We have before remarked upon the rapid spread of dilettantepreneuria—the compulsive expression of unrealizable entrepreneurial notions. One might accuse social gatherings north of the Cross-Westchester of resembling Shark Tank episodes except the judges are dissemblingly polite and the contestants less financially desperate than they are conversationally starved. And they do not carry prototypes.
Our over-educated, under-scheduled, financially secure population provides a near-perfect growth medium for the condition. Untethered thoughts rise from our Restoration Hardware settees like so many (if not as trenchant) Sean Ford thought bubbles and hover safely as they never do in harsher, projectile-traversed proletarian climes.
“You know what we really need?” or “Do you ever find yourself wondering why—?” Are openings that, for the initiated, serve as tsunami warnings—cues to go say hello to somebody you just spotted, fill a drink, find a bathroom, take a call, check on the children, see why the parrot is making that noise, etc.
We have also before touched on the enviable synergies of blowgrift—award schemes designed to extract revenue from the public (subscribers) and business owners (advertisers) both. Our compatriots at Westchester Magazine remain masters in the art. Their “Best in Westchester” scheme provides easy editorial fodder and also garners them incremental revenue opportunities—this year award plaques will run “winners” $175 and award ceremony party tickets can set them back $550.
Now, we do not look down our noses at blowgrift, but the practice (since it blurs editorial and advertising lines, allowing Commerciality to put a finger upon the otherwise objective scales of Local Journalism) does not mesh with our guild precepts.
And even if we were able to leave scruples aside and promote competitions for best açaí bowl, best native plant landscaping service, best organically sourced aromatherapy center, best in-driveway pet grooming service—extracting revenue from the region’s dilettantepreneurs is problematic for a more basic reason: Actual entrepreneurs—small business owners—at least try to make money.
Dilettantepreneurs, even ones with trust funds or wealthy partners who might be able to afford advertising and vanity plaques—while they can be self-aggrandizing, while often interested in drawing attention to themselves—do not spend money promoting their ideas. This is because they would first have to make said ideas real. And for that to happen they would, by definition, cease to be our quarry.
And so, since a scheme celebrating dilettantepreneurs therefore cannot be an act of blowgrift and because, perhaps not coincidentally, no other publication has yet occupied the niche—we are hereby proud to launch the first annual NWERDAs—the Northern Westchester Economic Region Dilettantepreneurial Awards. The NWERDAs are, and shall always remain, a pure, commercially untainted celebration of our region’s most unlikely-to-manifest notions, and the dreamers behind them.
To that end, we are enforcing anonymity throughout our ethnographic survey of this happy breed of citizens, this defensive moat against the envy of less happy lands, this blessed northern verge, this verdant belt, this elite rookery, this teeming womb of future leaders1, etc.
Each entry is presented as it was heard, or overheard, by our reporting team, and by our network of unpaid informants.
Please note that due to the daunting volume of ideas, we will be covering only two categories per quarter—and that transcripts have been edited for brevity and clarity.
AUTOMOTIVE CATEGORY
Although the front-door delivery services of Amazon, Wholefoods and Fresh Direct are chipping away at the status quo, unless you live in one of our hamlet’s bustling commercial districts, life in our region is still basically impossible without a car. Some municipalities have sidewalks that extend more than five blocks but northern Westchester is not a place for pedestrians, at least for ones not wearing brightly colored clothing and who are unskilled at leaping three-foot-high rock walls. The private vehicle remains, after the private dwelling, our most inhabited space. It is therefore no wonder that the automobile is a particularly fertile plot for innovative revery.
Runner up #2: Dark Humor Hood Ornament (Millwood)
“You know how every December idiots put antlers and wreathes on the fronts and roofs of their SUVs and luxury brand wagons? Well, I’ve come up with something that will achieve something beyond letting people know you’re not Jewish—getting pedestrians from walking down the middle of my street: a crumpled baby stroller attached to the front grill!”
