interesting – in our case, active & creative lifestyles and doing fun things with a partner.
Besides Flipboard, clearly the front runner in amazing apps, I spend most of my time (while waiting in long lines) checking out Pinterest’s iOS app. For the creative person who constantly needs inspiration from nature and can’t really travel much, or needs ideas for photo/video shoots etc, Pinterest is a dream. Its the first app that actually makes me feel good (as opposed to depressed – which is another topic all to itself, how may times have I heard “Facebook make me feel bad or annoyed because people “over share”). Plus Facebook’s mobile app pretty much sucks. Pinterest is less about sharing your real time life experiences and more about creating an archive of high quality inspriational images. At least it is for me, apparently their monetization plan is of course based on hyper-consumerism. I will admit I did buy one pair of Free People boots after I saw it posted on pinterest but shoes are definitely not what I repin.
I’m sure you’ve heard it before, Pinterest is brilliant, especially on your iPhone/iPad. Its an incredible archive of classic photography from the 60′s, highly sharable and educational infographics, breath-taking photos of wildlife that will probably be extinct in ten years thanks to environmental terrorism and swimming holes on the other side of the world that are on on your list of places to visit before you die.
September 07 / 2012
All the single folks… help us, help you!
Are you an active single person that hasn’t had much luck with online dating? You could help us out tremendously by taking a few moments to fill out this very short 10 question survey. The idea is to simply help us, help you. Online dating does not have to be lame, folks. Trust us.
Check out the “How it Works” video for more about MERJ.
April 17 / 2012
SXSW Interactive 2012
The secret is out (actually its been out for quite a while given the 30K+ attendees). Start-up fever has hit the mainstream and everybody who is any body (who is starting yet another tech company) will be in Austin in March. SXSW interactive has grown substantially and is featuring more and more TED Talk type of panels (but much more affordable). Geeks and tech heads once again get a chance to communicate with both technical and non technical folks by discussing topics such as HTML5 for film: Leading Edge or Bleeding Edge which is a panel that merges film and interactive, one of the more interesting panels. Consumer Patterns Revealed by Dating Site insiders presented by How About We founder and the VP at eHarmony looks interesting as well (minus the 9:30 am factor). One of my favorite panels is Social Media Is a Bubble and SXSW Is a Fad. The panel aims to prove something we all suspect; “that Groupon cannot sustain growth, and the valuations of current social marketing stocks are not sustainable”.
There are also new mentor-ship meetups such as the one held by Dreamit Ventures, a start-up accelerator program, as well as the official SXSW accelerator program where start-ups get 30 seconds (ok it just feels like 30 seconds) to pitch their not so simple ideas. The speakers are very diverse; from the CEO of NYC based Turntable.fm who conveniently gets to promote his start-up with a panel called Turntable.fm The Future of Music is Social to one of my old bosses, an eccentric ex-music industry dude, Steve Stoute whom I worked with at Carol’s Daughter.
March 05 / 2012
