.... And It's Over
Winter, that is. Even though the weather is still cooperating fitfully, the DC entertainment season has officially begun and I had a completely packed week.
It started Wednesday on H Street. I went to the Pug with a friend and ate a surprisingly edible "bangers and hash." The Pug has no real kitchen, so everything is made either on a George Foreman grill or in the microwave. So we're talking a lot of paninis here and a few other choices. This sounds dodgy at best, but it actually kinda works out. All the food has been prepared in advance with care and the choices are oriented towards this sort of prep. I mean, this isn't haute cuisine but for quick bar fare it's really not bad. I have always had incredibly friendly and accomodating service at The Pug and Wednesday was no exception - this is a great neighborhood spot.
The Pug stop was followed by the Palace of Wonders amateur burlesque show, in which a friend was performing. This was my first time to the Palace, actually, and it's a really unique and interesting place. The picture above is of the bar facing the street. The Palace seems to have adopted a cat and I was trying to capture the mascot sitting on the end of the bar with this picture. You can only see a shadow but I like the picture anyway. As for the show itself, it's hard for me to say if it was especially good or not, because I have no basis for comparison. But the performers were all enthusiastic and the costumes were great. I was thoroughly entertained.
Move on to Friday and the first installment of the Hirshhorn's After Hours series this year. This one featured a number of large scale projections by "video artist Ricardo Rivera and the Klip Collective," which made for an outstanding and visually interesting backdrop to the party. While the off-and-on rain throughout the evening tempered things slightly, it was still very well attended and a great time. This one was structured a little differently than past events. All tickets were sold in advance, and it was sold out a week before the event. The price also increased from $10 to $18 -- still a great deal for an evening of entertainment and a chance to see an exhibit with a buzz.
Onc criticism - they really need to work on the "check in" process. For past events, only part of the tickets were sold in advance. Some were held back for sale at the door. So if you had an advance ticket, you generally got in pretty fast, while people who came without tickets (suckers) had to wait in a long line. But this time, you had to have an advance ticket. No more VIP status.
Naturally, most people buy their tickets online. But there is never an option to receive printed tickets, so the vast majority of attendees will have to go to will-call. The only way to get actual tickets is to buy them at the box office, in advance, in person. There is also a security checkpoint that is a huge bottleneck - it seems like there's only a single portal that every one of the attendees must pass through before you can even go to will-call. My group kinda snuck around the security line (yeah, it was really secure...) with a little help from one of the empployees there who was probably breaking the rules to alleviate the obvious backup. So we were lucky. But there's no reason for this quarterly event to continue to be inadequately prepared to handle the crowd on entrance. It would also help a lot if you could actually get printed (or downloaded) tickets online, eliminating the fairly ridiculous will-call line. These issues should be easily resolvable.
Finally, Saturday, my friend Sara reserved the upstairs at Stoney's for her going away party. Sara's about the only person I know who's been in DC as long as I have and has decided to pull up her tent and move to Seattle. We will all miss her, but true to form she threw an awesome party. Everyone came out and in fact as of about 1:30 AM it wasn't clear that people were willing to let her leave... much love. We will miss you Sara. I think you'll be back one day... nobody can truly resist the black hole that is DC. I'm keeping my fingers crossed anyway.
So I will close with a kind of arty picture of the bar at Stoney's, since anyone who doesn't know my friends probably won't get much out of a bunch of random people having too much fun (and probably too much to drink.) The rest of my weekend was overwhelmed with long-overdue chores, favors, and other necessities of life that have been building up. Some progress was made, luckily, though the list remains long.
So until next time. I have been meaning to post about Ruby Tuesday's in Columbia Heights. That will most likely be my next post. Ruby Tuesday's rocks. No, I am not kidding. More later.