Global Reddit Meetup Day in Central Park.

“Look at the number of cargo shorts here,” remarked the skeptical companion Betabeat had dragged along to the Global Reddit Meetup NYC on Saturday, as we stood on the outskirts of the picnic in Central Park where close to 200 Redditors snacked on chips and soda and mingled in the shade.

As we approached the group congregated around a large sign featuring the Reddit alien logo,
we were invited to join in a game of “Dino Ball.” “It’s the best game ever. Come over and see,” we were advised by a circle of 20-somethings hitting what appeared to be a small green children’s ball with painted teeth. Other picnickers played soccer and tossed Frisbees. Discussion threads about the event had mentioned Super Soakers, though most attendees seemed fairly content chatting in small circles—including Reddit CEO Yishan “sparklepants’ Wong, who hung out at the picnic for about an hour, handing out stickers and taking photos with other Redditors.

The picnic, one of almost 500 meetups that took place on Saturday as part of the 3rd Global Reddit Meetup Day, was described on the social news website as “just a bunch of geeks and nerds hanging out” with the friendly addendum, “we do not care if you are a Redditor or not.”

Despite this disclaimer, attendees seemed incredulous when Betabeat admitted to not spending time on the site regularly. “You said you’ve been on Reddit briefly. How is that even possible?” an employee of the NYU Math Department who frequents r/Astronomy, r/Fitness, and a “couple of music subreddits” asked in disbelief.

“Here’s what you should do. Spend half an hour a day browsing on Reddit every day for a week. Then, after a week, try to stop,” an enthusiastic Redditor in army pants and a tank top said.

Many of Saturday’s picnickers are regulars at weekly Reddit meetups in the city. “I’m kind of a meetup junkie” said Marc Ebuna, who works in IT (“pretty much like everyone on Reddit,” he said) and attends weekly Reddit board-gaming meetups.

Others go to weekly meetups at Peculier Pub in the West Village on Tuesday evenings, where there are reportedly upwards of 50 attendees. “The Redditors usually take over the bar,” a regular informed us. “But we don’t talk about what we saw on the Internet.” He then explained, in detail, the perks of the Men’s Fashion Advice subreddit, r/malefashion. “If you shave your beard, you can post a photo to the thread and ask, ‘is this a good change?’ And people will be like, ‘yeah, man,’” said the Redditor, who didn’t have a beard, though any additional fashion sense was hardly noticeable.

Yet Jacob Shufro, 22, a software engineer at Peek, inc. and one of the event’s organizers told us afterward that the newcomers outnumbered the regulars at Saturday’s picnic. “At the regular meetups, the regulars outnumber the newcomers probably around 2 to 1, but every time we have a picnic we see a huge turnout of new faces. I’d guess this one was 3 or 4 newcomers for every regular.”

John Seto, 28, another one of the event’s organizers noted that this was one of the first times they’d seen subreddits represented at a meetup. Joey Castillo, a mobile app developer came to the picnic wearing an ”I Love Gamers” T-shirt and holding a sign for r/ainbow, an umbrella LGBQT subreddit, to help users find each other. In another area of the picnic area, members of the subreddit r/tall gathered--most of them sitting.

“R/tall, describe yourself in a sentence,” Mr. Seto called out for Betabeat’s benefit. “Yes. Tall,” was the extent of the response.

“We haven’t seen the ‘gonewilders’ here yet, though,” one Redditor remarked with a laugh, referring to r/gonewild, the notorious subreddit where Redditors post nude photos of themselves, which are subsequently upvoted or downvoted.

“Yeah, but they’re definitely here. They just haven’t revealed themselves yet,” another responded jokingly.

“The event was, and I think we all agree on this, very successful,” Mr. Shufro told Betabeat afterwards. “We had the biggest turnout we’ve ever had, the weather was perfect, and everyone seems to have had fun.”

Redditors congregated for most of the afternoon before dispersing around 5 p.m., many heading off to various bars on the Upper West Side, accompanied by their new friends. Others were worn out from an afternoon of socializing. After the event, Mr. Shufro told us that he “went and ate some Ramen noodles, watched Battlestar Galactica, and went to sleep. It was an exhausting day.”

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka "The Guy with the Red Tie"), founder of GarysGuide and mentor at ER Accelerator. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.org.

