Smiley Pete Banner (300px height)
A note from tadoo.com founder and editor Saraya Brewer and the Smiley Pete Publishing staff
In 2012 – five years ago this November – Smiley Pete Publishing's event-based website tadoo.com was born, as an extension of the company's commitment to Lexington's arts & culture community. At the time, our staff had been struck by a cultural shift we had observed locally, particularly in the way of live music. Following the 2008 razing of "The Dame Block" to make way for CenterPointe, a handful of new music venues had either recently opened or amped up their booking efforts in attempt to help fill the live music void that the beloved venue The Dame (and the bar and occasional venue Buster's) had left behind. Cosmic Charlie's, Buster's Billiards & Backroom (now Manchester Music Hall) and Willie's Locally Known had recently opened; Al's Bar was going strong; the Green Lantern had amped up its weekly live music. A handful of others, including the now defunct Natasha's, Land of Tomorrow and other dearly departed venues, were doing their part to help Lexington's music scene rise from the ashes that were scattered after The Dame – an iconic venue that had somehow found a way to touch a seemingly all-encompassing cross section of Lexington music fans – had shuttered.
Much was happening, in many different places, and we felt the city lacked a comprehensive resource where locals could go to find out what "tadoo" – particularly nightlife – on any given day. Over the past five years, tadoo.com – what we like to call a "comprehensive but curated" local arts and entertainment calendar, with a special focus on live music – has strived to provide that service for our users. At the center, for us, is the importance of promoting and furthering our city's entertainment options – not only for our own self-serving live-music-loving personal interest, but in the interest of attracting and retaining both tourists and local talent to our town.
In the years since we launched the site, local venues have continued to open and close, move and shift, flourish and flounder – a city's entertainment scene is a living, breathing thing, and it takes the participation of many moving parts and people to keep it healthy and alive. Lexington has done better at this at certain times than it has at others. As for our part, we are the first to recognize the shortcomings of our little website – which has honestly been one of the most complex and challenging ventures our company has produced – but we are proud of the role we've been able to play. We spend a not-insignificant portion of our hours and energy each week updating this website and populating it with events, whether its scouring the web or formatting your submissions. It's a lot of work, but we are happy to do it because we feel its important, even in an era where lots of you may primarily get your event info from your personal social circle, however insular that might be.
So all of this is really just an overblown lead-in to say....five years after launching the site, we've moved it to this same hub that houses smileypete.com, the website where all of the online content for our sister publications, Business Lexington, Chevy Chaser Magazine and Southsider Magazine, lives. After testing the waters of various and flawed online calendar software over the years, we have yet to find a perfect system, one that suits all of the design and functionality needs of both our administrators and users. But we are excited about the usability and look of the new site, which we just launched in early November. We wanted to give our readers a heads up that the new site looks VERY different (don't be scared!), and also that we will still be working through kinks for the foreseeable future, as we get used to the ins and outs of the new system.
To reiterate, an online events calendar system of this sort has TONS of moving parts and pieces – admittedly, many more than I think my bosses or I anticipated when I pitched this idea to them five years ago – and we predict that it's unlikely that this system will perfectly suit everyone's needs or desires. But it makes sense for us, for lots of reasons, to move toward housing all of our company's publications – tadoo.com included – in one central location, and it was time for us to make a change. The URL "tadoo.com" now leads our users to a new events calendar. We will continue to accept submissions for events that meet our "arts & entertainment" criteria, using this "Submit Your Event" feature, located on the righthand side of the page (note that we will need to approve all event submissions on our backend before they appear on the site, and this process can take around a week). There's a chance some events may get lost in the shuffle as we make this transition (especially those taking place in early November) but we will do our best to continue to help get the word out about all the great gigs, art openings, plays, and other events that make Lexington a genuinely fun place to live.
We appreciate the support shown by our users, advertisers, and event organizers over the years, and ask that you bear with us during the transition. As always, we welcome your feedback – please email info@tadoo.com with any comments, questions regarding the new site or tadoo.com in general. Constructive criticism and testimonies about what you find useful or frustrating about the site are particularly welcome.