The buzzing noise you heard Wednesday night was coming from U Street.

The BuzzFeed kids invaded D.C. to toast their new Washington bureau, and their Washington political journalism brethren heeded that siren call of free booze, piles of cheese and sliders, flocking to the Brixton.

Manning the helm was our old Bama of a co-worker, John Stanton, now BuzzFeed’s D.C. bureau chief, and standing beside him was BuzzFeed’s political editor, Ben Smith.

When the time for speech-giving arrived, however, Smith weirdly spent a bit more time talking about his former place of business than his new project.

“Thank you guys so much for coming,” Smith began. “It’s really fun to see my friends from Politico here. It’s exciting. It feels to me a little like how fun it was with those guys four years ago to start something new and build a real solid, lasting news organization.

“[F]or that, you have to be in D.C. to cover the huge stories that are going to be here over the next six months to a year,” he continued.

Before signing off, he told the crowd of more than 200 journalists and political staffers: “Thanks for coming, and we look forward to competing with you guys.”

Ahem, Politico and the rest of the nameless news organizations Smith never worked at, that sound you just heard was a gauntlet being thrown. Many of us might not have gotten it, as the Brixton beverage service was working on overdrive, but still!

These young, buzzy upstarts think they can kick our arses! We’ll show them that there’s more than one way to photograph a cat!

Dear BuzzFeed,

It’s on.

Yours, D.C.’s Newsgathering Community

P.S. Who you callin’ Bama? Son, please.