The crowd was small, our spy reports — "about 20-30 people, mostly TechCrunch50 finalists." SearchMe.com was one of the finalists — "some woman even Twittered that they got in." Arrington drives a gray Porsche, and "left with a ladyfriend, didn't get to see who." (Anyone know who he's dating? Do tell!) On to the pictures!

Arrington, even as host, never could seem to crack a smile:

TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde watches from the sidelines:

Arrington and Del Conte catch up:

And here Mr. Henderson shook my hand and didn't mind at all when I said it was really his longtime companion Tom Coates, part of the Fire Eagle team and old queer hand of the blogosphere, whom I came out to meet. "We're here in my circle of exes," Culver continued. "And I have one to toss back at you," I added.

The rest of the evening is lost in a botched Flip video file sync — no footage for you — and a flurry of text messages wherein I tried to locate the guy getting a handjob in the men's room at the end of the night. No help from Fire Eagle there! Tip me if you know who the lucky jack was? (Photo by Andrew Mager)

At August, things got crowded up real fast. There were more women in the crowd this year, a change from sausagefests past. But they were hardly breaking Valley gender barriers. The marketers at the Plista booth lamented that their competitors were getting attention by hiring cute girls to serve free beer. (I still don't remember what Plista does.) A fellow with an accent — possibly a put-on — asked Yahoo Tech Ticker cohost Sarah Lacy if she worked in PR, because "you're so pretty." Here's Lacy's account of the conversation:

Dude: "You girls are really lovely you must work in PR."
Lacy: "Did you really just say that? That's incredibly insulting. Never say that to a woman in any business setting."
Dude: "No, I just mean because every pretty girl I've met here is in PR."
Lacy: "Yes, I know what you meant. that's why it's insulting. It's like assuming a woman in an office is a secretary."
Dude: "Blah blah."
Lacy: "You know what? There's a lot of people i actually want to talk to here." (walks off)

He came up to me TWICE after that, interrupting conversations to apologize.

Lacy: "Look, I don't care dude. just don't ever say it again because it's textbook insulting."

Everyone was mesmerized by Julia Allison, the former Star editor-at-large (read: TV spokesperson) turned Wired covergirl. That is, if you were important enough to warrant a conversation with her. Once the 30 seconds of polite time she gives you is up she'd turn free agent and could easily be stolen by somebody like Facebook's Dave Morin. Speaking of being mesmerized, rap impresarios MC Hammer and Chamillionaire showed up as well. They mingled amongst the geek kids talking about tech and rap while the Olds just guffawed at the entire thing from afar.

As the party wound up and the business-card-swapping got all the more frantic, Duck9's Larry Chiang put his afterparty plan into motion. His brilliant scheme: Send the entrepreneurs a URL with an invite to the Four Seasons Palo Alto and misdirect the venture capitalists with an otherwise identical invite to the Westin — a plausible location, since that was where Chamillionaire was staying. For non-VCs, the choice came down to Chiang's pool party at the Four Seasons, or Julia Allison's expedition to the Cheesecake Factory with Randi Zuckerberg, the nerd chanteuse and sister of Facebook CEO Mark. I crashed the pool party. I like to think I made the right decision for Valleywag readers.

At the Seasons, we saw Brian Solis working the crowds like a pro. Justin Kan of Justin.tv enjoying the jacuzzi in his underwear surrounded by girls. Shira Lazar mingled with Michael Arrington (perhaps prepping for an interview). And I even witnessed Jason Baptiste of Publictivity pitch a movie deal to Sarah Lacy based on her book. Michael Cera to play Zuckerberg anyone?

Which brings us to a tweak in Arrington's business model. Michael, instead of charging sponsors for booths at the party party, why not sell sponsorships at the afterparty? I don't remember any of the companies who paid for my attention on Sand Hill Road. But the scenes of Silicon Valley's finest stumbling around at poolside? Burned into my memory.

