The Lights Stayed On!
12/12/10 10:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madrobinsA year ago the Lucas Companies holiday party were interrupted by a massive water main break which caused a black out. It says something that immediately when the lights went out people started looking for the tech facilities crew, as if they could have done something about it (the party is held in downtown SF). So the party ended early last year.
This year the rain held off and the lights stayed on. The theme was "Revel", and there were half a dozen areas within the party that were supposed to represent big festivals of various cultures: Carnevale was front and center as you walked in (with Mardi Gras beads and scantily clad dancers); to the right, the NYC Festival of San Gennaro (with street fair games--SkeeBall and Balloon Burst and things like that--and street fair food--mini Italian sandwiches and Italian ices and cannoli); dead center, Oktoberfest, with various beer stations and an oompah polka band that switched to pop songs later on (I'm not sure they played "Stairway to Heaven" as a polka, but they might have) and various wursts and pretzels and German Chocolate cupcakes; to the left, The Moon Festival, with lovely Chinese food and people in Gilbert-and-Sullivan Mandarin outfits doing paper cutting and lantern making; beyond that, the Cote d'Ivoire Bal Masque, which was had music and, um, a guy walking around with a huge boa constrictor which he would drape over people's shoulders for photo ops (I stayed far away. My feeling is that all it takes is for the snake to get the idea in its raisin-sized brain that it's had enough and *squish* my brains are coming out of my ears. No thank you); and finally, in the rear, Cinco de Mayo, with an electrified Mariachi band and women showing people how to make paper flowers and luminarias. And of course, even beyond the Oktoberfest beer stations there were bar set ups all over. No one went thirsty.
The coolest part of the party is that every year people from the various subsets of the Lucas empire submit work for the art show--photographs and sculpture and paintings and prints. Not surprisingly, there's a huge lot of talent out there, some of it whimsical, some of it very straightforward, but all of it worth looking at.
Even though the lights stayed on, we did not. Sign of wisdom: if it's too loud to have a conversation with the people around you, and you've eaten enough and you're not there to get drunk, maybe it's time to leave. So we did. But it was a swell evening. And as we left we noted two emergency generators parked at the side of the building, just in case. It's a good thing to learn from experience.
This year the rain held off and the lights stayed on. The theme was "Revel", and there were half a dozen areas within the party that were supposed to represent big festivals of various cultures: Carnevale was front and center as you walked in (with Mardi Gras beads and scantily clad dancers); to the right, the NYC Festival of San Gennaro (with street fair games--SkeeBall and Balloon Burst and things like that--and street fair food--mini Italian sandwiches and Italian ices and cannoli); dead center, Oktoberfest, with various beer stations and an oompah polka band that switched to pop songs later on (I'm not sure they played "Stairway to Heaven" as a polka, but they might have) and various wursts and pretzels and German Chocolate cupcakes; to the left, The Moon Festival, with lovely Chinese food and people in Gilbert-and-Sullivan Mandarin outfits doing paper cutting and lantern making; beyond that, the Cote d'Ivoire Bal Masque, which was had music and, um, a guy walking around with a huge boa constrictor which he would drape over people's shoulders for photo ops (I stayed far away. My feeling is that all it takes is for the snake to get the idea in its raisin-sized brain that it's had enough and *squish* my brains are coming out of my ears. No thank you); and finally, in the rear, Cinco de Mayo, with an electrified Mariachi band and women showing people how to make paper flowers and luminarias. And of course, even beyond the Oktoberfest beer stations there were bar set ups all over. No one went thirsty.
The coolest part of the party is that every year people from the various subsets of the Lucas empire submit work for the art show--photographs and sculpture and paintings and prints. Not surprisingly, there's a huge lot of talent out there, some of it whimsical, some of it very straightforward, but all of it worth looking at.
Even though the lights stayed on, we did not. Sign of wisdom: if it's too loud to have a conversation with the people around you, and you've eaten enough and you're not there to get drunk, maybe it's time to leave. So we did. But it was a swell evening. And as we left we noted two emergency generators parked at the side of the building, just in case. It's a good thing to learn from experience.