hey baby, wanna yelp?

Last Wednesday, Natalie and I headed over to Medjool for Yelp's Invitation to Flirt event. As soon as we arrived, we were handed little "flirt" cards; the objective was to find our match. Some of the lines were pretty good - my favorite was "I'm not a tease, I'm just a reminder of what you can't have" - while some were not quite as entertaining. One guy got so into it that I started giving him a dirty look, until I realized he was just reading his line with gusto.

Besides the free drinks and appetizers, we got to (re) meet the founder of Yelp. Funny story here: Back in 1999/2000 or so, when I first got to SF, I met some guy named Jeremy at a random house party. Being new to the area, I was collecting email addresses of cool people that I'd met, hoping to find some peeps to hang out with. In my drunken state, I dropped the list.

A few days later, some guy emails me with the list of addresses that I'd dropped. Lo and behold, Jeremy S. grows up to be the founder of Yelp, one of the truly cool sites out there. I only met him the one time, but surprisingly we both remembered the incident 5 years later! And that's the story of how I got into Yelp Elite.


Natalie, Jeremy and me at Medjool

Of course, being the Asian (a.k.a. picture whore) teeny bopper that I am, I had to take a picture with Jeremy. I mean, who knows? One day, when Yelp reaches Google-esque popularity, I can pull it out and say I-knew-him-when. Besides, I'm programmed to be a groupie. I grew up in Jersey.