Party Time. Excellent.

So last night we went to the Spoleto Soiree, which is put on by "the Scene," a group of people trying to get the younger crowd more interested in Spoleto. I definitely admire their goal. I do think that their advertising the Soiree as a party with dancing and a "young, hip crowd" sounds a little like something my grandma would say. I don't describe myself as "young and hip."

Anyway, we got there early. At the door some people were pushing Bacardi mojitos from a bottle, which were decent. The bar was further back and in the beginning it was nice b/c it wasn't swamped. The selection of alcohol was good and the drinks were strong. But, before long you had to fight a mob just to get a glass of wine. And half the bartenders had a drink in their hand, which seemed slightly unprofessional and contributed to the confusion. One bartender poured me a drink and then held in in his had, speaking with about 3 other people before handing it to me b/c he seemed to have forgotten what he was doing.

The food was delicious. fancy corn dog kind of things and catfish mini-sandwiches, egg rolls, mini grilled cheese and tomato soup, risotto balls.... all of it was great. The catering was done by JBC and all the food was arranged on pieces of glass sitting on Campbell's soup can.

The party had a pop-art theme. The whole set-up very "modern" feeling. In the middle of the room was a weird trumpet-shaped light and surrounding it was ottoman type things for people to sit on and some candles and stuff. There was a guy in the corner painting the whole time and giant slide shows on 2 walls of art, mostly Andy Warhol. Speaking of which, A guy dressed as Warhol was there along with some guy with a painted on mustache and a tuxedo and cane.

The bad part of the night was the music....the HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE music. It was nothing but trancy, techno, house music. For about the first 3 hours, there was one person dancing. And she looked strange and on drugs. Andy Warhol got up on a pedestal and this other girl was suddenly all over him, trying to lure him off of the pedestal will her non-rhythmic dance moves. Some people did end up dancing when he put on some old disco music. To me, this party was a little falsely advertised. When someone tells me there will be lots of dancing, I expect there to be music that people like to dance to. The music selection was ridiculous and pretty much put a damper on the whole feel of the party for me and the group I was with. It wasn't a fun, light-hearted, young party. It was very serious and elitist and pseudo-hip......as if the dj was saying "This is my music and I like it and so do crazy girl and Warhol over here so the other 500 of you can SUCK IT!"

Basically, I am a young person. I don't listen to stuff like that and neither does anyone else I know. One or 2 songs of it would not be the end of the world, but an entire evening of it was hard to deal with. In reality, the party seemed geared a little less towards the youth of Charleston and a little more towards some gay old man's idea of what "young and hip kids" would enjoy. It was an okay party...the food was good and I drank a lot....but for $50 I should have a GREAT time, and I really didn't.

Pronunciation Key

This should be a mandatory list for all news reporters in this town. Learn how you pronounce local things before you go on tv and say them for the whole town to laugh at.

If you miss pronounce these, you should not even live here:

Legare = La-gree
Huger = Huge-ee
Hassel = Hazel
Porcher = Por-shay
Manigault = Man-i-go
Mazyck = Ma-zeek
Simons = Simmons

Im sure I'll find other ones to add here as I watch the news nightly.

Locklears Blows

So Basil didn't happen. That place is always so damn crowded its ridiculous. And Spoleto has begun, so pretty much everything downtown is packed. We ended up going to Locklears in Mt Pleasant, which used to be pretty good but now isn't really any better than Carey Hilliard's.

Apparently all of Sal Parco's restaurants are closed Sunday. I really want to try Uno Mas, the new Mexican one, but it wasn't open yesterday. Neither was Boulevard Diner, which was our second choice. Locklears was really about our 5th choice. Our waitress was annoyingly chipper. I like waitresses the best when they leave me alone and just make sure I have enough water b/c I drink a lot of water.

I'm going to Basil tonight....

I've never been there before. I'm not much on rice noodles and curry, but it is supposed to be wonderful. I'll let you know how it goes.