Worth it?

[missroserose]

Tonight's episode of Project Meet People In Chicago met with...mixed results.

To wit, it included:

• Spending forty minutes looking for parking in a popular area of town on a Saturday night
• Giving up and paying $10-plus-tip for valet parking
• Attending a social meetup in a venue that turned out to be a little too noisy for conversation
• Giving up after an hour or so, and going outside with plans to head home, only to discover that the valet attendant was nowhere to be found
• Finding another, slightly less noisy (if still painfully trendy), place to have a drink while we waited for him to return
• Waiting twenty minutes for our drink orders
• Listening to the noise level in the second venue increase by 50% as the DJ slowly turned the music up and people started yelling to compensate
• Paying $12 apiece for cocktails whose ambition far outstripped their execution
• Making it out of there and finally finding the valet attendant an hour later, only to wait a good fifteen minutes in freezing cold before he finally showed up with our car

On the other hand, we did meet at least one semi-interesting couple before it just got too loud for conversation.  And then, while waiting for the attendant to bring our car around, the following exchange took place:

Drunk dudebro behind us:  "Whoa, check out this one's suit!"
Drunk Dudebro 2:  "Whoa, classy!  What's with the--"
Brian:  {turns around and looks at them}
DD 1:  "OH!  Okay!  Wow!  You're rocking that suit, man!"  {weaves off}
DD 2:  "Seriously.  Keep it up."  {follows}
Designated Driver Dudebro, quietly in passing as he caught up:  "That is a pretty cool suit."
Brian, to me:  "Dudebros gotta step out of da closet, yo."
 

...Worth it. 

Comments

[cyrano]

One of the things that drives my 'never go Out again' inner faction is the incomprehensible desire of people who are Out to be certain that the music is as loud as possible to remind them of how much fun they're having.

But that faction is old and cranky.

[missroserose]

I don't necessarily mind the bar environment when I'm with people I already know, and can read their body language as much as their actual words. Besides, usually when I'm in that sort of environment I'm planning on dancing, which isn't a hugely verbal activity anyway. But while I sort of understand that bars are the de facto social environment for people our age, it seems a uniquely bad sort of place to meet new people. At least, if you're at all interested in getting to know them as people.