January 12, 2006
Introducing Overheard
Washington is a town that runs on background, on double secret cover information and fields of wild, grain-fed anonymice. Everyone knows what someone else said about something in D.C., and while we're always happy to receive tips on blockbuster scandals, sometimes you just want to chuckle to yourself about the guy next to you who's telling his buddy on the cell phone to meet him for drinks at Big Hunk. Enter DCist's Overheard.
A new concept it's not; feel free to check out Michael Malice's work in New York to see what we're going for, but we suspect the District has its own vernacular, its own idiosyncracies, its own public verbal pratfalls. And we want everyone to know about them. Simply send your choice lines to overheardindc at gmail dot com (we've linked to this address over on the left sidebar), and we'll publish them in a post when we get a nice collection or find a particularly jawdropping gutbuster. We don't want to know who said it (unless it's someone famous), and we don't want anything blatantly offensive.
Go now, and listen to your loud-talking neighbor.
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You might be interested in a series I've been doing right here in DC since December 2003 called "The Theatre of the Barely Socially Acceptable" --based on overheard cellphone conversations on the Metro and other very public places.
I followed that link and almost spit my coffee at the screen reading the overheard conversations. Funny reading, and this is a great idea. Look forward to seeing it.
Interestingly enough, Mr. Malice seems to own the web address www.overheardindc.com. You may be getting some competition on this feature sometime soon, or if you're really lucky, a questionable lawsuit for copyright infringement.
Looking forward to reading the entries, though!
All those overheard conversations are fake.
But I'd like to contribute something I heard in the men's bathroom today:
"DCists overheard in dc thing will not work"
Nate: Mike Malice is an old friend of mine, and a contributing writer for GothamistNYC. He's letting us run the Overheard feature in DC, as they have no plans to expand to other cities (yet!) In exchange, we credit them with coming up for it and link back to the OiNY site.
I have to agree with cynic. I think alot of the Overhead in NY quotes are made up.
Finally! My eavesdropping will pay off!
I'm going to go to the DCist happy hour and write down all the funny things I hear and then we'll have a wierd sort of meta thing going on.
That's too bad that he's authorized you guys to do it down here. I was really waiting for one of these (not that we'd ever get to see it, anyway): http://www.gawker.com/news/overheard-in-new-york/ideas-in-new-york-overheard-147768.php
I think that there's a version up for SFist. . .
You've given me an idea. I'll discreetly tuck my MiniDisc recorder into my jacket whenever I'm on Metro, and edit together some best-ofs.
overheard: "MiniDisc recorder"
You're right. DC is a goldmine.
You can go to http://www.livejournal.com/users/overheard_dc/ for a fledgling version of this.
Sarah ≥ Michael Malice
Overheard in New York did not come up with the idea. inpassing.org was around for several years before them. They do not own the format.