#100 interviews

Here are some great shots from my trip to the Bull Jagger Brewing Company. If you haven't yet, check out my write up for 100 Interviews about Portland's only lager.

I met Gaby Dunn when I was newly 18 and terrified of not making friends during my first week at Emerson College. Gaby was spunky with long, wavy hair and a tie-dye shirt. Her dad looked like Eric Clapton and her mom used to send giant care packages filled with Easy Mac to the suite she lived in. We tried to blame our first alcohol violation on her 15 year old sister who was visiting from Florida in the fall of 2006 - The Resident Assistants didn't buy it. Gaby is the type of person you always knew would do cooler things than you. She has the kind of drive and passion that comes from intelligence and a lifetime of pushing yourself. A little over a year ago Gaby told me about an idea for a blog. She was going to interview 100 types of people - people she had never met with stories she had never heard. Shit, I thought... that's a damn good idea. Why the hell didn't I think of that? And she did it. A year later, Gaby Dunn did something that most 20-somethings cannot say - she came up with an insightful and exciting idea, started it, stuck with it, finished it and created something truly amazing. A Village Voice award and a potential book deal later, Gaby is still running her site with a new, but familiar vision. After you are done reading this, check out 100interviews.com And until then, enjoy a very special My Year in Beer exclusive from the one and only, Gaby Dunn. - - - Sam Adams Boston Lager, Wachusett Blueberry, Harpoon IPA and Smuttynose IPA in Boston. Brooklyn Brewery in New York. Highland Gaelic Ale in Asheville, North Carolina. Abita Amber in New Orleans, Louisiana. Anchor Steam in San Francisco, California. Allagash White in Portland, Maine. Holy Mackerel in both Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and Greenville, South Carolina.   Whenever I’m in a new city, I always get the local beer.   No one ever told me to do this. It’s not something I read in a Zagat guide or saw on the Food Network. I’m not even a particularly good beer drinker, but I’m becoming a better one. About six months ago, I gave up drinking liquor because I realized that generally, the nights that ended in me black-out drunk and petting a police horse while screaming for my boyfriend to not let me forget that I was petting a police horse, always started with me ordering a gin and tonic.   In the absence of liquor, I now rely on beer and wine, both of which are delightful. With wine, I stick to the pinot noir no matter where I am. It’s simple, it’s tasty, it’s elegant and I heard Paul Giamatti wax poetic about it in Sideways. That movie was all about wine!   But with beer, I was at a loss. In college, my fake ID made me too nervous to get specific with an order. I’d always just stumble through, “Uh, right, yes. I will have one beer, please. Of whatever alcoholic beer you have cheapest, good tavern maiden. I am very familiar with beer ordering because I am obviously 24 years old! Wasn’t Saved by the Bell, a show we are both old enough to have enjoyed, hilarious? Okay, bye.”   My other options always sounded like lost ‘Harry Potter’ books: Natty Ice and the Mysterious Silver Keg! Then, I’d expelliarmus some vomit. Not ideal.   When I finally did turn 21, and could take my time with beer orders, I thought, like with agriculture or pizza delivery, why not strive for local.

It just feels respectful. If I’m visiting a city, I want to see all that city’s wares and goods. In New York, you get pizza. In Los Angeles, you get hamburgers. In Narnia, you get Turkish delights. And in a city that brews its own beer, I want to try that local concoction. In the past, exporting and importing were harder to do and so traveling to a new place often meant eating and drinking solely what was grown and brewed in that place -- even, and especially, if the fare was unfamiliar. I like that tradition of simplicity and adventure when it comes to beer. 

You’re supporting local, smaller businesses. Since you’re in a place, you should support the economy by purchasing beers that recycle that money back into the city. It helps boost revenue not only for that particular bar, but also for the local beer-seller rather than some national chain with no stake in the city. That’s not beer knowledge, that’s just economic logic. If you consume that beer, it means the beer-seller will get orders for more! You’re, in a small way, creating job security. It’s a gesture made in an effort to get tanked, but it’s still a thoughtful one.

It feels fresher to drink. Again, I’m no beer snob, but this just seems logical. Corporate beer sellers have to package and ship beer from the city it was made in to the city it’s being sold in. That means the beer has to travel. I don’t have science to back this up but local beer probably ends up being sold quicker and while it’s fresher. It always tastes better to my untrained tongue because it’s brewed for that city, for that mood, to taste delicious under those exact circumstances. For example, even though Sam Adams is a nationally sold beer, I bet it tastes better to drink it just blocks away from the Jamaica Plain brewery (where PS: my mom got so wasted with me and my roommate one time that a friend had to pick us up in his car).

        Gaby Dunn made all the right moves. She went to school for journalism and beefed up her resume and portfolio by writing for various news outlets, but when it came time for her graduation in 2009, the economy had tanked and so had the news industry—both of which now sit mostly in the same purgatory as they did then.

