So Over Debt

I’m sure some of you are probably tired of hearing about the Financial Blogger Conference, so I’ll try to make this my last post. At least for awhile.

I feel like I could tell stories about the conference every day for a year. Still, I promised 5 stories and I’ve only told two of them. The last three will be told as succinctly as possible, with the inclusion of some low-quality video.

We Encounter the Mafia

Last Saturday, a group of us decided to leave the hotel for real food. We asked the hotel shuttle driver, Nick (or Alfred, or Willy, depending on who you ask) for a recommendation. We decided on The Rosebud (pictured above), an Italian restaurant a few miles from the hotel.

On the way to the restaurant, Nick tells us that he used to be an attorney. We’re all looking at each other like, Really? Then why are you driving the shuttle for a hotel? And he tells us.

Years ago, our friend Nick had some Mafia connections. I’m not sure how it related to his law practice but I could take a few guesses. He was arrested, refused to be an informant for the police, and spent 15 years in prison. And our last-minute dinner reservations were courtesy of his friendship with some of his former buddies.

Now, I wasn’t sure I believed this story. I could see how the life of a hotel shuttle driver could get a little boring, and how it would be fun to freak out a vanload of young female bloggers. But then we entered the restaurant, where we were swept past a ton of people waiting for tables, seated, fed, and back in the shuttle within an hour.

I’m sure Nick received a twenty in his pocket for bringing The Rosebud some business. The food was awesome. But I couldn’t help wondering if we would be held hostage until he repaid some kind of Mafia debt.

Moral of the story: Be nice to people in the service industry. You never know how they came to do what they do, or what kind of connections they have.

SnowglobeGate

Can I talk about the swag bags for a second?

On Thursday night and Friday morning, a group of us gathered in the bowels of the Marriott to help stuff swag bags. I thought this would be pretty easy - a couple of brochures, maybe some Post-it notes and pens…

I was so wrong.

These messenger bags were stuffed with so much swag, we had to form an assembly line to stuff them. Plus we got other stuff throughout the conference. I came home with six t-shirts, four books, a mousepad, a rubber duck, a slap bracelet, sunglasses, the Personal Finance Calculator for Dummies (which I am SO excited about trying), two USB sticks, a reusable grocery bag, a journal, a million pens, some notepads, and about 150 handouts from various sponsors. And my favorite swag of all? Huge foam fingers from Budgetable that say “Blog On.”

Then there was the weirdest swag of all - a snowglobe from Regiftable.com. The snowglobe features a chick with some presents named “regifting Robin.” First of all, who the hell is Robin? Second, why would you hand out nearly 300 snowglobes to people who have to take a plane to get home? I think a few people managed to get theirs past airport security, but the majority left theirs either at the airport or the hotel. Since I drove, I was able to take mine home, but I really don’t know what to do with it now. MOST. RANDOM. SWAG. EVER.

Moral of the story: Think about swag before you give it out. Please.

THE STORM

Saturday night at John Barleycorn (where I met Kyle the douchebag), most of us spent the night in the upstairs bar/dance floor area, which was packed with bloggers and random people. There was also a bachelorette party going on.

There was this old dude dancing around who had to be in his sixties, if not older. He wore this old school silk jacket with THE STORM written on the back. Obviously we knew we were in the presence of greatness.

At one point during the night, Ashley from Money Talks and I were fortunate enough to receive moonwalking lessons from THE STORM himself. Between several drinks and my shoes, I was pretty much failing at doing the moonwalk. He gave up on me after a minute and (I think) succeeded in teaching Ashley. Later, we found out that THE STORM is well known in the Chicago area nightclubs.

Moral of the story: Old age is no excuse.

This video is terrible, but you do get a decent view of the jacket.