Can we just say it? Julia has the buzz and attention these second-tier bloggers and video makers have dreamt of for years, and they can't stand it. Maybe you guys need to wipe off that mirror on your laps and take a good hard look. Over here, we're nothing but grateful for her success — Wired's Allison story, sure to be read by hundreds of thousands of our kind of people, namechecks Valleywag five times. (Photo by Brian Solis)

But he is not above a little strategic flaunting. Slide hired a Hollywood props firm to create life-sized versions of the sheep and other icons from its SuperPoke Facebook app, displayed like museum exhibits at the party. Could rival RockYou afford such a gratuitous show of wealth? With their latest funding round not quite locked down, unlikely. It's considered bad form to spend money while you're out raising more. And that was Levchin's point in throwing the party: It's not quite that he was spending money for the sake of spending money. He was spending money to show that he could.

Investing in companies, even at late stages, is a relative bargain because of the strong euro, and once a company goes public, the returns are doubled again because companies trade at a much higher price-to-earnings ratio on average than the do in Europe. However, after telling a story about entrepreneurs turning land in southwestern France being managed by the government into a newly productive wine region from which guests were tippling the bounty, Wellington's Eric Archambeau explained that the new office was going to focus on business development. "Who needs another VC in Silicon Valley?" he quipped.

One of the companies in which Wellington has invested is Seesmic, the online-video tool founded by the crushingly gregarious Loic le Meur, who bent our ear over enabling his company's technology in our comments. If it means TechCrunch's Michael Arrington might drop by to share some of his deep thoughts, then I might just be able to make Le Meur's case with our publisher.

The most shocking sight at yesterday's SF Pride parade wasn't the contingent of marching Googlers. It wasn't the Yahoo booth handing out temporary tattoos. It was the total absence of other tech companies, small or large, from what should have been a cheap and easy opportunity to build brand goodwill among the estimated one million attendees. Hello, Microsoft? Valleywag reporter Melissa Gira Grant helped build Float 183 for two nonprofit sponsors.

One hurdle is the huge price difference between fees charged to nonprofit corporations versus their openly for-profit counterparts — making money is the last taboo in this town. I haven't been able to get the numbers, but if the only company floats are from the likes of Clear Channel and Macy's, there's clearly room to make the event more affordable for startups. Come on, Web 2.0 marketers, negotiate something for next year. Also, be sure to put your logo up there as high and big as possible, so we needn't stand on tippytoes to see it.

If you don't live in San Francisco, here's the wrapup: 2008's gay-and-everything-else pride parade was nothing like The Onion's parody. As Americans have become more tolerant, SF Pride has backed off from the giant-penis aesthetic meant to "freak the breeders" or whatever. It's now tame enough that Yahoo's "Purple with Pride" slogan was one of the few dirty double entendres among blocks and blocks of sweater-bear family values statements.

The most conspicuously outsized demographic marching yesterday? Christians. Lots of 'em. Specifically, Christians willing to skip over Paul's admonishment against the Gays (1 Corinthians 6:9-10) in favor of a quote from the Big Guy himself: "Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." RTFM, people.

(Photo by Melissa Gira Grant)

The offending burgers.

Plaxo's Joseph Smarr and John McCrea deem the sliders Comcastic.

Here come the firetrucks!

Ladder at the ready!

Firemen converge on the culinary disaster.

"It was a sugar marathon that would predictably peak in the middle in a weird haze of digital SLR flashbulbs, Twittering iPhones, and San Francisco body odor," wrote Cagle of the blogging, livestreaming, and actual tasting of cupcakes. "Apparently, it is more important to prove you were there than to actually have fun, which is especially ironic when you can't stop bitching loudly about 'the damn media.'" We have met the media, and it is us. We just haven't figured it out yet.

(Photo by SFBG)

(Photos by NewYorkInsider and NYFoundersClub)

(Photos by Nicholas Carlson)

Photos by Randal Alan Smith

Speaking of which, the crowd included Chuck Phillips, the president of Oracle; Accel Partners' Jim Breyer; Google angel investor Ram Shiram; Gavin Newsom; former California governor Jerry Brown; Jessica Guynn of the Los Angeles TimesBarron's; AllThingsD's Kara Swisher; former Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein; MarketWatch's Therese Poletti; Craig Newmark; and renowned San Francisco socialite Denise Hale, who rather liked my tie.

