Young New York men who want to know the hottest spot for back-waxing in Brooklyn or when to compete in an arm-wrestling tournament at the Port Authority Bus Terminal have a new resource at their disposal, thanks to a pair of Penn alumni.
2003 College graduate Benjamin Lerer, a political science major, and 2002 College graduate Adam Rich, a fine arts major, recently created thrillist.com, which provides an insider's guide for young men living in New York City.
A free subscription to the Web site's listserv guarantees users four e-mail newsletters a week that clue them in to hot, and often little-known, restaurants, bars, gadgets and services.
Rich said he and Lerer came up with the idea one day at the gym.
While discussing potential date locations for the weekend and searching online for possibilities, the two realized that "there was a complete lack of information that was targeted for people our age."
In designing their newsletter, Lerer and Rich aimed to craft e-mails that their target demographic -- urban professionals with six-figure incomes -- could easily relate to.
"We wanted the e-mails to be ... as if you had just a really in-the-know friend who you trusted and who had great information about what's new in New York for you," Rich said.
The sarcastic tone employed on their Web site touches on this point.
"Your friends are losers," the site reads. "Send them Thrillist to help get their lives back on track."
Lerer and Rich hired a writer to provide an even sharper edge and decided to take on the list as a full-time job. The team also contracts out when necessary.
"Because it's such a small group of people," Rich said, "we're all wearing a lot of hats."
Rich and Lerer say they make it their job to learn everything occurring in the city that is relevant to men their age.
But it hardly feels like work, they said, agreeing that they would seek out interesting New York locations regardless of their commitment to the Web site.
The two are always on the lookout for topics to write about.
A couple of weeks ago, Lerer and Rich wandered into a bar in the meat-packing district, and they wrote about it on thrillist.com before the bar had even come up with its name.
"All the things that we write-up are stories and information that we would wish someone would give us had we not been the ones running the service," Rich said.
Their active involvement in New York stemmed from social experiences at Penn. Lerer and Rich went downtown often to explore the city and discovered a number of little-known locations that they later helped popularize.
One of Rich's prized finds was a bar in Old City that featured Monday-night karaoke.
"My experience hunting for that there has really helped me with doing the same thing on a larger scale in New York," Rich said. "It was ... a little bit of a starter city experience."
While Rich said thrillist.com is a lot of work, there is nothing he would rather be doing.
"If coming out of school, I could have ... concocted the perfect job for myself,I probably would have described something like this," Rich said.
Though information about New York clubs and bars is available through other sites such as zagats.com, Thrillist provides a distinct service because its audience is so narrow.
"What they are covering is only a fraction of what we cover," Zagats spokeswoman Tiffany Barbalato said. "For me, it's kind of like comparing apples and oranges."
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