Instead, Connect had some live entertainment from winners of various categories, including the cast of the Bay Street Theatre production of Rent, Ben Tucker, City Hotel, KidSyc@Brandywine, and Cusses. I was so slack that I didn’t even manage to get decent pics of all the acts.

But I did take a couple of photos as requested of the entire staff of The Jinx.

How does a bar with a staff of nine win nine awards?

Susanne Guest Warnekros’ Congress Street establishment won Best Downtown Bar, Best Hook Up Spot, Best Bar Staff, Best Overall Bar, Best Bartender (Tony), Best Bar to Spot a Celebrity, Best Live Music Club, Best Live Music Bar, and Best Happy Hour. (In case you’re wondering about the certificate that Gil Cruz is holding in the pic below, it’s the one for metal band Black Tusk, which was on tour at the time.)

Ok, we could probably combine a few of those awards.

Well, maybe.

In many cities, you’d end up with different winners of Best Live Music Bar and Best Live Music Club, however duplicative those two awards may at first seem. And live music venues certainly aren’t always thought of as hook up spots or good sites for celebrity watching. And just because a bar is voted the best one downtown, that’s no reason it should also be voted best overall.

But there you have it — The Jinx has won most if not all of those awards before, and will likely win most of them again.

In part, this is a straightforward matter about lack of competition. Since the closing of Live Wire, we have even fewer live music venues devoted to hosting touring acts routinely. If Savannah were a bit larger, we’d have more focused demand for live music and more venues would be stepping up to the plate.

Also, it’s worth noting that The Jinx has found a kind of sweet spot with its combination of Americana and metal acts. Both those genres have large followings in Savannah, and there’s lots of crossover between them. For example, at happy hour on Saturday for Damon and the Shitkickers, I ran into Andrew from Black Tusk and Angel and Brian from Cusses.

On top of that, The Jinx has hip hop nights, has become the key venue for indie rockers in town for Savannah Stopover, and so forth and so on.

It’s a model that’s been thriving for years — and one that seems likely to thrive for years to come.

So here’s the staff of The Jinx, plus a pic of City Hotel and two of KidSyc@Brandywine.

I’ve been fortunate to win best local columnist for a number of years running for my work three days per week in the Savannah Morning News. There’s a feed with links to those columns in the right sidebar of this blog. A few comments about the popularity of my City Talk columns in the Exchange and, to a lesser extent, my Unplugged column (formerly Man About Town) in Do:

• I’ve been writing columns for 13 years. That’s a big help in any popularity contest. . .
• The Savannah Morning News has the largest circulation of any print product in the region.
• Since the SMN and other print publications cut staff during the recession, I don’t think there are any other columnists even writing three days a week.
• Readers love basic information — what’s new, what’s open, what’s closed, who did what when, etc.
• Readers love brevity. I think the most popular columns are the ones where I include several different blurbs.
• Over time, columnists can — at least with some readers — establish credibility to talk about a wide range of issues.
• I’ve heard columnists bemoan the difficulty in coming up with new ideas, but I’ve been tracking so many different trends and stories over the years that I find it pretty easy to come up with subjects for columns.

This is my first time winning Connect’s best local blogger vote, so I’m pumped about that. I started this site for a variety of reasons that I’ve discussed before, and it has become an important outlet for me. I sincerely thank you all for reading.

Connect’s Jessica Leigh Lebos won runner-up for both best local blogger and best local columnist. It seems to me that having the same two of us at the top of both categories is a clear indication that we have a dearth of Savannah-based blogs. I have in particular been encouraging others to start music blogs for a couple of years now.

By the way, I anticipate some changes — i.e., enhancements — to Savannah Unplugged in the coming weeks and months. More on that soon.

Thanks to all of you for reading and for your passionate interest in some of the topics covered here.

Cheers,
Bill Dawers

For many of the winning entrepreneurs, small businesses, and even some of the large businesses, recognition like this one from Connect can buoy the spirits and boost the bottom line.

I’m not going to get paid more for the win, but it’s still an honor to know that some of Savannah’s citizens read my stuff regularly enough to vote for me. I’ve tried hard over the years in my Savannah Morning News columns to give people information they want, analyses that they might not read elsewhere, and heads-ups about things they’d otherwise never find out about.

At the same time, I’ve got to add that I’m maybe the only columnist in town writing three days a week for a print publication — so I ought to win, right? I’m not even precisely sure how many times I’ve won this honor, but I think this is #6 (but it could be #5 or #7). Btw, for the cynical who think that polls like this are always fixed, I’d point out that Connect itself has three good writers who count as columnists, yet a freelancer for a rival publication keeps winning.

For the second year in a row, I was also runner-up as a local blogger, behind Jessica Leigh Lebos for Yo Yenta.

The big awards party is always a great time, and last night it once again took place in the Morris Center at Trustees Garden. The gathering attracted a large number of winners plus their guests, which meant editor Jim Morekis — with some assistance from community editor Jessica Leigh Lebos — spent a lot of time emceeing and congratulating the honorees.

I was struck last night by the number of winners that devoted their moment or two on stage to thanking others.

This small photo gallery is in no way comprehensive (I’m an easily distracted partygoer), but I think it gives a little sense of the energy and diversity that gathers each year for Connect’s party. I’m not 100% sure of all the names here, but I’ve tried to caption them in some way — I’m obviously open to making corrections and additions. Just hover your cursor over the pic, and obviously click to enlarge.