May 16th, 2010
The First Rule of Happy Hour Club Is……
Bruce & Kevin - Damage Assessment First Happy Hour
A part of Bruce and Mary’s old life back in the States that they have really missed is the Friday night happy hours they used to share with their St. Cloud friends at brother Neil’s place (one of Joey’s pals, when announcing that he was going to “Uncle Neil’s Place” for happy hour was asked, “Where is that bar, never heard of it?”). And before St. Cloud it was our Alexandria friends who we partied down with, every Friday night. Let’s see what happens in Mérida when Bruce and Mary introduce that time honored tradition of Friday night happy hours to their Mérida friends.
We’d talked about it for a long time and we finally decided to kick off the first Mérida Happy Hour back in January when Kevin and Rosie were visiting. Kevin and Rosie are very social and they had met many of our Mérida friends on prior visits so we knew they would enjoy it, as visitors, so we sent out the invites. The invite went something like this: Please join us for the first Mérida Happy Hour this Friday. It commences at 5 and ends….. In an effort to keep the hosts responsibilities minimal (to encourage lots of hosting volunteers) everyone should bring their drinks and a botana, snack, to share. By the end of every happy hour a new host shall announce themselves and the tradition shall continue. Absolutely no RSVPs, come if you like, don’t if you don’t and the first rule of Happy Hour Club is…. there are no rules, the above are just suggestions.
Well that first happy hour at our place was quite the success with about 25 people showing up, including our local friends Enrique and Mary (not Maria) who, in typical local fashion did not show until most guest were leaving. Well it didn’t make much difference to us as Dave the Brit and his entourage kept us up until 1am anyhow.
The next weekend our good friends Lorcan and Lexi hosted, at their cozy house in Centro, with its beautiful gardens and patio. We were the first there and helped them set-up and again it was quite the crowd but with a number of different folks who were new to us. The local contingent showed about when we were leaving which caused all future Happy Hour invites to not be open ended. Now, quite explicitly, invitations state that the hours of Happy Hour are 5-7.
The next happy hour was at Dave the Brit’s new fish and chips place on Calle 59 in the heart of downtown
Happy Hour Club at Captain Flint's
and gringo gulch. Cap’n Flints was not slated to be open for a bit but Dave thought this would be a good opportunity for a trial run and it was a huge success. Dave started off with botanas of breads and cheeses and then quickly served up his fish and chips and deep fried empanada type things that Dave’s right hand man Varon had essentially invented. Very good but not too heart healthy as you can imagine. Again there were a lot of familiar faces and another batch of new ones.
The next happy hour was hosted by Enrique and Mary, our local friends and they live way out in Fracc. Francisco Montejo. This was the first happy hour that we could not walk to. Our taxi pulled up at Enrique’s brand new house in a brand new development and boy, were Lorcan and Lexi glad to see us. They were the first guests to arrive, we were the second. You see, Lorcan and Lexi’s Spanish is quite a bit better than the average gringo down here but not quite up to conversational levels so they had been struggling. And soon we were joined by a neighbor Alberto who treated us to his Tamarindo Margaritas (quite good) and soon Dave and his entourage showed up along with a few others and the evening, for us, was capped by Alberto tuning up his guitar and crooning some Latin love songs for us. It was a very enjoyable happy hour (but smallish due to the far out location) and one that we were happy to have shared with Dale and Judy, church friends of Mary’s mother Harriet, who were in town for just a couple of nights on a bus tour of Central and SE Mx.
Alberto Serenading Us at Enrique and Mary's Casa
Then for the first time, no one volunteered in response to the weekly Wednesday batch email that Lorcan, bless his soul, had taken upon himself to send out informing of the next happy hour host or soliciting one. So, we decided to meet at El Lucero del Alba, our neighborhood bar. As we are the founding fathers we chose our bar and a fine one it is with reasonable beers and free, most excellent botanas. We were the first ones there and we helped our server buddies Filipe, Lucio, and Enrique bunch tables together for this gringo onslaught and leading the charge was Dave and his entourage followed closely by Lorcan and Lexi. We had about 20+ turn out and it was fun but it was difficult to mix as you had to hop from table to table to do so.
Mary and the Hard Core of The Happy Hour Club
We missed the next happy hour which was hosted by Debbie our good friend and it was the doozy of the bunch as 45 people attended. We heard a lot about it at the next happy hour that we attended (I know, we the founders dropped out for a little while and boy did we get crap for it!), again at El Luceros. Once more no volunteer stepped forward and Lorcan and Lexi and Mary and I discussed this at length as things like Happy Hour are important! We agreed that this Happy Hour club had morphed out of all recognition. We looked around the room and we knew maybe half of the people and we also knew why nobody was volunteering, it had grown too big! So we decided to do one last call for a volunteer and if no one stepped up, we’d take a break for the summer and reassess in the fall. And that is what happened, no one stepped up and we are on break. But I like my idea better. Once we get back from MN in early June (we have some things to attend to like Mary’s annual May 17th celebration and… something else…. oh yea, our daughter Helen’s marriage!) I will propose, because why the hell should we take the summer off from Happy Hour(?), that we, on the sly, start all over. Only this time it will be only the hard core, our intimate group (you know who you are) and we will all be sworn to secrecy. I am thinking of passwords and secret hand shakes. I’ll keep you posted.
Thanks for visiting gentle reader. Once again it is another case of be careful what you wish for, for Bruce and Mary. But maybe next time they can do Happy Hour right and it will be a cause for celebration for all of their Mx days! Well that was a little over the top, but what the hell you can never underestimate the power of Happy Hour.
