Schnipper’s & Swagapalooza

I got an invite to this new event Swagapalooza, where they get a bunch of bloggers/twitterers together and give them free swag while people pitch their products …hoping for some PR out of it. The lady serving the wine was hooking me up. Where’s the food though? Why am I here? I see some cupcakes from Sweet Revenge, but with all this drinking during dinner time, it will not suffice. Maybe that’s the point …get us drunk and take advantage of us.

I’ve never seen so many people stuck to their phones in an audience. Twittering in full force. There was a guy pitching a bruise cream/patch and mentioned how his wife uses it for her eyes (…later explaining it works on the bags under the eyes). I couldn’t tell if it was a joke, but someone from the audience called him out for wife beating on the Twitter display behind him.

The most interesting idea (but poor pitch) was from Surprise Industries. You tell them a day and they send you to some location where something surprising will happen (someone’s marriage proposal, some crazy food experiment, etc). They hosted the after-party where they gave out the Miracle Fruit pills with lemons. More on that later.

I headed out of Swagapalooza with a big bag of swag, starving and looking for food. I kept walking into restaurants and walking out, drunk and indecisive. Chicken Bar, the place that houses Nathan’s, Church’s, Subway, Arthur Treacher’s, etc …Now that’s a mindfuck when you can’t make a decision already. I was pleading in my mind for Zach/Midtownlunch to help me out. Please Zach, help a drunk guy carrying a big bag of crap. Show me a sign! Then I saw this huge ass empty restaurant with big signs –Schnipper’s. I asked for the most popular item on the menu, the burger. The cashier asked me how I wanted it cooked. Medium Rare. Then I proceeded to the restroom where there was a wasted rich looking uptown lady maybe in her late 50’s. She walked into one restroom, saw the clogged up toilet and ran back out. Then someone came out of the next restroom and she let me cut. That was pretty nice, but I was thinking she was planning on doing her own damage and didn’t want me to suffer or at least know it was her.

I came back out for my burger and noticed the quality to be similar to fast food. It reminded me of machine pressed frozen patties. Not sure if it was, but it tasted of that quality. I didn’t feel good at all ordering it medium rare. Imagine going to Burger King and asking that your Whopper have a little pink on the inside. Schnipper’s takes “having it your way” a little too far.

After the fill me up and walking 14 or so blocks carrying a bag of swag, I ended up at the after-party, which was a bunch of booths with more vendors trying to sell their ware. But this group was mostly of the new age market. A lady with a bowl of blue balls and a sign that said “Protection from Psychic Vampires.” I was about to eat one before she stopped me and told me it was to put in water. It absorbs my stress or something and then I throw out the water. I preferred trying to eat it.

Surprise Industries was there giving out those Miracle Fruit pills. It was neat. You let it dissolve on your tongue and somehow it does something with your receptors and taste buds that make sour things taste sweet. It made the lemon taste like an orange …for the first few bites. I wished it lasted longer. I wonder what that blue psychic vampire propeller would taste like after the Miracle Fruit.

Schnipper’s Quality Kitchen – 620 8th Ave (btw 40th St & 41st St) New York, NY 10018