Last night, if you missed the ten thousand announcements, was Clam Night at the Eastern Point Lit House.
At our weekly meeting at the main Clam Headquarters board room last week, we made charts and graphs to estimate attendance. James broke out SPSS to do some regression analysis. We did not know what to expect.
What we got? A great group of people, and more folks than we expected – a fun, engaging, hilarious audience. It was made up of some of our best friends, some strangers, and people who have been supportive of us from day one – or in so many cases, day negative one – just urging us to get the Clam off the ground. I hate public speaking with a passion, but with a tiny bit of liquid courage, I was able to talk candidly – a big step for me. And that’s because I knew the crowd was having fun.
A Paisley-clad Jim Dowd in his native habitat, at a lectern talking animatedly.
All the Clamtributors were there. And I can’t say enough about how great this team is. Some of them appeared out of nowhere. Everyone brings something unique to the table and they’re all genuinely funny, amazing folks. A good team is everything. This blog would be impossible for one person to do. It would actually be impossible for Jim and I to be the only ones doing the Clam, what with the having families and working on multiple projects. I want to edge away from being sappy and shit, but we have had an immense groundswell of support from people who aren’t getting paid, know this will never turn a profit, but enjoy helping nonetheless. I can’t possibly thank everyone enough.
From left: Stevens Brosnihan, Amanda Cook, KT Toomey (ducking down awkwardly), Adam Kuhlmann, Jeremy McKeen, James Dowd, Len Pallazola, Brooke Welty. An amazing team.
Yesterday our all-time hits counter ticked past 300,000. Since the end of May. This seems like an unbelievable number, far above our best-case readership scenarios. For a blog that started as a Facebook dare between Jim and I (and we all know you can’t go back on a random Facebook dare), this has blossomed into a regular readership. A blog that has been quoted or linked to by Boston Magazine, the Globe, and Esquire. A meeting place for sarcastic, funny, smart folks.
We’ve realized that we’re filling a need here in Gloucester – maybe a need none of us realized we had until the Clam arrived. We have created a funny, smart, dialogue about this town. We laugh most days, we get serious some days. Sometimes we get hungover and our posts are kinda crappy. Sometimes people leave us amazing comments. Sometimes people leave us amazingly shitty comments. Sometimes people don’t like what we have to say, as if exposing Gloucester’s flaws means we hate the city instead of wanting to fix them and make the city better.
We’re already discussing another future Clam Night. The Lit House was a great setting. Clams Against Humanity was a huge hit, thanks to our beta testers. We’ll be offering it as a downloadable series of .pdfs for chump change as soon as we perfect it.
Thank you, all of you. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to write for you.
It is clear, by your fruit, that you are awesome! So much fun last night and so fun to read your blog. xo
<3
Reading aloud the anti-Clam comments (from the small of mind and thin of heart) – that you gracefully do not include on the Clam threads – made it all even more worthwhile. And underscored why The Clam is so necessary. And rewarding to read.
We didn’t know what to expect last night, and we were pleasantly surprised that we were welcomed so warmly by your crew. We had loads of fun! We will definitely join you folks again if given the chance.
So bummed I missed it. Keep on Clammin’! Hope to make the next one 🙂