The Flavour of Cool

Jul 26th 2007

Can e-mail newsletters recommending cultural events in the world’s big cities maintain their credibility as they grow?

THIS Monday in New York, those so inclined could have toured Brooklyn’s pizzerias, sweated to “outer-planetary” dub or attended a modern recasting of “Eurydice”. But which was worth your time? Deciding what to do in any big city can be difficult, making it tempting to stay in and catch up on e-mail instead. But that might in fact be the answer. Two companies—Flavorpill in America and le cool in Europe, acting separately—publish free, weekly e-mails that narrow the torrent down to the two dozen very best events.

There are plenty of places to look for reviews and recommendations, but they can be unreliable or prone to manipulation. And they do little to address the problem of volume: Time Out New York, a listings magazine, listed nearly 500 options for Monday alone. That is why Flavorpill and le cool have opted to provide “filtered cultural stimuli”, as Sascha Lewis, one of Flavorpill’s founders, puts it. A stable of unpaid contributors selects events and writes recommendations. Part-time staff editors then assemble the listings. “It’s about understanding quality within genres, not about specific genres,” says Lisa Hix, the editor of Flavorpill San Francisco. The result is an eclectic, catholic style that, its editors believe, does its best to distil excellence from cultural chaos.

Read it on the Economist’s site…

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