NYE with the crazies

I wouldn't expect anything less than drunken crazies, price gouching and insane crowds when celebrating New Year's Eve downtown, but the level or madness some people ring in the the new year with still astounds me.

Yet Ross and I still had an amazing evening!

We opted for one of the more publicized events this year...always a crap shoot as high publicity often leads to crowd control issues (a la Zombie Pub Crawl back in October). The theme of the event was what drew us in...Shanghiaed...an Asian speakeasy. A Indian fusion restaurant was working as a "front" for an underground club on the lower levels...VIP karaoke lounges, gambling tables, several DJs, premium open bar, go-go dancers, Javanese shadow puppets, human marionettes, and a shibari performance...

A lot to see, do and take in besides your customary drinking and dancing.

Our suspicion of the over marketing of the event was confirmed when the coordinators oversold and had to move the event for the restaurant to the event center of the nearby Grave 601 hotel. A beautiful hotel, but little can be done to a conference center to cover up the boxy, opened spaced feeling, when the original ambiance was closer, plastered in ornate Indian and Southeast Asian and divided into several distinct rooms throughout the restaurant.

At the hotel, instead of a restaurant with three distinct spaces serving different intentions and music tastes we were offered one large ballroom with one portion roped off for VIPs with the karaoke lounge somewhere down the hall passed the elevators. Orginally three dj's were booked for three different rooms within the restaurant, they ended up using one all night in large ballroom space. The bars were poorly planned with too few bartender to keep up with demand. The half hour waits for a drink were exasperated by VIPs not content to wait in their own VIP lines felt free to cut to the front of every other line...as far too many privileges were sold to really maintain the coveted VIP status. About half of the entertainment canceled with the venue shift. And they ran out of most liquor and beer by 12:30.

But you know what? I still had a blast.

The worst of the night for me was the tediousness of standing in line for a drink.

But the crowd mentality and joy of the evening was contagious. Most of the night was we spent tearing up the dance floor among the throngs of other human bodies. The music thrummed. The lights throbbed. Everyone was dressed to impress.

The highlight for me personally was the shibari performance and the subsequent conversation with a stranger of the male persuasion about what was going on, if it hurt, if women were really into that sort of thing and what had happened to 'normal' sex. I answered what I could, as straight faced as I could (yes...I have indulged in Japanese rope bondage before) and ended the conversation by asking if it looked like the performers were doing doing anything on the stage that remotely even resembled sex. He blushed and moved on.

Sometimes the knot work is just beautiful...

We barely got a drink in hand before the New Year and with little warning the countdown began. A toast, a kiss and the New Year upon us, we danced with even more vigor and the crowd of crazies became even more inebriated, and began to thin out as the new year tolled on.

One perk to a conference center setting many a drunken woman discovered later in the evening as several propped themselves up pathetically, shoes kicked off, waiting for their man to return from coat check.

Upon exited the hotel, coats, hats, and scarfs snugly engulfing us, we were bombarded with not only the cold, but also the intoxicated Midwestern stupidity of cocktail dresses and high heels scurrying across busy streets with nary a coat or glove in sight.

We barley managed to hail a cab, but upon learning he wanted to charge $25 for our 5-6 block commute, but decided to hoof it instead, and leave the warmth of the vehicle to the more scantily clad of the evening's revelers and carousers.

Being in the thick of the celebration, despite my aversion to crowds and people in general, was truly incredible. And a raucous way to start of what should be a very, very good year.