“Wouldn’t that be expensive to produce?”
“That’s part of the beauty! Over 2 million strollers are thrown away every year in the United States. Thrown away. Sent to landfills. So, this is a green scheme on top of everything else. Just have to rough up the discarded pram with a sledge-hammer or a baseball bat and voila.”
“How do you attach them to the grill?”
“Still working at that, actually. Probably bungee cords, but sourcing them sustainably is proving a challenge.”
Runner up #1: Hardened Bulkhead (Katonah)
“So, here’s my big money-making idea. You know what’s more dangerous than cell phones in terms of driver distraction?”
“Those touch-screens the manufacturers are now installing that you need to look at in order to change the volume or the station or the temperature? Because knobs are so old-fashioned and you can adjust them without taking your eyes of the road.”
“No. Children!”
“You mean in the car?”
“Twelve times more distracting than cell phones! Did you know parents looking into the back seat represent 75% of all driver distraction cases!”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, and it’s getting worse as parenting skills decline. Mom or Dad at least used to be able to swat or threaten punishment as a means of correction—but no longer! The solution is obvious, is it not?”
“Something to do with a stick?”
“No.”
“An electric ankle cuff of some kind?”
“We just need to take a page from airline industry—a secure bulkhead between the passenger cabin and the driver!”
“That sounds like an expensive undertaking.”
“If American and Delta can manage it, I think Volvo and Subaru can, too.”
“You said this was a money-making concept?”
“Yes, I’m going to buy stock in Jamco (JMCCF: OTC)—the company that does bulkheads for the airlines. They’re uniquely positioned to handle the entire market. And then I’m going to bring Ralph Nader out of retirement and set him loose!”
“Is Nader retired?”
“And I have an even bigger idea, also taken from the airline industry.”
“What’s that?”
Automotive Category Winner: Dashboard Black Box (Katonah)
“Yes. A black box recording device—resistant to fire, water, catastrophic deceleration, and direct physical trauma—so all the unreliable noise of post-accident witness statements is expunged from the picture. The insurance companies will wet themselves over such a device—the ability to update their actuarial science with real-world data, to determine exactly what went down in the moments before crackup.”
“But it’s not quite the same situation is it? With professional airline pilots calling into a tower or speaking with their trained copilot? What do you think might be recorded?”
“Here—I’m right now working on some scripts that I will hire actors to record for the investor demo. Ahem—
‘No, Laura, it’s this next exit, aw come on, you’re going to miss it, come on, you got plenty of room, just punch the gas, that’s it—[kkkktttt]’
or—
‘You bastard! Think you can cut me off like that? No signal or nuthin’? How you like this you co—[kkkkttttt]’
or—
‘Sweetie, can you please get back in your seat and put your belt back on? You know I don’t like you climbing in the way-back like that. What? What did you say? You’re what? You’re letting Kitty—Morgan!!! Get back in your seat this instant!!! Do NOT open her box!!! It’s NOT safe to let a cat—especially THAT cat!—roam around a moving vehi—[kkkkttttt]’”
BLOWGRIFT CATEGORY
We may be wary of blowgrift ourselves but its sparkly application has ignited many brushfires in the minds of local dilettantepreneurs. Therefore, at the risk of seeming meta (which is also frowned upon by The Handbook), our second NWERDA category is for potentially innovative award schemes.
Blowgrift runner up #2: The MEAs (Purdys)
“We seem to have a lot of neighbors in corporate communications.”
“We’ve noticed the same.”
“They often seem a little glum.”
“Why is that, do you think?”
“Do you ever read Westchester Magazine?”
“Mostly I just look at the ads.”
“Well, they do a lot of local awards, and I’m thinking of suggesting they do one for this sector. They could even do several if they were to lean into subcategories: best crisis aversion, best policy amelioration, best conflict-burial, best adversarial anesthetization . . . Maybe it should be national, though. You think USA Today might be into it?”
“What would you call them—the awards, I mean?”
