Well, you knew it would happen eventually.  With such a legendary Parade Day, it stands to reason that Binghamton would in time receive federal recognition for throwing one of the most kick-ass St Patrick’s Day celebrations in the country–nay, the world. (Never mind that we do it 2 weeks early.)

Mayor Matthew T Ryan has been invited to the White House to “join President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, fellow elected officials, and other community leaders” in commemorating St Patrick’s Day. Clearly, Barack’s hoping he brings a little of the Parade Day spirit to DC. (Please remember open container laws on the White House lawn, people.)

It’s not clear if the Prez and the Mayz will get any one-on-one face time, but if they do, one can’t help but wonder what they might discuss. So of course I’ve come up with a few possibilities…

* Barack Obama is a basketball fan. And Mayor Ryan is quite tall. Clearly, they will be discussing Obama’s NCAA picks.

* Barack Obama wants to go down in history as the green President; Mayor Ryan wants to be seen as a green Mayor; Far East Movement–whose biggest hit is about the sexiness of a fictional "G6" jet–is coming to Binghamton University. Obama and Ryan will discuss pop culture’s glorification of energy-inefficient forms of transportation and take a symbolic ride around the rose garden on a two-person electric-powered scooter (built by GM).

* Barack Obama has been accused on conservative blogs of not being an American citizen. Mayor Ryan has been accused by crazed anonymous web forum posters of not really living in Binghamton. The two will hold a beer summit on how to establish undeniable proof of residency, citizenship and lack of socialist sympathies.

Oh, to be a clover on the lawn of the White House celebration. Sadly, if the two actually do speak, we’ll probably never know what words are exchanged. But we do have the OFFICIAL word about what’s going on from the City:

Mayor Matt Ryan tomorrow will join President Barak Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, fellow elected officials and other community leaders from around the country to commemorate St. Patrick’s Day in a ceremony at the White House.

“It’s an honor to commemorate this occasion at the White House with the President, Vice President and other leaders from around the country,” said Mayor Ryan. “Binghamton has a rich Irish heritage and a strong tradition of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, and I look forward to representing our community and learning about others.”

MORE FROM THE CITY

UPDATE: The County has extended the state of emergency until 5 PM; County offices are closed. A number of people asked me over Twitter and Facebook what a state of emergency means to people whose employers are expecting them to come in. I asked the county exec’s office if it’s illegal to drive:

"It literally means ‘only emergency personnel on the roads’ but there are other critical staff at various operations in the county–non government related. If stopped they would need to prove they are critical personnel." - Darcy Fauci

Andrew Block from the City (also under a state of emergency), when asked if it is illegal to drive, responds:
"It is, unless somone has an exemption, e.g. emergency vehicle."

As I write this, I can hear the motor of my landlord’s snowblower whirring away outside my window, trying to clear a path in the driveway.  In some ways, a pretty futile effort.  There’s 16 inches of untouched snow on my tiny dead end street and we’re waiting patiently for a plow to come rescue us. (The key word here is patiently. Snow plows don’t run on magic, people.)

Actually, my whole morning’s been pretty futile—I rolled out of bed at 4 AM to try and get to work. After a quick shower, I discovered that it was absolute folly to think my car would ever make it out to a major road… (Though it is worth mentioning that the major intersection down my block actually WAS well-plowed.)

I stumbled through the foot and a half of snow to the top of the hill, somehow imagining if I made it off my block I’d find a way in. 4 different cab companies refused to pick me up. A guy in a jeep pulled over to see if I needed a ride and then laughed when he found out I wanted to get to Vestal. A city plow stopped to honk at me, indiciating that I was getting in the way of the plowing. Finally, I slinked back into my apartment and went on-air from my apartment for a few minutes until Lori got to work.

Who knew that Snowpocolypse 2011 would grind Greater Binghamton to a halt this morning? Well, WBNG’s Andrea Michalenicz did. While the rest of us spent yesterday pitying ourselves for having to return to work Monday morning, Andrea knew that most of us probably wouldn’t make it.

