This image was lost some time after publication, but you can still view it here.

Giving voice to the subsumed lore of the underclass, the Gawker Media Mole Rodeo encourages your submissions of personal stories from the front (or rear) lines of the fabulous New York media lifestyle experience. We'll continue running candidates all this week; before the holidays, we'll re-run favorites for reader vote on which tipster wins the markedly dubious honor of enjoying free drinks with Gawker editors and Page Six's Paula Froelich. Send your mole tales to mole@gawker.com, post-haste. For this installment, let's return to the timely topic of media holiday parties, and misty water-colored memories:

While I read the latest Village Voice item with a mixture of nostalgia and nausea (I remember [former editor] Doug [Simmon]'s cab and heroin stories too, yo), I thought since it is the season, I'd pass on some holiday memories from back in the day when the Cooper Square coven was merely a viper pit of ambitious back-stabbers and prima donnas rather than the hemorrhaging cesspool it later evolved into.

When I worked at the Voice in the late 90's, when the ship was slowly making its way across the Atlantic (so way before the New Times Titanic iceberg imploded it), we had holiday parties that went a little something like this: [another former editor] Don Forst would come 'round to talk to the troops at about 5 on Monday (paper would be put to bed early instead of at 10 p.m.) to close up shop and start the festivities. He would announce his intention to walk out and not look back and bail us out if need be. Once the bossmen left, the fun really began.

Twister set up in one hallway, while the smoking lounge turned into the toking lounge (fatties rolled to perfection greeted all visitors) and dancing commenced in another room, where you were likely to see some lechy older men trying to make it with hottie interns. (To their credit, the interns deftly rebuffed such clumsy attempts.) Booze flowed while coldcuts and other holiday party favors kept us occupied as we wandered drunkenly all over the newsroom — the third floor of the Cooper Square building — dropping into one of many couches that seemed to be required furniture for all Voice editors. Everyone had sloppy smiles and nothing but good tidings to pass to co-workers, who gossiped in-between all the good will.

That's a Voice worth missing, yo.

Earlier: Wait, You Mean The Village Voice Isn't A Fun Place To Work?