Zittrain's book is about the tradeoffs between freedom and control, security and creativity. New devices like the iPhone provide a safer, smoother experience than the uncontrolled Web — but at the cost of having a gatekeeper, Apple, dictating what can and can't run on the device. That kind of chokepoint, in turn, makes it far easier for government regulators to get involved. The alternative, though, is not particularly attractive: an Internet ruled by spammers and hackers.

Like his counterparts in politics, Zittrain is seeking a third way. I couldn't help but think this impulse is driven by an early experience he related at the party: Getting beaten up in high school. (He thanked the hostess, Melanie, "for not beating up on me.") Having been bullied, Zittrain doesn't want revenge: He just doesn't want anyone to bully, or be bullied. This moderating impulse is seen in a passage where he discusses how neither governments nor citizens ought to be able to wholly circumvent the law through technology:

Perhaps it is best to say that neither the governor nor the governed should be able to monopolize technological tricks. We are better off without flat-out trumps that make the world the way either regulator or target wants it to be without the need for the expenditure of some effort and
cooperation from others to make it so.

And yet Zittrain's career could well exceed Lessig's. That he was able to fill a room — an impeccably furnished, tastefully modern room in one of San Francisco's wealthiest enclaves, at that — speaks to his draw. Liberal San Francisco politicans, self-made entrepreneurs, and the Web's wacky fringe can all find things they agree on in his work.

The danger for Zittrain is that his work might be nothing more than a justification for compromise and tradeoffs. Will he find a third way for the Web — or just point out the middle of the road? His calls for a "generosity of spirit" are reminiscent of the assumptions that turned eBay, a marketplace of strangers, into a very profitable community of traders. Hoping for the best really can pan out, as it happens. But the answers Zittrain will have to find, or inspire, are far more complicated than asking someone to be on their best behavior.

But besides the commercial rationale, there's a more disturbing reason for Facebook to throw a prom for its employees. With its cafeterias, gyms, and volleyball courts, Google likes to makes its employees feel like they never left college. Could Facebook be trying to make its workers feel like they never left high school? Infantilization is an effective employee-retention program. But it is not a particularly attractive one.

More pictures from Facebook's prom.

It all started innocently enough. Sugar Publishing's Rebecca Gruber was nice enough to put us on the guest list for the party, which was cosponsored by PopSugar and TechCrunch. After leaving our car with the valet we sauntered into the Vanguard, a well-known dance venue on Hollywood Boulevard, without a care in the world. The comely Bonny Pierzina accompanied your correspondent as a photographer. After running into some friends near the door, we procured sodas and set out to mingle. We stopped to admire Perry Farrell mixing hip-hop hits from the Wu Tang Clan and the Beastie Boys.

I figured I'd introduce myself to Arrington and thank him for throwing the party. That was a mistake. I shook his hand, and before I could finish saying "Hi, I'm Jackson West, the new guy at Valleywag," he huffed, rolled his eyes and walked away. Laughing it off, I suggested to Bonny she roam the crowd and get some pictures of the party goers while I circled through the rest of the venue.

But it wasn't over with Arrington. He wrangled event security, tracked down Pierzina, and told the bouncers that she wasn't supposed to be there. She was then escorted off the premises, but not before being asked where I was — presumably to be disappeared from the party as well. The hero of the night was social networking entrepreneur Nick Dynice, who suggested politely to Arrington that it was rude and tasteless to turn Pierzina out.

After a flurry of text messages, I snuck out to check on Pierzina, and found some guerilla marketers from Vimby also being asked to leave. Back inside, tasteless 1938 Media videoblogger Loren Feldman traded barbs over Valleywag's traffic (and how little of it went his way). Recent Bay Area transplant Marjorie Kase, CEO of Blogger Reps, lamented the travails of her former employer MeeVee.

The rumor started going around that Cashmore had also been ejected, which turned out to be quite true. One Hollywood agent complained that the "douchebag level" was high, even for him. Once we caught wind of the planned afterparty at the Roosevelt Hotel, we tracked down Arrington one last time to thank him for the free drinks, getting blown off again once recognized.

