Sean Bryant Dunn, 36, engineer/heavy-metal bassist, Bushwick, Brooklyn
Why my party will rock: “When it comes to New Year’s Eve, there is only one party that everyone should consider, and that is the one that I will be throwing…in my pants.”

-Time Out plans your NYE for you

Following in the grand tradition of every other magazine in the past three months, Time Out New York is trying to scrounge up a little extra scratch to stay afloat, and will be auctioning off a portion of its stake for $40 million.

TONY investors say the magazine is still doing fine, and they are merely trying to get a return on their investment. Which would be believable if it wasn't 3 months to the day when the Time Out staff promised all their freelancers they'd be paid…in 90 days.

So now that TONY paid all their writers, they're in the red? Too bad the copy is one thing that's not expendable in the industry.

Not to long ago, we received a letter in the mail alerting us that we were being given a free subscription Time Out New York. While we love all things free and all the free food Time Out New York gave us at their eat out event, we were pissed off at the news.

We already get the New Yorker and New York magazine, and two is our limit for magazines with “New York” in the title. Now there’s no way we could ever subscribe to the New York Review of Books. Plus, we get more than our fill of Julia Allison’s insights directly from her own relationship blog.

Anyway, Time Out Chicago’s editor-in-chief Joel Reese has been fired for allegedly breaching an undisclosed company policy. Whatever. Apparently there’s no company policy against subscription-rape to increase base circulation.

Confession time: we’re no longer allowed in Whole Foods. After a visit where we took too many “samples” from the salad bar, a very nice guard pulled us aside, snapped a Polaroid of us and asked never to return to the grocery store.

The long of the short of it is, we live for samples. So imagine our pleasure last night when we were invited to the Time Out New York’s Eat Out Event, which Time Out's 40 favorite restaurants offering samples.

As non-paying members of the media, the party was one very large, very high end free tasting event. Sadly, we ate as if we had paid the $100 entry fee.

CONTINUED »

Let us start by saying, we had no idea there was a Time Out Tel Aviv or a Time Out Beirut. But there is. Or, well, in TOB's case, there was. Over time, the editors of these magazines, Ramsay Short (TOB) and Amir Ben-David (TOTA) became close friends, drank vodka on the beach together, and talked of peace between their countries.

Now, as is quite apparent by Anderson Cooper's hot bullet proof vest, there is some shit going on over there, and hope for resolving issues between Isreal and Lebanon is becoming harder to cling to with each passing night of air strikes. Not to get all super-sentimental here, but the letters between these two young journalists, with pride in their countries as well as hope for peace between the citizens of their waring nations and each other, is quite compelling.

Time Out Chicago is currently running the emails online. This is a portion:

This is Ramsay Short, editor of Time Out Beirut, currently under total bombardment by the Israeli military. They have killed our city, and probably killed TOB in their murderous attacks. I am not sure where we can go from here. If it is temporary, we can come back. But if it is not, TOB—like everything else that has been flourishing in this wonderful city, so recently reborn—has been killed.

Dear Ramsay, We were very sad and concerned to get your heartbreaking e-mail. We hope you will be able to not blame us for the brutal bombardment of Beirut, as we don’t blame you personally for the bombardment of the north of Israel and other provocations done by Hezbollah militants.

It is so sad to know that on a personal level we can be friends, have vodka together on the lovely beaches of Cyprus and talk about future cooperation between TOB and Time Out Tel Aviv, but on a “national” level, we are enemies who are ruining each other’s lives, time and time again.

We know it feels like a story New York Times magazine would cream themselves over, but in our very removed and likely diluted opinion, the exchange is worth checking out. If only to make you realize that the war between Glamour and Cosmo or the Post and the Daily News are really, actually, quite insignificant in comparison.

A tale of two cities [Time Out Chicago]