By Gina Daugherty
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Just in time to spare Cincinnati from taking itself any more seriously is the funniest Web site you've probably never heard of.

DerfMagazine.com isn't advertised anywhere, and your favorite radio disc jockey isn't talking about it during the morning commute. Not yet, anyway.

But about 30,000 of you "get it" each month. And by "get it," we mean laugh at yourselves through DerfMagazine.com's portrayal of the people and places of Cincinnati. They take a pinch of truth, add a pound of exaggeration and poof: You've been Derfed.

No one is spared. The writers (the site has three but takes submissions from readers) for Derf come down on mixed marriages (those between east- and west-siders) and feature personal ads from native Cincinnatians whose goal in life is to "always live on the same street as my parents." They savage Hyde Park for being, well, Hyde Park - land of SUVs, Starbucks and long lines at First Watch.

Founded about a year ago by three or four (they claim to not remember exactly how many) local business professionals, the e-zine calls itself "Cincinnati's most irrelevant news source."

Yet it boasts 30,000 visitors each month, includes 10,000 e-mail subscribers and has a monthly happy hour attended by 300 to 400 young professionals. The happy hour is a movable party that happens at several locations in the city.

"There are few things where I can sit down and actually laugh out loud," says Elizabeth Cannon, a self-described DerfHead. "One of my favorites (on the site) was when the two women are supposed to meet at Starbucks in Hyde Park, but they keep missing each other because there are so many. And it's totally true.

"They are very topical. There are so many inside jokes to people who live in Cincinnati. It caters to our age group and the area we live in."

Like 'The Onion'

DerfMagazine.com is kind of like The Onion, the national satirical magazine and Web site (theonion.com). Only Derf specializes in making fun of Cincinnati, and you won't find any crude sexual jokes or hard-core cursing at DerfMagazine.com. This is Cincinnati, after all.

But they're plenty free about savaging the area's idiosyncrasies. Many readers liken it to British humor, and observe that Derf takes mundane details and blows them out of proportion, making missed coffee dates "disasters" and turning disasters into annoyances for local restaurant patrons.

Most people are savvy enough to recognize that Derf is satire and that the folks with the yellow billboards that say, "We Buy Ugly Houses," didn't really buy all the houses in Norwood. But there have been times when the humor is lost on some readers. People will e-mail Derf and complain that there really isn't a blind Bengals scout or a cul-de-sac community, where no one can get in or out. (The accompanying graphic shows a "double cul-de-sac" in GlenViewRidgeDaleHaven Oaks Estates. Where is that exactly? Probably in a cul-de-sac near you.)

DerfMagazine.com started as FredMagazine.com, when a friend of Mitch Tolokonsky's, named Fred (of course), had his face splashed all over the Internet.

"If you clicked on his head, the screen would become a big head of Fred and his face would spin around," says Tolokonsky, DerfMagazine's "CEO." "But he's kind of shy, and when people started coming up to him in the grocery store asking him if he was Fred from Fredmagazine, he got kind of freaked out and made us stop."

So they spelled Fred backward, creating Derf.

Other than that, Tolokonsky and his brethren at Derf reveal precious little about the origins of stories. And they never reveal who writes what. They do take submissions, which brings a tear to reader Steven Fink's eye, who got a story on the site.

"If I died tomorrow, I would the happiest man on Earth now that I have my story on Derf," says Fink. "I suggested that the tortilla press at Chipotle is the next big thing in exercise equipment, because it looks like they (the people who make the tortillas) are getting a good workout."

You, too, can get 'Derfed'

The Derf following has been by word-of-mouth only, with most visitors interested in the headlines and stories, which are updated each month just before the monthly Derf happy hour. DerfMagazine.com has always helped charities promote their events, but just recently they began accepting advertisements.

But don't bother calling any number on the Web site unless you're hungry. Along with "your unique Derf tracking number" that the "Derf tracking number team" advises you to write down, is a telephone number you are to call in case you lose your 10 digit tracking number. Why anyone might need this number is part of the game, but we tried the number to get in touch with the folks at Derf.

"Popeye's Chicken, can I help you?" answered a woman.

Humpf. We've been Derfed.

"We had one story where a kid was going to tell his parents that he was adopted. Then we said if you think you have adopted children, call this number, and it was Popeye's Chicken," says Tolokonsky.

He's evasive about why Popeye's Chicken takes so much heat in Derf's Web pages, but he did mumble something about it being annoyingly close to the gas station at Madison and Edwards Roads. In fact, they are in the same building. A point that Tolokonsky says makes getting gas and Slurpees even more difficult at the busy corner.

You might recognize Tolokonsky. His picture is on the Web site as Scooter Wellington, the award-winning Derf Happy hour doorman. There have been a few people who think his name is really Scooter, but mostly, no one believes anything that DerfMagazine.com says.

Or do they?

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E-mail gdaugherty@enquirer.com