SND STL Opening Night Bar Crawl

• UPDATE 9/11: Use the new SND STL Washington Ave & Downtown Map to plan your adventures!

In addition to the cornucopia of exciting activities at the SND STL Opening Reception, we’re going to have a bar crawl to close out the opening night.

Here’s the schedule and destinations:

Participating bars will be donating a percentage of their proceeds to the SND Foundation, so your drinking really does help a good cause!

Special thanks to Jen Herrmann for helping set this up — buy her a beer when you meet her!

The SND STL bar crawl is sponsored by Tribune:

SND STL optional Friday night activities: Happy Hour at Flamingo Bowl & SND Foundation Trivia Night

• UPDATE 9/11: Use the new SND STL Washington Ave & Downtown Map to plan your adventures!

Friday night is pretty wide open for SND STL attendees to do whatever they want — check out the Arch and CityGarden, explore some of the other areas of St. Louis, hit up the casino, explore Washington Ave. more, etc. If folks are looking for some events near the hotel we’ve set up two that will offer some valuable, fun and fruitful networking opportunities:

Flamingo Bowl Happy Hour

• When: 6-8 p.m., Friday, Sept. 30
• Who & How: Any SND STL attendees, just show your badge to get the special, no registration required
• Where: 1117 Washington Ave. (Two blocks west from the Renaissance Grand Concourse building)
• What:  Flamingo Bowl will be hosting a special happy hour for SND STL members. It’s a retro-bowling lounge with excellent food, a hipster vibe, more than a half dozen bowling lanes and a rockin’ jukebox.

For a $10 cover with your SND STL badge includes:

• A feast of St. Louis-style Pizzas (various toppings), Toasted Ravioli (another unique St. Louis food), chicken tenders and salad
• Each attendee will receive free shoe rental if they choose to bowl
• Each attendee will also enjoy Happy Hour drink specials extended until 8pm.

SND Foundation Trivia Night Fundraiser

• When: 8-10 p.m., Friday, Sept. 30
• Who & How: Limited to the first 75 registrations, register here through EventBrite (or at the door if it doesn’t sell out by then)
• Where: Over / Under Bar & Grill, 911 Washington Ave.
• What: The Society for News Design Foundation’s Trivia Night fundraiser at SND St. Louis will offer a local and fun way to interact with your design brothers and sisters while showing off your ninja-like knowledge.

This St. Louis-style bar trivia contest will run from 8-10 p.m. we’ll have about half a dozen rounds of trivia with topics including:

• SND History
• Journalism in TV and the movies
• St. Louis
• And much more!

There will also be mini-contests, give-aways and games in between rounds, as well as plenty of booze to keep your mind thoroughly lubricated. Two drink tickets are included with your $30 registration, which goes to a good cause helping fund scholarships and research from the SND Foundation.

SND STL drink specials for Friday night include:

• $10 buckets (5 bottles of Miller Lite or Coors Light)
• $5 Smirnoff Cherry or Grape Bombs
• $4.50 premium well drinks
• After 10 p.m. the bar will have a band playing on their outdoor patio and SND STL’s drink specials will continue throughout the night.

About The Society For News Design Foundation:

The Society for News Design Foundation, created in 1992, is the nonprofit education and research effort of SND. In 2008, SND received a Challenge Grant from the Challenge Fund for Journalism and opened an endowment campaign for its two scholarship programs. With support from donations and matching grants, the Foundation provides training grants for out-of-work visual journalists, university-level scholarships, travel grants for students to the Annual Workshop & Exhibition, grants to the student designers of the year, and outreach to minority journalists and journalism students at universities with large minority enrollments. The Foundation also provides research grants for projects on the future of journalism developed in partnership with other journalism organizations. Supporters contribute to the Foundation through direct donations, sponsorship of Foundation Fund-raising events, and by donating or purchasing items and services at the Silent Auction held in conjunction with the Annual Workshop & Exhibition. Contributions to the SND Foundation are generally tax deductible (in the United States) as charitable donations.

SND STL opening reception will feature booze, ink, karaoke, a 10-story slide & Joplin fundraising

UPDATE 9/11: Use the new SND STL Washington Ave & Downtown Map to plan your adventures!

