8A - Monday, September 19, 2011 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com BA - Monday, September19, 2011 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom but m ness a offload pieces produc willing ers. W they're lizing talents full-tin looking make extra or just tain a I workv invest into se course, very lit Ente net. Mc magicc and cra Whe a few y that an artistic accessil achieve artistsg their cr startinj Sellers, publicli Etsy sk each sa is sentc ers the] A sin me bro' and har gapore. seemed FINE ARTS COLUMN The Etsy experiment rt for art's sake" my friends have closed up their might be a wonder- shops after going weeks without fully romantic notion, a single page view, and the rest ost of today's small-busi- have resorted to relisting their rtists ultimately hope to items multiple times (for more the rounds of fees, of course), hoping they to rank higher in buyer searches :e onto and attract some sorely needed buy- attention. 1hether To make matters even more uti- frustrating, sellers have had to their compete against more thanjust as a other honest artists: Many people ae job, LAUREN have found it profitable to ignore g to CASERTA Etsy's quaint request that only a few handmade pieces, vintage items bucks and art supplies should appear hoping to financially sus- for sale. hobby while sharing their Chinese resellers have popped with others, artists often up with increasing regularity, tons of time and money and an alarming number of listed tlling their creations. Of items havea mysteriously ten- these artists usually have dencyto pop up elsewhere on the tie of both to spare. Internet. Plagiarism is constant r the magic of the Inter- and unregulated, and strategic re specifically, enter the tagging on items, despite being of a marketplace-style arts a "no-no," ensures that many fts hub named Etsy. of your search returns will be n I stumbled across Etsy totally random. ears ago, I was convinced Best of all, one can always find ideal marriage between thousands of people peddling creativity and digital supposedly"vintage" items that bility had finally been only add to the clutter. What's d. Here was aplacewhere that? You found a rusty coathook and crafters could sell in your grandma's basement? eations online without Just upload an artsy off-center g websites from scratch. photo of it, whip up a product open "shops" where they description noting its "charming y list items for a small fee; patina," and voila! Bonus points ims a little off of the top of if you photographed it against an le, but most of the money old hunk of wood! directly to the shop own- So where are Etsy's modera- mselves. tors in this mess? They prefer to gle search bar could let bury their heads in their button- wse paintings from Seattle boxes and pretend like they're ndmade soaps from Sin- running a multi-million dollar Simple, fast and cheap, it website where problems are 1 like it could do no wrong. magically solved using the Power of Love and Unspoken Mutual Integrity. They're also notorious- nt a Snorlax ly non-confrontational toward sellers who pull ina profit, so 1 painting? don't expect immediate action if you point out any of the afore- How a 'U' alum brought Tiesto to Ann Arbor By CASSIE BALFOUR Daily Community Culture Editor It would be easy to forget that recent 'U' alum Adam Lynn and his partner Zach Ruben, decked out in designer suits while sit- ting in a makeshift VIP room overlooking the EMU Conven- tion Center arena - which in mere hours would host hun- dreds of rabble-rousers cluster- ing around the world-renowned Tigsto - are recent undergrads who were putting on events at their respective campuses just a couple of years ago. But when the industrious pair poses in the DJ booth on stage and Ruben dons Tiesto's head- phones for a photo-op, they both grin with matching looks, know- ing they've created not only a hot new event promotion company, but a dream job. Well, this isn't so much a job or even a career as it is a capital- L Lifestyle. After Lynn graduated from both the University and his undergraduate college event promotion business (the aptly named Social Studyz), he con- nected with an equally entre- preneurial graduate of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Zach Ruben, who had founded his own company, Prime Productions. Despite the rumors that the New York native Lvnn had hord abo unhRun's BEHIND THE CONCERTS The Prime Social network Tigsto played a show at EMU Convocation Center on Friday. hometown of Columbus, Ohio, being the "devil's land," Lynn and Ruben found common ground after collaborating on a four-day college tour featuring DJ Steve Aoki. They combined their shared talents and markets to create the hybrid promoting company Prime Social Group. They've done 40 shows since the start of the year, featuring tal- ents like the DJ Avicii and Lupe Fiasco. But it didn't come easy. "I was just the kid who sent an e-mail every day," Lynn said, talking about how he found enouv o nneo~ns no start +he wa .i business. "I called every other day until I got something. You know the movie 'Wall Street?' Bud Fox calls Gordon Gekko every day for a year until he finally gets an appointment. I was like Bud Fox." "Zach is kinda the work- horse," Lynn added. "It's a very good partnership ... we're part- ners but we're friends too, which is good since there's a lot of trav- eling and we spend a lot of time together." The suave duo may don designer duds and sip the kind of vodka Ludacris raps about with world-renowned musicians, but they are forced to apologetically pause the interview intermit- tently to attend to their con- stantly buzzing smartphones to deal with last-minute details. Ruben's Blackberry calendar looks to be as crammed with dates and exotic locales as the President's. Lynn confirms that catering to the rich and famous and hand-crafting events awash in strobe ligits atnded by thousands is a 24-hour-a-day job. "I don't think people under- stand what our job really is," Ruben said. "They think we just post Facebook photos and pass out flyers. -But we're financing the entire show. The term pro- moter has a negative connota- tion. That's because of mainly nightclub promoters in big cit- ies." Lynn added, despite the schmoozing with celebrities and traveling to Europe - where they have connections in cities like Barcelona that Ruben hooked up while studying abroad in Spain - to produce shows, their job is anything but a constant party. "It's a way prettier position that it actually is," Lynn said. "People are always like, 'You