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Long live the fourth estate!

BioDynamo

17:10 / 25.07.03

Free snacks, free entry to the crappiest festival ever, unlimited use of the internet, loads of soft drinks in the summer heat.

I love being a representative of the media, or pretending to be.

What's the name of the UK film... Human Traffic? where one of the characters gets himself into a club by pretending to be a scene journalist. You should all do it, it's FUN! Forge your own press cards, get a fax to send out letterhead faxes with, get loads of free food and entertainment!

Anyone else out there enjoying a life of free lunches?

I, Libertine

17:47 / 25.07.03

Not yet, but I'd like more details on how I can!

pomegranate

17:48 / 25.07.03

i remember in high school a friend tried to get backstage at a pavement show ahead of time by getting in touch w/matador and saying he wrote a zine called pants. pants! that's excellent.

My Mom Thinks I'm Cool

04:45 / 26.07.03

Got in to see E3, a big video game conference in LA where you can see everything before it comes out. Normally a couple hundred bucks, but we made a web page with my name on it that had a review of a video game (and a bunch of business cards I never had to use), I got in free and got to see extra "press only" stuff.

My business cards describe me as "senior paradigm actualization manager".

BioDynamo

07:05 / 26.07.03

Gin: I guess you need two things: a press identity and some way of figuring out what events are available.

The press identity is pretty much what pants describes above. A few business cards, a simple yellow card saying "press" with your identity on (your "name" and the "media you work for"). I usually use this really old Indymedia press card, if anything. And a fax for sending press accreditation applications.

Where to go? I guess if you just want free food, the annual meetings of large but inoffensive corporations (chocholate producers, preferrably) should be quite easy to find out about on their web-site, usually with press contact details included. Specific product launches could be harder to find out about without access to some newswire... Big festivals or other music events. Your favourite band's concerts. Free entry to art shows, maybe? Theatre? All yours, for free, choose decadence!

rizla mission

10:24 / 26.07.03

Anyone got any ideas for how I could blag free records? good ones that is..

Fist Fun

18:15 / 26.07.03

Ah yes, press fraud blagging. Spent a summer in Edinburgh getting into loads of stuff for free because this guy had a "press card" and was doing "reviews" for a german magazine.

That was great fun. The trick was just to be totally brazen. We used to, or rather he would walk up to the front of queues have a few words with the person at the door and then we would waltz on through.

I'm not sure I'd have the guts to actually do that myself though.

Sax

09:46 / 28.07.03

As a genuine member of Her Majesty's Press, I deplore all this fradulent blagging of stuff that I have worked very hard to blag myself.

So far: Holidays to France, Japan, and Boston; Germany vs Croatia at Old Trafford during Euro 96; about four Glastonbury Festivals, two Readings, three Leeds Festivals, the Stone Roses at Spike Island; gigs too numerous to mention; ditto books and CDs; the autograph of Kenny (R2D2) Baker; a stay at the Metropolitan Hotel in London with free entry to the Met Bar; the undying respect of the world.

Oh, and for some mysterious reason, about half a dozen Durex Performa condoms in the past two weeks.

Jub

10:04 / 28.07.03

Even easier than blagging into events like this, is getting into gallery openings. You can easily find out about new showings in private gallerys. On their opening night it's usually free booze, ans whilst it is usually a ticket only affiar, everyone is so afraid of offending anyone else, they will keep their distance, you just have to breeze in and look like you belong there.

Used to do this all the time (about once a month) but to be honest I haven't done it for about 6 months; the last one was at a gallery in W1 who had the new collection from Carl Laubin (who did "Le Classement De 1855") and me and another random blagger managed to be embarrassed out of there after we accidentally insulted the artist and most of his paintings. But we were very drunk on their wine so it was okay overall.

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