THE FRESNAN

Facebook: The Newest Venue For Fresno Nerds To Argue About The Fulton Mall

Let's face it, bloggers: Facebook pages have taken some juice from blogs. "Blogjuice", if you will (mmmmm, blog juice). Some of the classic blog wars that used to exclusively take place on some Fresno blog or Mindhub, now can take place on Facebook pages or Twitter.

Most active as of late is the Save The Fulton Mall page. A nice sized BLOG WAR!.... or um, Facebook War? happened the other day. It was sparked by a previous statement by Mayor Swearengin, calling the mall “a fundamentally flawed attempt to preserve what amounts to a failed urban renewal experiment that has bankrupted every effort to revitalize downtown Fresno for decades.” Scroll down the page and find it, it's worth the effort.

There are plenty more debates happening on the page too, some of them even positive. If you're like us, you'll want to follow the page just to see how Fresnans smarter than you, like to argue.

Seems though, no matter what the venue, we'll always be debating about the Fulton Mall. It's as Fresno as tacos and August heat.

BMOTW: Fresno Tweeting Is NOT Blogging Except When It Is

Oh my how BLOG WARS of Fresno Haters vs. Fresno Defenders have changed. Used to be, somebody would write some post on Live Journal hating on Fresno. Then it would find its way to Fresno Famous and it would spark several pages of "Fresno is killer, Fresno sucks ass" debate, and that would be that.

Now, tweets spark long twitterthreads...twieteds...threets? tweds? well, whatever. Basically what happened this week, some dude or dudes on Twitter said "Fresno has problems and is lame." Other dudes said "no you're the problem (bingo), not Fresno."

The reason this Fresno Tweeting is a BLOGiest moment? Because it sparked two major posts this week. One from This Is Conlan and one from James Collier (oh and there was a related column too). Probably the most comprehensive and well thought out rebuttals to any sort of Fresno BLOG WAR! we've seen.

And certainly deserving of a Frestalk filled Bloggiest Moment Of The Week.

BONUS MOMENT!
Local furniture artist, podcaster and blogger, Adam Wall, has a long running blog called Gustav's Groupie. A major feature on his blog is his breaking down of certain letters to the editors of the Bee. He has decided to give that feature up. At least for now. All the debating and whatnot has gotten a bit stressful. Hopefully Gustav's Groupie will change his mind because we like to see other people get into blog wars and stress out. It's fun.

BMOTW: Fresno Mag Editor Irks Fresnans Ire

When a blog post sparks a Facebook page, you know it's a hit.

One of the oldest (old in blog time) sources of Fresno blogger fodder has been Fresno Magazine. Most notably, the comical results of their Best Of Fresno issues. Their lack of blogosphere savvy-ness hasn't helped with their cred' either (well their was that one time they were cool, but that's gone now).

Ironically, their latest attempt to appease the nerds Fresno Internet Community is what's got them hot bloggy water. This year, Fresno Magazine will be opening up their Best Of Fresno voting to online folks. Okay, took them a while but cool, barely noteworthy.

Except while announcing this, Editor and Bosslady of Fresno Mag, Melanie Warner-Kennedy, took a couple shots at the Beehive and its readers. Always a mistake to try and throw snark at the Hive and its community, especially when you're not so experienced with it. You will get buried.

And, you will get the Bloggiest Moment Of The Week... again.

Tonight In Fresno: Blog Wars and Portlanders

The Fresno to Portland pipeline will be pumping in reverse tonight at Audie's Olympic as Greenladies come down from the rose city. The members of the Greenladies are Fresno natives, now living in Portland. In fact, one member (Scott Moore) has a infamous past with Fresno's blogoshpere - he started a BLOG WAR! with then Beehiver, Bill McEwen.

Greenladies members used to be in Fresno bands like Montecore and Batteries. They'll be playing with current Fresnans, Wheels Of Fortune and Sac Town's Not An Airplane:

Could there be a live BLOG WAR! tonight? Well, we will be there to greet Scott. But not to war, just to drink and to give Scott a beer and say "Welcome home." Because we're Fresnans and we can forgive a Fresno native's transgression. Well, maybe not all of them.