So, it was a busy week. Steve Jobs (who loves black turtlenecks almost as much as I love red ties) resigned. Twenty-five thousand New Yorkers checked into Earthquakepocalypse (and lost some respect with Californians in the process). And Hurricane Irene gave us a few gusts of wind, a few drops of water and a lot of @ElBloombito. But nothing is more important than the upcoming SXSW 2012 Panel Picker deadline (September 2). See, where I come from, we look out for our own. So I've put together a list of panels representing our local New York startuppers. Go show some love and vote for them and email me if you want your panel to be added to the list.

And now, here's whats going on in your neck of the woods this week ...

Use The News! An Introduction to the New York Times API
Zoe Fraade-Blanar (interactive consultant, New York Times and adjunct professor, NYU ITP) will give you the straight-up dope on how to tame the "vast, powerful and a little confusing" monster that is the New York Times data services API.
Monday, 6 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway 4th Floor

Ruby for Kids. Sharing with kids how much fun programming is
You know what they say. It's never too early to get them hooked. Just don't be too upset when ur kid whips up a snazzy social app and snags seed funding before you do.
Monday, 6:30 p.m. @ Warren Weaver Hall, 251 Mercer Street

Outloud.fm - NYC Tech Talks
You can't turn around without bumping into a social music listening startup these days. Following in the smart footsteps of Turntable.fm and Console.fm comes a new one, Outloud.fm. Co-founders Steven Huynh and Mike O'Brien will tell you what its all about and how they built it using node.js and redis.
Tuesday, 7 p.m. @ Meetup HQ, 632 Broadway

PHP is dead: No startups use it... except these awesome ones
Personally I think the start-up world is big enough for everyone, yes, even you Cobol. But if PHP and Ruby want to meet up at the back of the school to duke it out, I'd pay to watch that.
Tuesday, 7 p.m. @ Refinery29, 30 Cooper Square 4th Floor

Producteev and Meetup host Old School Game Night Tourney for Startups
Start-ups. Game Night. Swag. Networking. Hot Dates. Pizza. Cold Beer. Prizes. Co-founders. Charades. Honorary trophy. How can you not like this event?!
Wednesday, 7 p.m. @ Meetup HQ, 632 Broadway 3rd Floor

500Startups NYC Demo Day
The place to be to hang out with super angel (errr... micro vc), master of 500 hats and the guy who introduced 'AARRR!!' to the silicon valley vocabulary, Mr. Dave McClure himself. Bonus drinking game--down a sake bomb everytime Mr. McClure can't remember the name of one of his own start-up investments. I kid, I kid :)
Wednesday, 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway 4th Floor

The Product Group September 2011
It's 2011. Surely you're not still torturing ur friends with Evites, are you? You, dear reader, need Paperless Post. And to learn more about their swoon inducing designs and graphics so-good-you-can-lick-them, come meet up with their product guru, Itai Ram.
Thursday, 7 p.m. @ MTV, 1515 Broadway

Graph Based Machine Learning with Applications to Media Analytics
Social graphs, interest graphs, taste graphs, knowledge graphs. Every start-up worth its salt is dropping the graph bomb in VC meetings and sprinkling it liberally in their pitch decks. But let's be honest. How many of us really know what the heck a graph is? So go chat with Intent Media scientist and former IBM researcher, Lei Ding and get the inside skinny on nodes and routes.
Thursday, 7 p.m. @ AOL HQ, 770 Broadway 6th Floor

Credit Card Processing Basics
No, you won't learn about how to deal with deadbeat clients or what ur start-up business model should be. What you will learn is how to get the dough from a customer who actually wants to pay you. You don't wanna be leaving money on the table, now do you?
Thursday, 8 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway 4th Floor

NYC Startup and Dim Sum Enthusiasts Meetup
Cuz startupping + dimsumming is a match made in geek foodie heaven.
Saturday, 10:30 a.m. @ Jing Fong Restaurant, 20 Elizabeth Street

More on the horizon ...
September NY Tech Meetup @ NYU Skirball Center on Sep 6
An Insiders Guide to Angel Investing with Thomas Wisniewski @ General Assembly on Sep 7
Video Hack Day with Shelby.tv @ General Assembly on Sep 10
Open Video Conference @ New York Law School on Sep 10

Until next week. Stay social, my friends!

Not to much to add to this wonderful video. It's a short interview with user DomCash, who reads the site every day, is more of a lurker than a poster and appreciates that everyone else also came to the meetup alone. He hasn't tried the bacon muffins yet, but worked up an appetite tossing the Frisbee. His favorite sub-reddits are jazz and when's got nothing better to do, a few rage comics. "It's like a dream," says DomCash. Goodness after the jump...