Adventures in Soho: The Sweet and the Vicious (Part Two)

Next stop: To hop on over to Sweet & Vicious 15 or so minutes early.  Here’s where our heroes run into trouble.  We go walking down the street and I turn to my husband.

Betsy:  Is that a bouncer?
Matt:  Where?
Betsy: Up there.  In front of Sweet & Vicious.
Matt: It certainly looks like a bouncer.
Betsy:  They’ve never had a bouncer before.  Uh-oh.

And uh-oh was the right sentiment to have.  Because, dear sweet people, I have never had an event at Sweet & Vicious on a Friday night before.  If you had asked me "What’s the Worst That Can Happen?", I would have answered, "It will be crowded".  This is what a lack of imagination will get you.  I had forgotten that sometimes whole bars can be rented out for private parties.  Whole bars like, you guessed it, Sweet & Vicious.

I would like to stop everything right now and solemnly swear that from here on in, I promise to never ever plan a Kidlit Drink Night without calling the establishment I am going to hold it at first.

So we approach the aforementioned bouncer.  To the side are some Queens librarians/denizens/friends of librarians who couldn’t get in.  What to do?  What to do?  Will the whole night be ruined?  We, which is to say Matt, asks the bouncer if there’s another bar nearby.  It’s Soho so we’re fairly certain that there might be, but the guy seems pretty baffled by the question.  Fortunately there’s a different fellow next to him who points across the street to The Vig Bar.  The Vig turns out to be a cocktail bar where only a few people are milling about.  We have to be carded to get in (a slight problem since my 32-year-old husband didn’t get his new driver’s license in the mail yet) and waiting inside is….

A big empty room we can have our party in.  Joy.

I’d been told that going to McNally early would be silly because they don’t even open their doors until 10.  What I did not anticipate was the line around the block.  Suddenly McNally looks like the hottest club in town.   Its line is full of well-dress Soho Manhattanites.  In front of us are two party girls, each wearing some rather stylized, pure white Harry Potter glasses.  It’s that kind of scene.  We hang out and have a good time, but it’s very odd.  A one-of-a-kind experience.  Any reporter worth their salt would have had a great time taking pictures of this amazing example of how Harry Potter really isn’t for just kids.

At the last minute my friends Dan and Sarah arrive.  Sarah’s mom, I have been informed, reads this blog and may become a children’s librarian soon.  HI, SARAH’S MOM!!!!  We go in, after having our IDs checked again (my husband has, I should point out, never had to show an ID once in this town until this week), our hands stamped, and in we go.  They project the movies against walls.  They have palm readers and magicians and all kinds of little booths.  In the basement is the "magic punch" (hence the hand stamp) which is free and very tasty.  So we camped out against the travel section and had a great view of the variety of costumes.  There was a woman dressed as Harry Potter who I really hope won the costume contest.  She was absolutely perfect in every respect.  So much so that I had a long debate with my husband over whether or not she even was a woman.