“What do you think of the Messaging Excellence Awards. We have Oscars, Tonys, Chloes—and now MEAs!”
“What would the statuette look like?”
“A mirror held by a bracket at a 45-degree angle, pointed upwards—like a waterski ramp.”
“So, you can see the ceiling?”
“No.”
“Your nose hair?”
“If you take it outside on a cloudless day—”
“Blue sky.”
“Yes, isn’t that nice? It’s better than my other idea of one for trade conventions, don’t you think?”
“Trade conventions?”
“Sure, boat shows, insurance shows, knitting shows, publishing shows, electronics shows—that occurred to me a few years back but the current disease cycles have made that a bit of a challenge.”
“And the money-making aspect to your idea—you think some publication is going to pay you for it?”
“Yes, you think you guys might be interested?”
Blowgrift Runner up #1: Award Show Awards (Armonk)
“Weren’t you so disappointed they canceled the SAGs this year?”
“For sure.”
“Still, there are plenty of award shows left. Doesn’t it seem there’s a new one every year?”
“It does.”
“I mean the iHeart Radio Music Awards—is that even a thing?!”
“Is it?”
“It’s gotten me thinking: What if there were an award show for the best award show! Are the Grammys better than the Academy Awards better than the MTV Music Awards better than the BAFTAs better than the Golden Globes better than the iHeart Radio Music Awards? Which in fact are pretty terrific.”
“Are they?”
“Think of all the categories you could have. You could judge red carpet walks, hosts, camerawork, animations, statuettes—you name it.”
“Best statuette?”
“Right?”
“Isn’t it a little meta?”
“Well, what isn’t these days?!”
Blowgrift Category Winner: The Corpsies (Buchanan)
“You go to a lot of funerals this year?”
“Yes, it’s been a bad stretch.”
“Between Covid and the first of the Baby Boomers reaching 75 years of age, 2021 was the deadliest on record. And it’s only going to get worse.”
“That’s terrible.”
“It’s simple math. Were many of the funerals you attended open-casket?”
“Yes. Most.”
“Mine, too. And here’s where the idea came to me—an award scheme for cadavers. The funeral industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry and it’s thoroughly under-leveraged in terms of competitive public relations.”
“You are proposing an award system for—”
“Absolutely. Best wardrobe, best use of color, best hair, best manicure—you know fingernails continue to grow after death?”
“You’d have judges show up at wakes and viewings?”
“No, I’d appeal to the funeral directors—they’re the motivated party here, after all—and arrange private showings in the back.”
“Won’t the families object?”
“Well we’d keep it about the morticians’ art, not the deceased themselves.”
“So you wouldn’t be able to do a category for best-looking corpse.”
“Well, of course we will want visuals of the deceased. I need to talk to my lawyer but I’m hoping we can find a way for families to opt in as it were. Give them one of those sign-off checklists that nobody ever reads. We might even get a term in there—for the permanent display crowd—for subsequent check-ins. ”
“Permanent display crowd? What, like taxidermy? Are you serious?”
“It’s not that uncommon, and the preservative science has come a long way. I’m in fact thinking we could have a worldwide open category to gin up press interest. Lenin, Mao, Liberace—with a weighted decay curve to help offset the years. It’s not fair to compare King Tut and Rod Stewart without some allowance for the centuries.”
“Rod Stewart is dead?”
“I need a good name, though. What do you think of The Corpsies? Is that too hit-them-on-the-head?”
Our congratulations to these first two NWERDA winners. The next installments of this year’s awards will include Concepts in New Media, Copyrights and Trademarks, Marketing Innovations, New Services, and Sloganeering. And we are hoping to announce an awards event in December where the overall winner will be announced. The event will be free and open to the public.
Meantime, if you catch wind of potential entries for the coming year, please send them our way. Every contributor of a winning entry will receive a limited edition, hand-typed email from a member of the editorial staff.
The NWRG Handbook, p. 3