A Blog Post In Which I Bestow a “Fuck The Haters” Award To My Favorite Local Art Gallery As you may have gathered from previous blog posts, my lovely neighbors at Quirk Gallery are some of my favorite people in Richmond.  They have put in so much work towards making my neighborhood a more awesome place and they are just rad in general.  Which is why I was shocked that they got a piece of actual real-life hate mail.  They gave me permission to publish it in its entirety: Wow. Just as I had ceased dry heaving after the last time I viewed your Tiger Beat style website, I just viewed the new version. Last Spring when our service decided to give you a look, it was overall a mediocre experience, until we happened upon the “staff” page. That’s when the puke bucket rolled out. How did that teenage-esque nightmare play out? Each staffer dropped down from the top of the screen like a creepy paper cut out, in some sort of jumping prepubescent school girl pose? Yes. Then it went on to describe each rapidly aging teeny bopper’s favourite soda pop, candy bar, and who knows what else, romance novel or teen mag? Just pathetic. I guess that’s what comes with the turf of privilege. Dilettantism is always revolting and ultimately a bro. hobby is what your gift shop/gallery amounts to in our opinion. Oh yes, as if “Midtown” Richmond were something more than a haunted ghetto that most folks like yourselves would not even dare venture out onto after dusk, or at all for that matter. You likely use a rear exit getaway to your BMW and high tail it to The Fan or more likely the far West End. Cute, no. Edgy, oh no. Provocative, no. The whim of those who need not worry, yeah. Quirk is well, not quirky. The imitation grade school caricatures are a step up. John Saxon Wildenstein Our hater, “John” included an art directory company in his signature that he supposedly works for, but when they were contacted, they had no record of him.  Then because they were so shocked someone was impersonating one of their employees, they offered Quirk a free listing in their directory (which actually isn’t cheap!  score!).  As far as I’m concerned, that’s Quirk - 1, Haters - 0. I’m not going to dive too deeply into the website comments.  I think the website is awesome and those drawings of the staff are awesome and were hand-drawn by Diana.  I also received a hand-drawn picture of me holding diet cokes (very accurate) and I happen to think it’s one of the coolest gifts I have yet received. What I really have a beef with is the characterization of our neighborhood being a “haunted ghetto”.  NOT COOL, DUDE.  First off, we do MOST of our venturing out into the neighborhood after dusk and again after 2:00am on our way home from all my favorite bars.  Not to mention the comment of using the rear exit as a getaway.  Everyone knows that if you’re trying to avoid sketchiness, you DON’T use our back alley.  It can get a little scary back there sometimes, folks. Anyway, I just wanted to stand in solidarity with my awesome neighbors and award them my “Fuck The Haters” award for not letting this idiot get them down.  He clearly has a thing against Tiger Beat and everyone knows that magazine is a great publication known for its journalistic excellence. Haters gonna hate, Quirk.  I like how you keep ‘em guessing.

A Blog Post In Which I Bestow a “Fuck The Haters” Award To My Favorite Local Art Gallery

As you may have gathered from previous blog posts, my lovely neighbors at Quirk Gallery are some of my favorite people in Richmond.  They have put in so much work towards making my neighborhood a more awesome place and they are just rad in general.  Which is why I was shocked that they got a piece of actual real-life hate mail.  They gave me permission to publish it in its entirety:

Wow. Just as I had ceased dry heaving after the last time I viewed
your Tiger Beat style website, I just viewed the new version. Last
Spring when our service decided to give you a look, it was overall a
mediocre experience, until we happened upon the “staff” page. That’s
when the puke bucket rolled out. How did that teenage-esque nightmare
play out? Each staffer dropped down from the top of the screen like a
creepy paper cut out, in some sort of jumping prepubescent school girl
pose? Yes. Then it went on to describe each rapidly aging teeny
bopper’s favourite soda pop, candy bar, and who knows what else,
romance novel or teen mag? Just pathetic. I guess that’s what comes
with the turf of privilege. Dilettantism is always revolting and
ultimately a bro. hobby is what your gift shop/gallery amounts to in
our opinion. Oh yes, as if “Midtown” Richmond were something more than
a haunted ghetto that most folks like yourselves would not even dare
venture out onto after dusk, or at all for that matter. You likely use
a rear exit getaway to your BMW and high tail it to The Fan or more
likely the far West End. Cute, no. Edgy, oh no. Provocative, no. The
whim of those who need not worry, yeah. Quirk is well, not quirky. The
imitation grade school caricatures are a step up.

John Saxon Wildenstein

Our hater, “John” included an art directory company in his signature that he supposedly works for, but when they were contacted, they had no record of him.  Then because they were so shocked someone was impersonating one of their employees, they offered Quirk a free listing in their directory (which actually isn’t cheap!  score!).  As far as I’m concerned, that’s Quirk - 1, Haters - 0.

I’m not going to dive too deeply into the website comments.  I think the website is awesome and those drawings of the staff are awesome and were hand-drawn by Diana.  I also received a hand-drawn picture of me holding diet cokes (very accurate) and I happen to think it’s one of the coolest gifts I have yet received.

What I really have a beef with is the characterization of our neighborhood being a “haunted ghetto”.  NOT COOL, DUDE.  First off, we do MOST of our venturing out into the neighborhood after dusk and again after 2:00am on our way home from all my favorite bars.  Not to mention the comment of using the rear exit as a getaway.  Everyone knows that if you’re trying to avoid sketchiness, you DON’T use our back alley.  It can get a little scary back there sometimes, folks.

Anyway, I just wanted to stand in solidarity with my awesome neighbors and award them my “Fuck The Haters” award for not letting this idiot get them down.  He clearly has a thing against Tiger Beat and everyone knows that magazine is a great publication known for its journalistic excellence.

Haters gonna hate, Quirk.  I like how you keep ‘em guessing.