How Did 'the Lounge' Come About?

Someone asked me yesterday how the name "Lounge" came about for the JFP's social-networking efforts. It actually starts years before we returned to Mississippi. Back in the 1990s, while doing a technology column for a Colorado alternative paper, I adopted the name "Silicon Lounge" for the column. Then when Todd and I went to NYC in 1999 for me to attend graduate school, we didn't have a lot of time to see friends and network with new people. So I started an e-mail list ("the lounge list"), which invited friends old and new, and mostly from the media, to a once-a-month gathering in the back room of a bar on 9th Avenue, at 52nd, I think (in other words, midway for uptowners and downtowners). Then when we moved here in 2001, we started having Lounges here at Hal & Mal's to gather new friends. (I've always been a bit of a connector.) In 2002, we launched the paper, and the Lounge List (the e-mail list and the events calendar became an integral part of our social outreach).

What's funny is that our good friend (and former Lounger) Sherri Williams of The Clarion-Ledger did a story about The Lounge way back when. It came out right after we launched the paper (a fact that is buried deep in the story).

http://orig.clarionledger.com/news/0210/28/o01.html

They wrote then:

Segmented, separated and segregated pockets of poets, painters, performers and other artists from various backgrounds have been unconnected and unexposed to one another's work in Jackson.

But a quiet little gathering of artists and lovers of art has expanded into a cozy and comfortable way for them to connect and hopefully collaborate at The Lounge.

The unprecedented, informal, monthly gathering of multicultural, multigenerational, multidiscipline group of artists and friends meets one Thursday of every month at Hal & Mal's in the Oyster Bar.

At The Lounge, pedigree, experience, training, race, age, gender and other differences that tend to divide are transparent — talent, ideas and people are of primary concern.

This is still the goal for Lounge 2.0 as Todd is calling this social network, and we hope it sparks all sorts of groups and helps get people out to events in and around Jackson. Our events calendar will no longer be called The Lounge List, and we will still keep doing the Lounge events e-mail with events reminders, ticket giveaways and special invitations. However, let people know they should get involved here, too, because this gives you guys much more opportunity to promote your own stuff and interact, not to mention get special invitations and prizes offered nowhere else.

The Lounge has evolved again, and we're thrilled about it. Thanks for making it possible.