Listen to what living in Fresno then Portland has done to these dudes:

Bloggiest Moment of the Week: Photog Bashing Wins Every Damn Time

Did you see what happened over at Fresno Famous on Friday? Guys, it was so awesome. The first known fight of photographers and 'models', like, everrrr. You know what though? Learned some things. Yeah that's right, things like:

• There is a local "model" community.
• Photographers can talk trash on each other.
• Bloggers can get out of the way and just let things happen (not one blogger has commented on the war).

The Blog War!! almost seems like one person doing everything since the comments are so numerous and in such a short time period. Except, that there is some serious slanderous stuff going on against this Casper fellow. No person would want to bash themselves this bad for the sake of publicity, would they? We're guessing (if it's all legit) there was a tweet or myspace bulletin sent out to alert folks to comment on the post. Or, KRZR has a bigger online community than we thought. Doubtful.

Regardless, that was Fresno's most Bloggiest Moment Of The Week.

The Bloggiest Moment of the Week:

It's 1:01 on a Saturday night and that means it's time to determine the bloggiest moment from a weeks worth of Fresno blogging and this week, there are two "moments" to choose from:

MOMENT ONE:
Blogger Edward Stewart notices the front section of the Sunday Bee has more ads than articles. The Fresno Bee's Beehive bloggers, Heather McLane and Mike Oz (on edge from previous scraps) were ready to defend the Bee before Ed's post even came out, so as a result, a BLOG WARR ensues. Gotta love a good local blog war.

MOMENT TWO:
When you marry the traffic of the Beehive with a good question, a bloggy baby is born. Joan Obra, occasional blogger on the hive, simply asks readers how they feel about Fresno dancing ordances in restaurants and Fresno's interents respond.

Can't decide who wins...I mean moment one has an awesome BLOG WAR but moment two has the inevitable Footloose and Kevin Bacon reference. Hmmmmm.

Gotta go with Moment One. Nothing beats a BLOG WARR among local bloggers. Nothing.

Fresno Blog History 101: A Portland Blogger Calls Fresno a Craphole

Since the recent BLOG WARS!! have quieted down, thought it might be a good time to remember a classic blog war: FresnoBeehive's (at the time) Bill McEwen calling out a former Fresnan for saying Fresno "is a royal craphole" on his Portland Mercury News blog.

It was such a classic blog battle, it may have been the one that solidified the term "blog war." It had everything that makes up a good war: Someone hating on Fresno, blogger to blogger combat (in the comments), cussing, other bloggers joining in and yep, Portland.

If you would like to revisit, click here. Unfortunately, the comments are gone from the post that started it all, so we don't get the full effect, but still, good blog war.

Did that get you all fired up for a new BLOG WARRR!!? Cool, because we found a Fresno hater with a new post to start a war with...

Bloggiest Moment of the Week: Not just a nerdy BLOG WAR, a nerdy CIVIL WAR

*Attention reader! This post is for the Fresno blog geeks. If you are not one of those people, this post will seem incredibly lame. Please move on to something cool on the internets, like trying to find a sex tape of Mayor Bubba or something.

It all began with invites being sent to various local bloggers for the 2009 Blogger Olympics - a Fresno Beehive event that pits local bloggers against each other, in various goofy sports, to determine Fresno's Blogger Olympics Champion. Great event (for nerdyass bloggers like this one), except, due to a limited amount of bloggers needed, not everyone was invited to participate.

That prompted a post from Ed Stewart (one of the ones left out at the time), basically saying "What gives?" A Blog War ensues. And this issue opened up the floodgates for other blogger accusations of "biting" of other blogger's posts, Fresno inspired posting and indie blogs vs. mainstream blogs. All (mostly) in good sibling-rivalry fun, but a good old-fashioned BLOG WARRR! none the less.

It's the kind of thing that only bloggers (like this overly sensitive one) could make an issue of.

Let this be a lesson to anybody that deals with bloggers in the future: If you do or plan something that you don't want to be public and a blogger is around, you better give that blogger the proper heads-up (like: "between you in me"), otherwise it will end up in a post - as silly as the post may be. We are douchebags indie-bloggers; writing about underground Fresno stuff is what we do. You would think our blogging peers would've known this.