Yesterday afternoon, Andrea posted to her Facebook page that she was updating snow totals and we were likely to get 14 inches.  Maybe you’re not friends with Andrea on Facebook, but you can always check her forecasts at http://www.wbng.com/weather . And OK, maybe Bing can be a bit behind the times when it comes to online tech, but there’s a few other resources you can use to beat the media at it’s own weather-reporting game…

TWITTER HASHTAGS #bingsnow AND #bgmsnow
What’s a twitter hashtag? It’s a way of labeling the "subject" if your tweet so that you can link it up with all the other tweets about the same topic. I’m not entirely sure, but I think our local snow tag started as #bingsnow until the Press & Sun decided to change it to #bgmsnow . Either way (you can use both), if you want to get on-the-street info about road conditions, snow totals, and closings piecemeal from twitter, just go to twitter.com and search for the hashtag. If you didn’t know what I hashtag was, go practice now so you know for next time. (And then you can drop the term in casual conversation at chamber of commerce mixers–I promise, you’ll get freelance web design offers you’re totally unqualified for.)

http://twitter.com/binghamtonmayor
OK, he’s not Newark Mayor Cory Booker yet (which is probably a good thing—with all the tweeting, how much mayoring could Booker actual be doing), but Mayor Ryan HAS set up a twitter address to address city situations like snow emergencies.

Last night at 10 PM, @binghamtonmayor tweeted: Plows + salt trucks out tonight + tomorrow, starting w/ emergency routes, then moving to side streets. Concerns? Call DPW Dispatch 772-7020.

Then at 7 AM this morning: City Hall opening at 11am today due to snow. Police, Fire and DPW to report to work as scheduled. Stay tuned for more updates.

After seeing lots of FB/Twitter traffic about the roads, I sent a quick message to the City for comment and got this response:

“It’s going to be a very busy day. We have all our available plows on the streets and we ask that citizens contact us directly with urgent concerns.”

In fact, AS I write this, I just got another tweet from @binghamtonmayor telling me that City roads are closed to all but emergency vehicles till 5 PM.

http://twitter.com/ny_broome
This is where you can get all those fun flood alerts… But it also told me this morning as soon as the County Executive declared a state of emergency—the one that told us all to stay off the roads till 10 AM.

Star 105.7 School Closing Page
http://www.binghamtonstar.com/pages/snowclosings.html
This is the fun happy page that I update with all the area school closings and delays. If we miss something, hit us up on http://www.facebook.com/star1057

@PSBJennifer
There’s a ton of reporters you can follow over at the Press & Sun. (See @PSBChrisKocher for fun stuff he’s heard on the scanner or @PSBChrisStrub for occasional breaking concert news)  But Jen jumps out of bed at the crack of dawn to bring us the early updates. She’ll let you know all the weather-realated stuff that’s been called into our local paper…

Now we’re CONSTANTLY getting inquiries about whether or not BU and BCC have closed.  Don’t call us; check twitter.com/binghamtonu and http://www.sunybroome.edu/.

PS, Broome CC DOES have a twitter, but as of 8:45 AM, it had no info on snow closings… @sunybroome (Maybe they should get on that?)

Anyway, after all that, here’s the important info I’ve gathered from all my online scouting:

• * Broome is in a state of emergency until 10 AM and only emergency vehicles should be on the roads. County offices open at 11.
• * City of Binghamton is in a state of emergency UNTIL 5 PM. Everybody should stay off the roads in Bing, the Parking Ramps are free today and tonight, residents are free to park in city ramps, and alternate parking is in effect. City offices are closed by the emergency folks still need to go in.
• * The snow will taper off, but now we have to worry about potential flooding. Aflood warning is in effect for the Susquehanna at Conklin, Windsor, Vestal and Waverly.

Stay safe, stay warm, and stop whining about the plows. THEY’RE COMING. This is why we HAVE states of emergency. So you can get into your jammies and tell your boss you’re not coming in. (PS, I just heard some plowing activity out my window… going to investigate.)

Read the rest of this entry »

So if you don’t know that hip-hop artist Drake is coming to Bing U on October 1st, you obviously haven’t been Facebook stalking me.  Which is frankly unacceptable.  Start right away.

Drake is famous for a bunch of reasons. He can sing, he can act, and he was a regular on Canadian teen drama ‘Degrassi:  The Next Generation’.  But perhaps the coolest piece of trivia I’ve discovered about Drake is that he’s become so famous as a singer/rapper that his real-world persona is actually referred to by name by CHARACTERS in the 2010 Degrassi TV movie.  Characters who knew the guy that Drake PLAYED on the show.  As in, “ ‘Hey, let’s go see Drake in concert.’  ‘Wait, you mean the hip-hop artist slash actor who pretended to be our wheelchair confined high school friend for all those years?’ ‘Yeah, him!’ “

Trippy.

Anyway, if you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years.  Or if you’re one of those people who “only listens to Morning Edition”—yeah, I know who you are—here’s a YouTube of one of Drake’s big singles…

Even though the news of his impending concert was leaked to some OTHER news outlet first—ahem, I don’t hold a grudge—I asked BU’s “Lord of the Concert” Aaron Cohn for a brief interview about how one gets a mega-gigundo-hyper-famous superstar rapper to come to lil ole Bing.

