Photo credit: T. Harris
My last journal post was about gratitude. Little did I know then, but some immense good luck was about to come my way...
For the past few months, I've been planning a reunion for an old Orlando nightclub for punks, wavers, goths, mods, skaters, surfers, etc... y'know... freaks. Anyway, it had been 25 years since I stepped foot in the place at the tender age of 13 and the club closed it's doors just 3 years later, when it opened as a new venue in a different location. I decided it was time to pay homage.
With the help of a friend who was still in Orlando, I managed to wrangle her into landing a venue for the event (the old club was long since torn down) for FREE and the original DJ even contacted me about coming out of retirement to spin for the night... also for FREE! I proceeded to design the poster, put out Facebook alerts and an event page, and invite the old gang. The event was on December 26th, the Saturday after Xmas, so it was guaranteed to have some old faces in town who were visiting for the holidays.
Yet with all this planning, I honestly never thought I'd be able to make it to the event. The only problem for me was that I was completely broke and didn't have a means to get down to Orlando at all. I wasn't sure how I'd pay for food and drinks once I got there, but I knew that if I could just get there, everything else would all fall into place. Friends were chomping at the bit, offering their places for me to stay, so that was more than covered. But how to get there? At the 11th hour, an old friend and former band mate of mine told me that he wanted to drive his little girls down to visit his family there and offered me a ride. And yes, it too was FREE.
We rolled into town just a couple hours before the event... just enough time to shower, change, grab a bit to eat, and rush over to the venue. I knew it was going to be a great night, but I never counted on 500+ people coming out to our little night of mayhem (we stopped counting before 1am and it stayed open another 2 hours). It was a bigger hit than anyone had prepared for... even the venue wasn't prepared, and they'd thought they'd maybe pull in $2000 in bar sales. Instead, they pulled in $6000!
As an unexpected cherry on top of the night, we were taking a small door fee of just $3, in case the bar didn't make it's needed sales... but because they went way over, we split the door 3-ways and I took home a couple hundred dollar bonus that I never expected. Sweet!
The original nightclub owner was in attendance and he was even teary-eyed as he thanked me for planning the event and I thanked him for giving us all a second home to grow up in and a soundtrack to our youth. I got to see friends that I haven't seen in 20 years, received more deep-squeezing bear hugs than I've gotten in my life to date, and got to witness the best love-fest this side of Woodstock. It was an amazing night and everyone came away with some wonderful memories... especially me. And to think, all of this came out of the brain of a struggling single-parent living nearly 500 miles away. Dream big, people!
Once again, thank you from the depths of my soul, you strange, wonderful universe, you!
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Addendum: I almost forgot another great detail! My old digital camera managed to take a permanent dirt nap at the end of the event night. I mean it completely tanked. Very sad, although to be expected with old technology. The next day, my friend and co-hostess gave me one of her old digital cameras, because she'd happened to have recently bought herself a new point-n-shoot, leaving the old one just lying around anyway. It may not be slim and it's a few years old, but it turns out to be waaaaay better than mine was. The generosity and giving that keeps happening on a daily basis leaves me speechless... and occasionally even a bit weepy :)