The SND STL opening reception is going to be a blast and we’re ready to finally announced everything we have planned for the conference kick-off!

First of all, the logistical info you need to know:

• The opening reception is taking place from 6-11 p.m. at The City Museum, 701 North 15th Street
• To get to the reception, just head out of the Renaissance Grand Hotel at 8th & Washington Ave northwest (left when you leave the hotel) up Washington Ave to 15th Street, then north one block to the City Museum (the building with the praying mantis sculpture, Ferris wheel and bus on top of the roof)
• Running late or don’t feel like walking the 8 blocks? You can also take the Downtown Trolley Bus from 8th and Washington Ave to the City Museum for $2
• Bring your SND STL badge and wear comfortable clothes and shoes if you want to get the full City Museum experience (more on this below)

The City Museum is difficult to describe for those who haven’t experienced it. You can describe the pieces — airplanes, miles of rebar, a 10-story slide, the son of Daniel Boone’s cabin, hundreds of steam-table pans, a Ferris wheel 12 stories above the city, an arcade of old school mechanical carnival games, thousands of recycled bottles, one World’s Largest Pencil, a circus, a series of underground caves, a zoo and aquarium — but this doesn’t do the experience justice. It’s like nothing else I’ve seen in the world and one of the top 5 man-made places I’ve ever experienced. I’ve asked guests how they would describe it and some of the suggestions I’ve received include: ”A real-life Tim Burton movie.”  ”A junkyard, art show, carnival and children’s playground all-in-one created by a mad, magical scientist.” “A-mazing.”

Here’s the City Museum’s official description:

Housed in the 600,000 square-foot former International Shoe Company, the museum is an eclectic mixture of children’s playground, funhouse, surrealistic pavilion, and architectural marvel made out of unique, found objects. The brainchild of internationally acclaimed artist Bob Cassilly, a classically trained sculptor and serial entrepreneur, the museum opened for visitors in 1997 to the riotous approval of young and old alike.

Cassilly and his longtime crew of 20 artisans have constructed the museum from the very stuff of the city; and, as a result, it has urban roots deeper than any other institutions’. Reaching no farther than municipal borders for its reclaimed building materials, CITY MUSEUM boasts features such as old chimneys, salvaged bridges, construction cranes, miles of tile, and even two abandoned planes!

“CITY MUSEUM makes you want to know,” says Cassilly. “The point is not to learn every fact, but to say, ‘Wow, that’s wonderful.’ And if it’s wonderful, it’s worth preserving.”

It’s an unforgettable experience and you should get to the reception by 6 p.m. so that you can experience the entire magical world that is the City Museum. Remember to wear comfortable clothes and shoes if you’re planning on getting the true experience — which will involve slides, climbing and tunnels.

The City Museum is an amazing attraction in itself, but we have even more planned including hands-on printmaking with St. Louis’ Firecracker Press which will have two presses on hand to do demos and teach you how to create your own custom SND STL postcards using hand-carved wood stencils, lead type and ink presses.

Throughout the night DJ services will be provided by DJ WatchDawg from Platinum Entertainment who will be spinning music for the event and taking requests. There’s also rumor of some potential karaoke singing available as the night progresses, so tune up your vocal cords!

Two free drink tickets are included with your registration and food at the opening reception will be a delicious sampling of:

• Beef Tenderloin on Crouton with Sun Dried Tomato
• Sesame Meatballs with Asian Ginger Sauce
• Fajita Chicken on Flatbread
• Barbecued Pork Sliders on Pretzel Bun with Cole Slaw
• Brie in a Pastry Shell

It won’t be all partying without helping a good cause though, we’re also going to have a gallery show of work from the Joplin, Missouri tornado. Earlier in the year, Post-Dispatch photojournalists J.B. Forbes and Robert Cohen helped organize a fundraiser for victims of the tornado which raised more than $7,000 for the victims and they will bring about a dozen of those prints to show at the SND STL opening reception, where they’ll be available for purchase by silent auction and general donations to the tornado victims will also be accepted.

Rest up! Because after all this, the bar crawl will kick off at 10 p.m. on the way back to the hotel!

The SND STL opening reception is sponsored by the conference host paper, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.