How About Here?

My brother, my sister and their wifey and hubby (respectively) spent the weekend with me in New York City, abandoning their kids for three days and flying 2000 miles north to see their significantly younger brother in his first Off-Broadway play.

Needless to say, they loved the play. And they loved the city. And they loved eating and drinking in the city. Drinking in the city. And drinking in the city.

[Smiley-ish face]

Of course, the four of them (in particular the women) are up-to-date on #venuegate and all of the chaos with our last minute venue swap. So, being the helpful siblings that they undoubtedly are, the four of them (again, in particular the women) made it a point to point out every possible venue that they encountered in their 50-hour stay in Manhattan. How about here? How about this? How about that?

When I first met them outside the SoHo Playhouse after our Friday evening performance, my sister was quick to pull out her handy-dandy iPhone and announce, We totally found the perfect venue, and it's in SoHo. What she had photographed was an art gallery of sorts -- a dark, cement-like hole that they'd stumbled across somewhere between Prince and Spring, with very trendy but overwhelmingly ominous, glowing rectangular boxes -- like oversized illuminated coffins -- spaced evenly throughout the grey box. And that's it. Just the coffins. And cement. And darkness.

Looks great, I said.

I was by no means ungrateful. New York is home to what seems like thousands of hidden venues -- many of which we've been lucky enough to discover through fellow bloggers and friends' recommendations.

And they certainly weren't afraid to chime in with rehearsal dinner options. This place is great -- and look, they do birthday parties! Or, We were at this great bar last night...

Just to fill you all in -- 2E's and I have a few options to work with, and all of those venues are on hold for our date at the moment. But, to be honest, we are still rather infatuated with our original location, and we haven't given up hope entirely. We're still waiting for word on this undisclosed event that may or may not disrupt our plans should we decide to stick with the loft. The one thing we know for sure -- we absolutely need to make a decision by the end of the month, which gives us two whole weeks of wiggle room. Two weeks to turn things around at the Loft; or to fall in love with an undiscovered space; or find the beauty and personality in a space we've already seen.

It's true. Time is not our friend. But I did know his roommate at NYU, so maybe he can talk to Time and see if he can pull some strings for us ... but they haven't spoken since, like, 2006, and I think one of them dated the other one's ex, so it's touchy ...

... oh well. We're still breathing.