Dunn, like so many others in her cohort, took a job that wasn't quite in line with her career goals. She missed telling stories, and decided that if the news world didn't quite have room for her to share sources' stories, she'd do it on her own. And so 100 Interviews came to be.

Last October, Dunn set out to interview 100 different kinds of people—ranging from a one-hit wonder to a woman who pickets abortion clinics—in the span of a year. She set out to offer up their stories to the world on a blog hosted by Tumblr, and now, Dunn is fresh off the project and (at just 23 years old) is poised to sign a book deal.

Thanks to an interesting idea, a self-identified lack of inhibitions, and a whole lot of self-promotion, Dunn says she's changed the trajectory of her life and career—and she likes it that way.

I have to shine a light on this great project by journalist/comedian Gaby Dunn (it's also posted in the Boredom Feeder): 

ABOUT 100 INTERVIEWS

Every person you see on the street, on the subway, at the doctor’s office — every person has a story. In October 2010, I got to thinking, ‘How many of those stories do I really know? How many am I missing out on?’ So I sat down and made a list: 100 types of people I knew existed in the world but had never met. A transgendered person, someone who had been to prison, someone who had saved a life, a one-hit wonder, a psychic, someone from a third world country. The project that was born is 100 INTERVIEWS (www.100interviews.com). 100 Interviews is a blog by NYC journalist and comedian Gaby Dunn, wherein she (who is me) attempts to interview 100 brand new people in just one year. After working as a journalist since age 14, there were still people I’ d never had a conversation with. I was ready to set that right. One year. 100 brand new people. And for the past eight months, that’ s what I’ve been doing, looking up from the minutia of my own life and into another human being’s face. Since the project began, I have had coffee with my father and a recovering heroin addict, talked religion with a self-made millionaire, gotten drunk with an amputee, learned about fearlessness and lunacy from a Guinness World Record holder, and tried to civilly understand someone who pickets abortion clinics. I’ve befriended ‘ Goosebumps’ author R.L. Stine, sat in a closed reading of RENT cast member Fredi Walker-Browne’ s new play, had beers with Village Voice Editor-in-Chief Tony Ortega, and ambushed a taping of The Colbert Report to “interview” Mr. Stephen Colbert. “It’s like you’ve made the conscious decision to have a more interesting life,” my friend told me one night at a bar. And what an interesting ride it’s been. So come on — Look up from your iPhone and stop playing Angry Birds. This is serious.

For more on 100 INTERVIEWS: Listen here and read here.

Seen on: The New Yorker, The Village Voice, Salon, The Rumpus, Daily Candy, The Apiary, Refinery 29, Doll Mag, Examiner, The YU Commentator, and more.

ABOUT GABY DUNN

Gaby Dunn began working as a professional journalist when she was 14 years old, because her school got tired of her using the library’s Xerox machine to make her own “newspapers.” 

At 15, she was hired as a part-time news reporter for The South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s community news section after a year-long internship there. In college, she worked as a crime reporter for The Boston Globeand as a summer intern for ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.’

She graduated from Emerson College in 2009 with a degree in multimedia journalism and comedy writing and is an entertainment media editor for Huffington Post Media Group. She also helps to produce the WFMU radio show ‘Seven Second Delay’ and the connected live show at Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater in NYC.

Gaby is a stand-up and improv comedian, having performed in the Women in Comedy Festival, the Yale University Comedy Festival and the North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival. She also produces and co-hosts a monthly stand-up show at Birch Coffee in Chelsea called Mish Mosh, every second Thursday of the month.

The Village Voice named “100 Interviews” the ‘Best Blog on Tumblr’ at the 2010 Village Voice Web Awards. It has since gained thousands of readers and followers. It is currently on track to become a book.

Gaby likes space shuttles, old school rap, George Harrison and ghost-hunting. She hopes to one day hunt for George Harrison’s ghost in space.

Hey there. Thanks for checking out One Hundred Dates!

In one month, I will begin a quest to go on 100 dates in 1 year.  I’ll be writing about it here, on this blog, as well as posting the occasional video. It will be like reality television for my dating life except not on TV and with words instead of film, and me instead of celebrities.

If the idea sounds familiar to you, that’s because it’s modeled after Gaby Dunn's adventurous 100 Interviews, which you should be reading religiously. The only difference is that rather than interviews, I will be going on dates. Today is Gaby’s birthday, so I suggest you go to her site and follow her; it makes for a great gift.

And just like 100 Interviews, there’s a list of 100 dates that I plan to go on. Whether they revolve around the activity, location, or partner, all dates will be different and none will double count. I need help though. The list of 100 needs to be finalized, so please send ideas of new dates or let me know which dates you don’t care for by emailing me.

Over the course of the next month, this site will be tweaked and content will be added. You’ll see videos from myself as well as others on why I’m doing this and what people think of the idea.  In the meantime, check out the about section for an overview.

It's going to be a crazy ride. Tune in to watch me stumble and fall on my way to manhood.

Giddy up,