Hamsgiving IV

Yeah, fuck it, I'm using roman numerals.
I haven't talked about Hamsgiving yet, which is odd. Odd because I normally run out a liveblog of the occasion and odder because we hosted it at a bar this year, which added to the complications about tenfold. The weird thing though is that in spite of the prep, it was less memorable this year, at least for me. I did leave earlyish, so maybe I missed some things, but then everyone leaves early on Hamsgiving. You don't start drinking at 1:00 and expect to go all night. I should say, not anymore at least.
The big news is that our celebration was overrun by the Idiotarod. Dave said it first when breaking the news to me: that it was really the worst-case scenario. The fairly obscure and extremely out of the way bar we chose, Wunderbar on the fringe of Long Island City, which holds about 100 people with some comfort, just flukishly happened to be double-booked with us and a group of worked-up, aggressive and drunken fools. A few hundred of them. I've thought about it some since then, but I still haven't been able to think of a worse group to have "sharing" a space with Hamsgiving, especially starting as early as they did, like 4:00pm. I remember standing there outside the bar, tending the grill right after Dave broke me the news, and looking down the sidewalk a few blocks away, seeing the first few people snaking their way towards us. I'm sure it sounds hyperbolic, but the uncomprehending shock very legitimately paralyzed my judgment. I guess I'd be no good in a war, because my response to this stimuli is just too slow.
The truth of the matter is that the Idiotarod-ers weren't really as bad or as numerous as expected. In the heat of the moment we were forced to have our guards up, which knocked down the enjoyment level a little, but in actuality their presence ended up being almost a wash. They inconvenienced us for sure with our food spread and with their thievery, but having a huge number of people added to the "party" and their dumb-ass costumes provided entertainment. They did eventually force us to relocate and perhaps lose a few of our attendees, but we did end up getting slightly cheaper beer, plus use of a large grill, plus free cleanup, all without having to pay the bar a cent. That worked out ok. We should have even left much sooner, but whatever. I was happy with my shirt, I was happy with the Polish sausage guy on First Avenue, I was happy with the grill, I was happy with the drunkenness, I was happy with the ham and all the other great meat efforts this. The only thing relating specifically to the holiday that disappointed me was that in the confusion of the crowded bar I didn't get to sample as much of the food as I'd have liked. And I never did get a meat sweats shot.

Before I go on with this unorganized post, I want stop and focus on something very negative. it doesn't have to do with Hamsgiving exactly but more humanity in general. Sometimes I'm too much of an idealist I guess, but I was really disappointed with a couple of people that day. First is obviously the manager of Wunderbar. This guy never told us about his double-booking of a huge group. Ultimately he didn't ask for the bar fee and he sorta tried to make things up to us at the end of the night, but that definitely doesn't excuse his motives or his deceit throughout the process. It was just blind greed. (I think I should be proud that encountering this still shocks and appalls me, right?) I know a businessman needs to concern himself with business, but doesn't anyone have a conscience about money anymore? Maybe the capitalist system is to blame, I don't know. There isn't really any incentive to ever do the right thing, and the right thing very often isn't the most profitable. That's counter-intuitive. The simple fact is that if we knew he had double-booked us with the Idiotarod, we would have never gone there, no questions asked. And he knew this, and he knew we would be paying him $250 plus bringing in around 75 people to buy his drinks all day. So instead of doing the right thing and being honest with us (actually, doing the right thing would have been not even booking the Idiotarod in the first place), he said fuck it and followed the dollar signs. I should note here that Wunderbar isn't exactly the kind of place to pack in customers, and that really it was us that was doing him a favor from the get-go, giving him a shitload of business that he never would have had, so you really might have expected him to be grateful for it. There was a ton of room for us to have our party in relative peace and for him to have a very profitable day. But I guess when you have a whole tub of ice cream in front of you, if you are a dumb fucking robot then you'll just eat the whole thing, no matter what effect it has.
It was a similar story when we relocated to LIC Bar, a bar that I like. The bartender though was a raging bitch. Initially she cut us some slack and let us use their back room (which we didn't actually need but at the time was empty) until another scheduled group came in, but again, we instantly produced 50+ (I was drunk at this point so have no real idea how many people we had) people when before us she had about 10-15. You'd think she would be happy, but no she wasn't really shy with displaying her opinion that she was being more inconvenienced than anything else. 50 people x 2 drinks per hour x $6 per drink x 2-3 hours = $1500. You are a bar owner. On a normal day you have 10-20 customers drinking at the rate stated, between 4-8pm, then you have 25 people from 8-11, 50 from 11-12, and 15-20 from 12-2am. This is all just very rough, and I'm sure I'm being liberal with the numbers for LIC Bar. Anyway. Round the numbers a little and add them up, so that on a normal weekend night, you make a little more than $2000, including tips. When we walked in the door, we almost doubled her income expectation. Fuck that woman. I understand we should be happy we found a home there, but it was LIC, we could have stopped at basically any place and had plenty of room. She was very lucky that we happened to choose her, and really amazed me with her sense of entitlement. She found a hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk but got pissed that she had to bend over to pick it up.

So I said earlier it was more complicated this year, and it was, but I really hope that doesn't discourage people. Most of it was our fault in procrastinating with the planning, and then latching onto a half-assed idea of using a bar. Using a bar by itself is not a half-assed idea, but locking in on the specific one we chose for no really good reason probably was. With more lead time, and probably a slightly higher expectation concerning booking fees, we could very easily find a more convenient and more upfront location.
Two big things have happened in the last year: no one lives in a big shitty apartment with outside space anymore, and no one has the ability to just accept a trainwreck mess of an apartment afterward anymore. Plus, the pool of partygoers keeps increasing. Using a bar is really the only reasonable option for future years. We've got to get started earlier and we've got to treat it like a legit event with contracts and such, not like an informal agreement amongst us and the bar manager.
I say this all directly, but the fact is that I likely won't have much if any involvement in the planning for Hamsgiving V, since I'll be in Chicago. It's no guarantee I'll be able to even attend, although right around that time would be about perfect for my first visit back to the city. I guess I'm just really hopeful that the perceived stress of staging this event--especially when outside factors are conspiring against us--doesn't outweigh the actual enjoyment of the celebration. I hope it doesn't get in the way of things.
I do know that whether I'm able to attend next year or not, I'm going to initiate a Hamsgiving West in Chicago for sure. It's a perfect city for it, too.