Alterna Blogs on Madrid
Madrid Me Mata - Alternative Blog Extraordinaire
If Madrid kills you, Madrid Me Mata (MMM) might be just the blog for you.
Reporting on everything from alternative cinema to politics to massive...
Pillow Fight
If Madrid
kills you, Madrid Me Mata (MMM) might be just the blog for you.
Reporting on everything from alternative cinema to politics
to massive public pillow fights, this group of five dedicated lads does their
best to keep you “in the know” in the Spanish capital. Their popularity speaks for itself. In the last several months they’ve been
featured in El Pais, Radio Ser, and the Magazine Traveller as well. Web traffic is up and they are roaring ahead
with their alternative take on Madrid.
Preferring to keep their identities a bit “escondido” (hidden), all but one of the
bloggers writes under a pseudonym:
Alturo, Didi, Inthesity, Elfran, and Luis. Luis uses his real name but notice the lack
of a sir name. In a country where
approximately 20% of the male population is Christened Luis, let’s face it,
this might as well be a pseudonym.
So who exactly are these guys? We had an opportunity to catch up with them
at their annual bar crawl in the Barrio de la Paloma (near Ronda de Toledo). They invited all their faithful readers to
come stumble from bar to bar on an ambitious nine-pub itinery - the boys are prolific
in all senses of the word.
Appropriately enough the bar crawl started in Taberna las
Caracoles (Tavern of the snails) and slowly crawled around the neighborhood. Caracoles is a bar de viejos – a natural
choice: going to such spots is a tell-tale sign of a dedicated Madrileño. None of that fancy La Latina stuff!
The bar, as is true of all of its type, has bright
florescent lights, metal counters, a TV in the corner broadcasting sports, and,
of course, lots of viejos. Caracoles
distinguishes itself by having a big pot of snails bubbling away on the front
counter – ya gotta have your shtick.
At 8:00 PM sharp the bar was stormed by MMM readers suddenly
going from a few older gents to a hoppin’ scene as crowded as, ironically, a
trendy La Latina venue.
All the writers from MMM are absolutely down-to-earth; this
is to be expected for a blog that doesn’t aspire to the glitz and glam of the
city but rather the “local flava” – in this case: snail.
As we shifted from bar to bar, we got a chance to chat with
the core of writers as well as the devoted readers.
The five MMM bloggers seem to be genuinely non-commercial. Inthesity had no idea what sort of traffic
the site got. A professed computer-phobe
he said he wasn’t concerned with such things, but said that when they were
being interviewed on the radio one of the journalists quoted the figures.
Alturo, much more computer savvy, knew the figures very
specifically, but even in his mind, they meant very little. When asked if they host advertising he simply
said that if someone calls and really wants to advertise on the site they let
them – a fairly Zen approach to marketing, no?
Obviously this is what blogs were meant to be: writing for
the sake of writing – an on-going ode to Madrid. It’s
a great way to kill to birds with one stone – practice your Spanish and get an
insiders view of the city. The snails – optional.
---Published 2008-02-17