So there we were at the Roosevelt, enjoying some fine hamburgers at 25 Degrees and dishing with Mahalo's Sean Percival when who should sit down at a booth but Arrington. The Valleywag team thought maybe we'd buy him and his entourage a round of drinks. After explaining the situation to our sympathetic server Leah, she suggested that maybe a milkshake would be more appropriate to the evident maturity level, and we agreed.

So with a signal agreed on and the camera ready, we walked by just as the milkshake was delivered. Hope you enjoyed it, Michael — we hear they're delicious, especially the strawberry.

(Photos by Bonny Pierzina)

(Photos by Elizabeth Borda)

That was Jamie Zawinski, the Netscape engineer who helped "free the lizard" by open-sourcing Mozilla, even though he apparently offered up his SoMa nightclub, DNA Lounge, for the event. Zawinski did, however, build a time capsule of the early Web — including early iterations of the Mosaic browser and website — for those of you who couldn't make the party but would like to wallow in the nostalgia. Who did show up? Dozens who RSVP'd after Valleywag's calendar listing yesterday, forcing Mozilla to open up the bar when the drink tickets ran out. Photos, including our own Owen Thomas making nice with Anglosexual Flickr engineer Cal Henderson, by Randal Alan Smith.

You guys should cover Scribd's posh anniversary party from Saturday night.

Location: Ariba billionaire Ed Kinsey's "modest" $22 million dollar home. Looks like it belongs to English royalty. His basement houses a stable of vintage sports cars from the '60s through the '90s, from Shelby Cobra to Aston Martin.

Michael Arrington and some of his kids from TechCrunch came, as did Paul Graham from Y Combinator, plus some other bigwigs I didn't recognize.

Trip, Scribd's CEO, looks like he's twelve - and is quite the overconfident Harvard kid. How the VCs let him run a company of 11 people is beyond me.

(Photo by Joey Wan)

Sabala, who started at Digg on February 6 as community manager and marketing director, is a SXSW veteran. (You can tell because she calls it "South By.") She was set on the idea of a party at the festival, but by Friday, she and the rest of Digg had decided it was a nonstarter. The next Monday, though, she gave it another try. A call to a Napa winery landed a sponsor for wine. A call to a contact at PureVolume secured the club for Tuesday night. With that, Sabala had a party that bridged SXSW Interactive's last day and the SXSW Music's first.

A few blocks away at Six Lounge, Revision3 was also bridging music and the Web, with a live debut of "Rock Band," Randi Jayne Zuckerberg and David Prager's homage to the guitar-wielding videogame at a party hosted by Rana Sobhany. Kevin Rose ruled Austin last night — he also cofounded Revision3.

Prager, Revision3's COO, told me Monday about the times he'd put money from his own bank account into Revision3's coffers to make sure it made payroll. Those lean days are long past for both of Rose's companies. Even as the stock markets waiver, Web startups seem flusher than ever. A Microsoft ad deal has buoyed Digg; the online-video boom is taking care of Revision3's paychecks.

Are we going to see this kind of party scene at next year's SXSW? Let's be clear: SXSW was a good time, not a boundless bacchanal. Nothing smacked of excess: A mild dose of star power is enough to intoxicate the deskbound Web designers who attend the festival. But I noticed that no one talked about the stock market once the whole week. SXSW was a comfortable bubble. As the Webheads fly back home, will they even feel it popping?

(Photos by Brian Solis)

Were you there, too? Or just want to add a caption? Leave a comment here or on the photo page.

(Photo of McCarthy and Thomas by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid; Loren Feldman and Owen Thomas by Brian Solis; gallery by Noah Robischon)

I took this up with Sarah Lacy, who was on hand — finally, someone else at work! — filming for Yahoo Tech Ticker. I asked her, do people come to SXSW and party because they're too busy when they're home to go out and socialize? "No," laughed Lacy. "They're partying at home, too." There goes that theory. Pictures from the party:

Fon's goal was to distribute enough Fon routers to create a local network of Wi-Fi hotspots. But Fon's plan for critical mass was upstaged by Joselito's critical ass. Cher-ish finished off the night with a bar-stopping performance and outfit she stitched herself. I thought about asking her to make me one, but I don't have the package to pull it off. Check out the rest of the photos.

Photos by Randal Alan Smith