Zeb Dropkin explains an app that tells you how much your neighbor pays in rent.

Full disclosure: This reporter lives in the East Village. Which is how she knows the neighborhood is a total hotbed of tech hangin'. Venues in the area are teeming with Foursquare tips left by Naveen and Caro. Free wifi abounds. Techies spotted serendipitously after hours in the East Village include Dennis Crowley on multiple occasions, as well as GroupMe co-founder Steve Martocci and Chris Poole.

No luminaries showed at d.b.a., the beer-centric bar on First Ave. chosen for the inaugural East Village Tech Meetup, although Betabeat personally (read: on Twitter) invited Jack Dorsey and Fucked Company's PUD, both currently in town.

The crowd instead included developers, start-up founders, Google employees, a Betaworker, two journalists, at least one student and the founders behind Video Time Machine, currently the no. 1-selling iPad app in the App Store and no. 2 in the entertainment category for iPhone. ("If we hit number one in the iPhone app store, it's going to be over. Game over! Retirement!" crowed co-creator Matt Capucilli, who lives in the East Village.)

Mulitple employees at East Village-based Foursquare signed up for the meetup, co-organizer and East Village dweller Chris Carella said, but they begged off because it was too early--6 p.m.--and when not on strike, folks at 36 Coop work late.

Mr. Carella said he was told to expect about 50 percent of the 70-odd RSVPs, which is about how many cycled through while Betabeat was lingering.

"What's the goal here?" ur-netcaster Zeb Dropkin asked co-organizer Oskar Bruening, who explained that the goal was to be social and talk (lightly) about tech.

We did a survey; about half the attendees either worked or lived in the East Village. The other half just thought it was a cool neighborhood and wanted to do some cool networking.

Betabeat accidentally walked into a nerd talk on our way out, though: Mr. Carella and his wife Becky were talking to GroupMe's Pat Nakajima. "Windows 7 doesn't do push notifications. They're called toasts. I was like, we have to have the word 'toasts' in our codebase?" Mr. Nakajima said.