Had a lot of fun last night at
Lucky Strike in Philadelphia.
YellowBook had a Internet Team outing last night. Every once in a while they like to get out of the office. Of course this happens to coincide with a release day, so we all could use the stress release.
Funny story about release day. My team and I went out to lunch yesterday. Jeff gets a call on his cell phone while we're in the restaurant. He doesn't recognize the number and assumes it's an unimportant call, so he ignores it. Shortly after, I get a call on my cell and I assume it's a recruiter. It so happens that it's the office desperately trying to get a hold of us. Something went wrong with the release. We got back to the office after lunch and walked into a total surprise melee. All this
the day after Jeff made a big stink about everybody having our cellphone numbers. D'oh!
Anyway...
Busy day at work. Everyone was struggling to get out of the office in time to get down to Center City. Of course, I was like the last one because I had to make a playlist for on the way down. Something with some speed and aggression. If I'm going to be driving down the Schuylkill with the rest of the rush hour dumbasses, I'm going to need to channel my homicidal urges.
So I'm headed down 76 and it's pretty slow, as would be expected. Between Belmont and City it gets
really slow. A goddamn U-Haul truck stalls out right in front of me in the left lane. Razzafrazzin brickafrikkin rat bastard summumabitch! After that silly shit, I get around him and make my way into the city. So now I get off the Vine St. Expressway at 15th street and I have the incessant gridlock to look forward to. People wonder why I don't want to work in the city.
Spending time looking for a place to park downtown is like masturbating with a cheese grater. It may be exciting and different for a minute, but ultimately painful. I didn't want to park in a garage. The prices are nuts. Although finding a spot on the street is almost futile. After taking a few circuits around City Hall, I made my way over to Chestnut Street in the hopes of finding a spot. Nevermind the fire truck right outside of Lucky Strike that traffic couldn't get around, what about the SEPTA bus stuck behind me, blocking the entire intersection at 13th and Chestnut? Once I got around the fire truck, I found a spot only a couple of blocks from the place. OK, so it was a loading zone, but you know what? The cost of a ticket would probably be about the same as parking in a garage, so fuck it.
I made my way into Lucky Strike, and it was kind of a cool joint. Multiple floors of bars/restaurants/bowling alleys. Swank. I saw that there was a private event on the second floor. That must be us. So I made my way up. Nope. Evidently it was an event for
PhIMA. What the hell is PhIMA? I stuck my head in just to make sure. Guess who's there? Oh, shit. It's Gina. :) Before I can say boo, she swept me in and was showing me around. Guess who else is there? It's Desirea. :) They assumed I was there for PhIMA. I didn't even know what that was. It just so happened that not only were Des & Gina members, but so was Jeff's wife, Tara. Gina & Des introduced me. I told her that when Jeff comes home at night and goes, "That son of a ..." , that's me! (Just kidding) I hung around for a few minutes, but I really wasn't supposed to be there, so I politely excused myself and went and found my people.
My group was up on the third floor. Most everybody was there. Andy, James, Ilmer, Alex & Anton, Jeff, and Michelle were already there. Dessi and Tina showed up a little later than me. Tina encountered that same stalled out truck on 76. She must have been not too far behind me. So we're all chatting (and drinking). Having a good time. Andy ordered this moderately interesting-looking blue drink called a
Lucky Strike. It looked like a big blue martini. You know me, I stuck to Yeunglings all night.
After a while we got food. The cuisine at Lucky Strike is kind of interesting. Pretty much what you'd find at like a Chili's or an Applebee's or something like that. But with a couple of twists. They serve breakfast there along with their dinner menu. Not usually two things you'd find together outside of a diner. They even have a breakfast burger, which is a burger topped with a fried egg. That's different.
So we're eating, drinking, chatting, having a good ole' time. We're all done eating and now let the bowling begin! We got two lanes for 10 people. Easy enough, right? God we had so much fun. And evidently a couple of us can actually bowl. James did really well. Alex was crushing pins. I'm glad he was on my team. It was only like his fifth time bowling ever. Ilmer and Dessi were beginners. We all were such cheerleaders for them.
As for myself, I stunk out loud. You know me. All form and no follow through. I use my classic four step drop. Of course I was only using a 14 pound ball, so I was throwing fastballs with zero control. Truly I needed a heavier ball. Once I slowed down my release, I regained some of that control. They actually had speedometers on the lanes and by far, I threw the fastest balls.
That's the cool thing about bowling. You can completely suck and still have fun.
Speaking of suck...Anton. Anton set a bad precedent by rolling a 9 in the first frame. From there, it was all downhill. Gutter, Gutter, Gutter, Gutter... Gutter. Hahah! The first game, he bowled a whopping 29, only to be beat out by quiet little Dessi (a first timer) in the 10th frame. Hehe. I told him the second game was the dignity game. I think his patented stumble-and-chuck method might have been holding him back.
About 9:00, the girls were done with their PhIMA event and came upstairs to join us in the lounge. I would have liked to have seen them bowl a few frames, but they just kind of hung out gabbing the rest of the night. I tore my self away from the lanes for a bit a couple of times and hung out with them until it was my turn again. I didn't want to let them feel neglected. :)
We wrapped up at about 11. We all kind of stumbled back to where we parked, seemingly all over the city. ;) James suggested the next outing be at
Fogo de Chão, a Brazilian steakhouse across the street. I got back to my truck and sure enough, there was a ticket. Thirty bucks for parking in a loading zone. But you know what? It's still more preferable to parking in a garage, for about the same price.
So Lucky Strike was a great night. God that was fun. What did we learn?
- Parking in Center City is like masturbating with a cheese grater
- Yeungling is bowling fuel
- PhIMA is the Philadelhpia Interactive Marketing Association
- I met Jeff's wife, so I guess I learned something
- I learned that Anton can't bowl worth squat, hehe
- I learned that Tina and Michelle are a lot of fun. Put those two together and they're trouble. That's OK. I like trouble.
- Ultimately, I learned that I really like the people I work with directly. They're a group of people that really like to have fun. We work hard and we play hard. Nobody's stuck up or a stick in the mud. That's important to me. These really are my kind of people.
Labels: Bars, Food, Life, Night life, Work