Urban Times Holiday Party
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008
Lulled to sleep by the soft, drifting snow, the city had turned in early and left the street lamps glowing as faint night lights. The snow was predicted to end some six hours earlier in the early afternoon, and yet here it was midnight-dark and quiet, the streets already piled deep and smooth – the severity of the weather barely noticeable in its slumbered pace.
I watched the storm play out subtly from The Cashew’s second floor. Above me were the metal rails on which the windows roll back and open up the second floor to let in the summer air and city smells. This was a completely different view than it would be in June when those windows, which equated to the building’s sides, were rolled back for enhanced atmosphere and trendiness.
Flakes fell steadily while the party-goers sipped rum and vodka mixtures and chewed ice despite the cold barren scene they’d forgotten in conversation and the bar’s warmth. As gradual as the snow fall, intoxication came to us all. Discussions that began guarded or with an edge became open to flattery and bombast, honesty and blue humor.
People who’d begun the night with hands in pockets and folded arms were embracing and posing for photos all while the weather denied the prognosticators, buried the high-rises and skyscrapers, brought a silence to the streets that would likely last only a few hours after the storm dried up and the buses started running on schedule.
My intention was not to drink heavily and for the most part, I kept that promise, but after the white-knuckle driving to reach this place (it’d taken me an hour-and-a-half on a drive that typically lasts 35 minutes) alongside this sudden solitude on the new-coated streets around, I felt a strong sense of relaxation among the bleak scene. I sat at the bar with a plate piled with appetizers, which I hoped would absorb the vodka cranberry drinks I’d downed.
Usually public and disquieting, the streets were gentle and the safety translated to my company. This was a small band of friends, colleagues that were writers and designers, photographers and artists, editors and the occasional spouse pretending to enjoy us all. Any level of comfort at a bar can be dangerous, so more vodka cranberries went down – just enough, though, to make me jovial.
We talked about Urban Times, the magazine that a few of us contributed to from the beginning, a magazine begun in much different weather, spring almost two years ago, the debut coming in a steamy July. The times and the situation were different. The weather was different for the city then, too. To go from obscurity to writing material that is thoroughly read is a magnificent accomplishment. I wouldn’t have come out in this weather for just anyone or risked the drive home on worsening roads.
After the group photo was taken, I stepped out into the raw night and the still-falling snow. Another year – another unexpectedly successful one – for a new magazine was about to be put to bed and the people who had worked to make it what it was were all nursing sleepy heads, ready to be tucked in.
