March 22, 2008

“So we’ll go no more a-roving

so late into the night…”

At least not this month, anyway.

Going out to bars, or dancing, or staying up all night is, quite often, the perennial tale of foolish youth gone by, the “good old days” for many of my cohort. Perhaps not for my immediate friends, but for friends of friends, or coworkers, or even the slightly older friends in their 40s or 50s. Most everyone has fond anecdotes of their days in college or after high school when they’d stay out all night, drag in the early morning exhausted, only to shower and head out to face a day of work. Heck, that still describes the habits of many of my industry colleagues during our week-long conferences! I don’t know how they’re still up and about after all that, but I’ve never been able to hang with the cool crowd because I definitely need sleep. Blame it on the arthritis. Then, too, I never really wanted to because I was on the wrong side of the dichotomy: there were the hard-partiers who could be up past 4 am drinking, or my own, must be responsible, type. As a card-carrying member of the second group, I always felt awkward committing to drinks with the partiers, and having to duck out early every time.

Without the pressure to stay out all hours, though, going out sounded like a lot of fun. And with a 26th birthday looming this year, it’s time to shake things up before I completely fossilize. Since my friends who have embraced the social scene are in New York, and those who continue to avoid a social life are in Southern California, I floated the idea to the gals at work. We’ve all been working really hard, so they were game. We planned a night on the town after work last Friday. [This is a great group, not only do we get along well enough to work and play together, we wear about the same sizes and can exchange clothes. Win-win!]

We had it all figured out. Coworker’s friend, our DD, made up our fourth, and arranged for free passes to a Hollywood club. We figured out a relay driving system to share gas and parking costs. It was going to be some good, cheap, fun! Well, it was definitely fun, but the cheap part went awry.

Foolishly, I’d thought getting to work an hour earlier on Friday meant we could leave earlier, get some rest, food, and prettied up for our night out on the town. Stupid deadlines. We couldn’t leave until 7:30! By that time, we starvelings were also punch drunk from sleep deprivation, which boded well for the rest of the night. Also, we found out that our free club was hosting an all-Asian night Friday, and that was much less appealing. Yes, I realize that sounds mean and I’m also Asian, but that doesn’t mean I really want to be in a club full of them. It’s a different crowd and music and energy than what we had in mind. So, change of plans. We decided to start elsewhere, where we could get some proper ’80s music, and that cost us.

As it turns out, Hollywood is quite the expensive town for spur-of-the-moment plans. I’d budgeted $20 total, but only brought $14 in cash because I didn’t have time to run to the bank. Also, credit cards are normally my go-to form of payment anyway.

For dinner, we shared a fine repast of Vietnamese food: $7 each, tip included. Since we had a DD, we gals each had a cocktail while getting dressed at Coworker’s place, but our overall tardiness meant that we had less than ten minutes to get ready if we wanted to make it to the first club in time to use our coupons. We’d managed to scare up $5 off coupons, which would have been perfect had we arrived by 10:30. Alas, leaving work late meant we had dinner late, got ready late, and had to pay in full. Booo. Our DD had to pony up the extra money for us girls who didn’t bring enough cash. What’s with clubs charging $15 cover, and not taking credit cards? Preposterous!

Then it turned out that both clubs required a $20 minimum to use credit cards. I was to drive C2 back to her apartment at the end of the night, so I’d stopped drinking, but the others were, and that means I couldn’t pay back either DD or C1 for paying for dinner or cover by buying their drinks. Also, they paid for our water because they’d opened tabs or had cash. Gr, I hate owing people money!

Don’t worry, though, I didn’t spend the whole night fretting over money. The first club was well worth the cover because they played ’80s favorites nearly the whole time: Prince, Depeche Mode, Billy Joel, Toni Basil, Michael Jackson, and of course, Madonna. There was a blonde guy up front on stage the entire night and he was an absolute SCREAM. I have never seen a man, gay or straight, so seriously rocking out and playing air guitar in my LIFE. They had a huge multi-step stage on which anyone could dance, and of course, C2 insisted on going up there. While I really haven’t got rhythm, I didn’t feel the least bit self-conscious up there because the crowd was so fun! The energy of a crowd out to dance is palpable, and intoxicating.

We crossed the Walk of Fame and passed the historic El Capitan Theater on the way to our free club, nicknamed “Asia.” I’ve never done this before. Never enjoyed the sights in Los Angeles, never been out there just to have fun. The night was blustery and nearly frigid, our feet rudely reminded us that we’re not 19 anymore. It was, as C1 said, almost like we were in an actual city, where you could walk wherever you wanted to go. It faintly reminded me of New York. Asia wasn’t 100% Asian as we’d feared so it was a good time there too, but we were pretty wiped out by then and people were much too fond of using their elbows to get through the crowd. There was a flying cocktail glass, at some point, and ice on the dance floor. We finally called it a night at 2 am, and hobbled through the cold night to our car, exhausted and happy. Most of all, happy to be sitting down.

Now I’m both out of cash, and owe C1 ($6) and DD ($10). Total spent: $30. Oh. Hm, doing the math just now, I thought I’d gone over quite a bit more than that. Both my wallet and feet need a little R&R. 🙂