I hope everyone that wants to participate in this year's games (except for this goob), gets to. It's a real fun event, made BY bloggers FOR bloggers. There isn't many of those - we usually are covering or watching somebody else's event. And it needs to be said, the Fresno Beehive does a great job at promoting local bloggers. Planning things can suck, especially when you can't invite everyone, so I feel for the Hive.

And yeah, I may not be able to participate, but, you know, at least I have my old tapes of happier days:

Bloggiest Moment of the Week: Unknown Blogging Records Are Made To Be Broken

In case you're as lame as this blog and you're blog-scoring at home:

It's an official Fresno blogosphere record: 21 posts in one week from the Beehive's Heather McLane... in only five days. Not only that, a mild BLOG WAR!!! started up within her Fres-Know post between TV media and print media. Awesome. And, definately worthy of this week's Bloggy Moment.

Bloggiest Moment: Will You Go 'Off Blog' With Me?

I wanted it to be the FUSE Festival, with all the blogging about it. Maybe even FresnoCentric's site redesign.

Nope. I'm too much of a sucker for a Blog War (or comment war to be exact)...

A post by Mike Osegueda asking if Frank Caliendo is funny or not, sparks interest from Mike Oz and Heather McLane's own personal Blog Troll. The Troll bashes and Mike, Heather, regular commenters, and fellow bloggers weigh in. The post almost reaches 100 comments. That's very bloggy and that's Fresno's Bloggiest Moment of the Week!

NO WAIT! Don't go. I think I've changed my mind about this week's moment. Did you know people actually comment over at the Bee's Opinion Talk? I didn't. Until now. They get into that shit too. And here I thought blogs were just for silly nerds like me. Apparently it's also for smart nerds too. 

The post and comment war is way too involved for me to properly sum up. All you need to know is it started with the Bee endorsing Barack Obama. Then things got crazy and it ended (maybe) with the poignant comment I pasted below, and a new term I'm going to be using the rest of my blog-life: Off-Blog.

Thank You Fresno Blogsphere, Thank You

So we told ya about the Central Valley brain drain site.  Then the FresnoBeehive told us about this.  Fresno native Dara Purvis wrote a column [some time ago] about her drained Fresno brain.

The only way it could have been better?  If Portland was involved.  I couldn't help join in on the  revived comment war (hopefully, soon to be blog war).  Here was my take on all of the Fresno bashing:

Gotta love the Fresno haters as they chuck rocks at Fresno from 1992.

Thank you for leaving Fresno and please stay away.  It has become a better place because of your absence.  The worst thing about Fresno was all the FresNoers that used to be here. 

Every weekend in Fresno is filled with endless cool things to do and great people to do them with.  All this with amazing homes (with pools) for 250,000, Yosemite in our backyard and the beach a brief morning drive away.

I love it here, especially since you lameasses have left.

Portland doesn't pwn Fresno

Even Portland video game nerds find time to bash Fresno.  Real unoriginal bashing too...except for the use of pwn, that's a new one.

This just solidifies my belief that 98% of the Nation's snobs have moved to Portland.  And at least Fresno doesn't get crazy-frozen streets.  Like Portland:

Rain vows to kill Fresno this weekend

Fresno.  I hope you can swim.  Because, according to local weather dudes - running around with their heads cut clean off - three storms are coming to drown your ass. 

Mother Nature says that Fresno has been skating by with mildly wet winters for too long.  It's time to die.

Portlanders would laugh at us for being so buzzed about a weekend's worth of storms coming.  They get it ALL winter.  But then, we could laugh at them, because they have actually become numb to their shitty weather.  Fresnan's just have to get through a weekend.

Blog wars and bad ad copy

It has been some time since there's been a good local blog war;  And wouldn't you know it, the latest is about Fresno.

One of the Fresno Bee's finest (Mike Oz) found this gem of a blog post, ripping Fresno and pointing out the lame, poorly written, national Prius commercial.  Watch and listen to the Fresno joke and then go email the company responsible. 

Then enlist in the latest Fresno blog war!