have the best job ever.' They see the picture of us with Tiasto.... I wouldn't trade it for anything but you have to put in the time. We're at a critical point in our career - we can take advantage of this and work our asses off, or be complacent and say, 'Hey we've done great this year' and be done with it ... that's why me and Zach sort of feed off each other." The job certainly has its perks, and Lynn and Ruben are constantly networking and hus- tling to expand their already skyrocketing business. They work with a travel agency called College Travel Experts to pro- vide a spring break package not only drenched in sun, but in electronic-music in Puerto Val- larta, bringing musical acts like Steve Aoki down to Mexico to play exclusively for these spring breakers. Although the duo has a lot on th orizon, Lynn and Ruben h eir share of stories and bate e scars from running these shows and providing top-notch comfort to musicians and com- edy acts. Even though they're used to dealing with celebre- DJs, the pair isn't immune to becoming starstruck. As the opening act warms up the hundreds of partiers situat- ed below in the arena, the beats start to seep into the makeshift but appropriately swanky VIP room. The two undergraduate party planners-turned-bona fide, savvy businessmen reflect on their rise. "It's a career now," Lynn said. "I wake up in the morning, and I'm not worrying about classes. I'm worrying about contracts ... as they say, I'm still living the dream." mentioned reselling, plagiarism o--'r general rule violation (trust But the art-and-craft world's me, I've tried). honeymoon with Etsy is ending, But all is not lost. Yes, Etsy and it's slowly becoming obvi- has some serious organizational ous who got the better end of the problems. Yes, its moderators deal, need to growa spine and crack The problem began when Etsy down on their more unsavory started to take off. I mean, really sellers. But despite its stunning take off. Suddenly, all of my artsy ability to take them for granted, high school friends had opened Etsy is still a collection of some of a store for themselves and filled the most talented, dedicated and it with everything from their AP unique people in the world. Art Studio sculptures to hand- Want an oil painting of a misty made jewelry. I watched as the nighttime cityscape? Got it. How number of;sellers swelled into the about one of Snorlax? Done. hundreds of thousands and list- Yesterday I dove into the site for ingswere propelled into the mil- 10 minutes and saw everything lions. Etsy became a marketplace from handmade retro watches of far-too-epic proportions. and made-to-order'20s-style Don't get me wrong - wedding dresses to bronze-cast increased traffic across a global- sculptures and a woodblock print izedtnarketplace was exactly of a lake that I used to visit. Each what;Etsy wanted. It just hadn't artist had a fierce passion for his planned out how to keep its or her trade that shined through "indie integrity" once actually the work they now offered up to getting its wish. others. With no new way to organize If only Etsy appreciated them this influx of creativity, small as much as their customers do. sellers now find themselves drowning in a massive pool of Caserta is lookingfor an Etsy- competitors with no easy way to bitsy teeny-weeny tie. To point her stand out from the herd. Three of to one, e-mail caserta@umich.edu. TODD NEEDLE/Daily The event promotion group Prime Social planned Tiesto's concert. CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENTS, 2010-11: THE DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT POPULATION LIMIT ON CALIFORNIA'S PRISONS AMERICAN MILITARY ACTION IN LIBYA BIG BROTHER AND THE FOURTH AMENDMENT University of Michigan Law School Hutchins Hall, Room 250 Tuesday, September 20 4:10-5:40 tM. Refreshments Immediately Following SPONSORED BY U-M OFFICE OF THE PROVOST I DRIVE From Page 7A deep into his own subconscious and doing vengeful things he could only have imagined. The fruit for the viewer is momentary - it's the look on his face when he shocks even himself - like an innocent child bearing witness to murder, the shock becomes another obscuring layer in his mind. As he opens himself up to usbyreleasinghisviolenttension, he simultaneously closes himself off to the film's other characters, to whom he is suddenly a com- pletely different person. Director Nicolas Winding Refn (the "Pusher" trilogy) and writer Hossein Amini ("Shang- hai") don't fully develop the film's backstory and characters - and purposefully so. In a film where each supporting character's past is his or her handicap and down- fall, a protagonist with no more than a face and a job becomes the one-eyed man, king of the film's conflict and the only person with the freedom to be the good guy. It's a violent, bloody film with classic touches dating decades back, despite its contemporary setting. Most noticeable are its retro '80s-style pink font and synth-backed music selections, which indeed hearken to images of a masculine-type shadowy vigilante patrolling the streets of L.A., albeit one shot on now- grainy film stock, not on the beautiful Arri Alexa camera foot- age "Drive" employs. When the brutal final scenes of the film hit magic hour - that evening time when sunlight shines straight on - the mood of the film is already set; the crimes that were once limited to the nighttime have oozed into the daylight and taken over our pro- tagonist's life. Like Butch Cassidy or Bonnie and Clyde, he can only drive so far from his problems. With a strong cast fronted by the stone-faced Gosling, "Drive" is an engrossingensemble picture that will kill you with quiet. The loud revving of a car becomes a comfort in its convention; at a Ryan Goslingm ade sure Herbie would never speak again. *0 certain point, silence leaves far too much deadly possibility for our characters. Ryan Gosling has described this film as his super- hero movie, and the comparison rings true - it's the bubbling- under-the-surface, superficially calm hero pic with a hell of a bite. Like Gosling's face covered in a splash of blood midway through the second act, it's a car colliding with an unsuspecting audience. It will shock you, and then calm you, only to leave you open to the next bloody smack in the face. And all throughout, we carry the understanding that our Driver is on the same page, the innocent passenger on the most perilous ride of his life. WANT TO JOIN THE DAILY? YOU HAVE ONE LAST CHANCE. COME TO OUR MASS MEETING TOMORROW AT 7:30 P.M. ON 420 MAYNARD.