Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Friday Night: Yelp Elite at Anthology, 2.29.08

I decided that I would stay home on Thursday night because it was going to be a big weekend and my body has been telling me lately it can only take so much abuse. By the time I considered heading down to the Hard Rock for MSTRKRFT, the thought of driving downtown, finding parking, then listening to dance music had lost some appeal. The winner of my ticket giveaway did update me, however, and said it was a good night. MSTRKRFT played nearly two hours, and aside from long drink lines, he seemed to enjoy the night (and noted he didn't have any problems finding parking).

By Friday, I was itching to get out of work and stopped home quickly afterward, then headed down to Anthology, for a Yelp Elite party. If you're not familiar with Yelp, it's time to make yourself familiar. It's a community site where anyone can register and write reviews of restaurants, boutiques, bars, nightclubs, parks...pretty much everything. Since I already blog my opinions about everything here, I am not much of a Yelper, but I do use the site regularly...when I'm asked to recommend a restaurant for out of town clients, for example, or when I need to book reservations for my bosses when they travel to other cities. "Find the best sushi in New York," they'll say, and in a few Yelp minutes, they have a reservation based on pretty solid recommendations. The site has been around for a while now, but only in San Diego a little over a year. Ruggy is working there now and was kind enough to invite me despite my lack of "Elite" status, which is given to prolific Yelpers.

Anthology is absolutely stunning as a venue, and for lovers of Jazz, it seems the perfect venue. They serve dinner, or you can just buy tickets to a show without being obligated to buy food. The ground floor has a stage and several tables for reserved seating and dining, along with a full horseshoe bar. The second floor mezzanine has seating along a railing for a view of the stage, and the third floor, where the Yelp party was being held, there's more seating along the railing, a lounge with couches, a bar, and an outdoor patio with some more couches and seating. It was such a lovely night, I found a couple friends and we chilled on the patio for most of the party.



The night was sponsored by Veev, which is an Acai based vodka and is quite delicious. It's really sweet, however, so a lot of people chose to drink it in Lemondrops or with cranberry juice, but I opted for "heavy Veev, splash of tonic". I'll call it a sneaker drink, because you drink it like it's a light refreshing bevvie, then BAM, you realize this ain't no light liquor.

The party ended at 8, but I was called and told I didn't have to sell merch at the Casbah after all because the Raveonettes merch hadn't arrived, so I stayed a little longer chatting on the patio. I met a guy who is a contractor working on projects that I'd worked on through my architecture firm, so it was one of those moments that really makes you realize San Diego is such a small town. For me, that's just the way I like it. He also said he worked on the Hard Rock Hotel and that the music hall is just an empty shell at the moment- there was some disagreement between contractors, architects, and property owner, supposedly, which would explain why the shows are held in conference room spaces for the time being.

Anyway, it was a really sweet way to start off a night and I hope that there are more Anthology events that pique my interest...I'm not much of a jazz person, but perhaps some more acoustic shows might draw me there in the future. And if you are a jazz person, or are the kind of person who has to take out of town relatives to a nice place when they come to town, this would be a great place to do it.

Next post...the Raveonettes...pictures by me, review by Greg.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Glad you had a good time! It was cool seeing you out!