PS: If you need any proof of how fabulously famous Drake is, a recent free South Street Seaport show to promote his new album had to be canceled when it attracted 25,000 fans instead of the expected 10,000.  Of course, Drake was supposed to perform in conjunction with Hanson.  So you take your pick as to who the real draw was…  I mean, that Kevin Jonas is dreamy.

What’s that, you say?  Kevin’s not in Hanson?  Then who the hell are the Hansons?

Oh crap.  That ‘Mmmbop’ song.  25,000 people?  Just think how many more would’ve shown if they had canned Hanson in advance.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: BingPop has received assurances that Hanson will NOT be appearing with Drake at BU.)

I always wonder what the politics of choosing an act for a college show are like.  Is there a vote? Is there a smoke-filled back room?  Do you flip a coin?
Haha.  There are certainly politics involved, and the smoke-filled back room with just a few people used to be the place these types of decisions really were made. It was hit and miss.  In the last year, however, we’ve started leveraging technology and making the process more data-driven, with online surveys distributed to the entire student body.  In short, we figure out what the ticket price of various shows would be, and we ask students to rank each of our choices from 1-5.  Needless to say, Drake finished pretty darn high.

Beyond that, things like artist fee/value, tour routing (if they’re coming through NYC, the northeast, etc., we can usually get a much better deal and the artist is more likely to accept a college date), and little things like artist buzz play a factor.  I also put a lot of weight on the gut instincts of my concerts chair and entire programming board…often times they’re the deciding factor when we’ve got tough choices to make.

Of course, the other half of the coin is the greater Binghamton community.  We really haven’t figured out a great way to gauge what they would like to see.  So on that front, we kind of need to go with what the students want (since that’s what we can obtain data on), and hope the community gets excited as well. 

What are the dirty details re when tickets go on sale to public vs students; and prices?
You got your story right- tickets are on sale online 10am Thursday, September 2nd.  There will be a nice big link on sa.binghamton.edu.  They’re all general admission.  We managed to keep the prices really fair for this one- $36 each (plus a $2 facility fee and $2 convenience charge).  That said, this show is 2 days after two sold out dates at Radio City Music Hall, where the cheapest ticket to be had was $56 and the good seats were $106.  And since the Events Center isn’t that big, everywhere in the building is going to be a good view.
Since BU undergrads pay an activity fee for events like these, their tickets are slightly cheaper- $28, and also available atsa.binghamton.edu.

Backstage riders are legendary.  Any stories you can share about past acts and what kind of fun stuff you had to get for ‘em?  You don’t necessarily have to tell us the NAMES…
We haven’t had anything too legendary in recent years…of course, artists ALWAYS ask for alcohol (often fancy types), which we cannot buy with state dollars.  We’ve also been asked for raw kombucha, goji berries, "non-domestic" chocolate, baby wipes, and deodorant to name a few.  Whatever it takes to keep the artist happy…we pride ourselves on being the most professional programming boards around.

Drake is a pretty big get?  How hard is it to negotiate getting the show to Binghamton?
Again, there’s always a variety of factors, and a lot of times it comes down to routing.  We are fortunate being just three hours from New York City, and that’s how we’ve swung some of our biggest acts in recent years like Green Day and the Foo Fighters.  In terms of the negotiation, it is also tough because we fight hard to keep our ticket prices as low as possible on all of our shows, both for students and the community.  Fortunately, at the end of the day the artist has the same goal as we do; pack the house.  So in terms of negotiation, we usually hit a happy medium in terms of costs. 
 
Funny thing about Binghamton: sometimes people go to a show not because it’s their favorite artist, but just cause it’s a BIG show that’s coming to town and we don’t get that many.  How do you describe Drake too, say, um, your Mom who might want to go see a concert in town?
Drake isn’t your typical rapper in a lot of ways.  Yes, his songs are catchy, and his album "Thank Me Later" was one of the biggest of the summer.  If you haven’t heard of him, take a listen on iTunes- there’s a reason he is so popular amongst young people right now.

But to my mom…honestly I would describe him as a "nice Jewish boy" because he is in fact Jewish (and had a Bar Mitzvah)! He is also Canadian, and started out as an actor playing the character Jimmy, a boy in a wheelchair, on the popular show "Degrassi." To any mom’s who are GLEE fans, I heard someone joke the other day that they planned to show up to the concert in a wheelchair with a "Team Artie" shirt on…thought it was pretty clever.

But in short, it’s guaranteed to be a fun show.  If you’re not familiar with Drake, but just want to head to an energy-filled concert, this may be one to check out.