Location: Carmichael's Steakhouse
Date: Friday, September 20, 2013; 5:30 pm-10:00 pm
One Brick has a long relationship
with the ‘Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’
and this was another event to benefit them.
And it was in a Steakhouse! The
cool evening air made my walk to the venue pleasant and I arrived to see some
of the One Brick crew assembled outside what looked like warehouse space of the
restaurant. As it stood, it was the party
area for the Steakhouse and the place where tonight’s festivities were going to
be conducted. I checked in with Kinga,
who was the EM and saw that some of the regulars like Gary and Rich were in attendance
along with Charles Paul. Well, the
evening was getting better.
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| The courtyard of 'Carmichael's Steakhouse' |
Tonight’s event was a fundraiser
beer tasting festival with several brewers in attendance. Our job was to help with registration and
raffle sales as well as whatever help they brewers required. At registration they wanted two volunteers to
pair up and I was with Charles Paul. Right
of the bat he said that since ‘American
Airlines’ was sponsoring tonight’s event, he would get fired if anyone saw
his picture below the ‘AA’ banner. This is because they use GE’ engines on their planes as opposed to the ‘Boeing’ engines, which is where Charles Paul works. There was only space for one person of the duo
to sit down and I took the table with Charles Paul standing behind me. I would be checking the visitors against a
list and to see if they had the ‘VIP’
or ‘General Admission’ package. The VIPs could come-in at 6 pm, one hour
before the General Admission opened. Once
I located the guest’s names on the list, I was to hand them their bid card
while Charles Paul would put a wristband on them – Yellow for VIP and Blue for
GA. He was to also give them a bottle-cap to vote for their favorite brewer. The cards had their bid number for silent auction and raffle and which they
would need for check-out at the end of the event. It seemed easy enough and with the smell from
the steakhouse and Charles Paul chirping in my ear from behind, we were ready
to start.
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| My list of names |
We were checking-in people with
last names from H’ to ‘L’ and next to me on either side were
others with names either before or after those alphabets. There were signs behind us to let people know that, but we can’t expect visitors to see that can we! So we had several people coming standing in the wrong line and very soon Charles Paul started announcing,“If you’re last name is between H through L,
please step us and let Ritesh handle your beer drinking fun.” I said he should instead say “Beer drinking necessities” and he
agreed. We had a view of the people
walking through the restaurant courtyard to get to our table and so when people
came, Charles Paul and I started guessing if they were going to be in our line…anything
to stay entertained. I was trying to
address the people by their first name, and Charles Paul would be charming them
with his one liners, especially the ladies. There were times when our section had no people standing in line, whereas there were long queues on either side. To this I would say, “You wish your last name was between H-L don’t you!” Almost everyone coming in was nice and friendly, and I even saw my
friend Amy. It was fun but after an
hour, became quite repetitive.
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| The votes were in |
Around 8 pm I had about 20 cards
left, but Kinga had sent some of the volunteers – including Charles Paul – for a
break, and so I was now responsible for every letter from ‘H’ onward. The list with
me wasn’t foolproof though because there were line entries such as “Guests Of Erin” and while only 2 guests
were supposed to claim them, I could swear that at least 4 people came through using that. Boy, Erin sure was a popular host! Around 8:30 pm I was relieved by other volunteers and went inside
the party room. There were a lot of
brewers and people were walking around with beer samples. While I could not drink, I was allowed to
taste the gourmet food that was being offered.
I walked about for some time and reported back to Kinga to receive my
next assignment. We had handed out
bottle-caps to all the guests, who were to drop it into a fishbowl at the
brewer whom they liked the most. This
was their ballot in selecting the best brewery for the evening. We were to go around and collect all of the
bowls and count the ‘”votes”. A few of us got the fishbowls and assembled
in a backroom to count the caps in each.
It came down between ‘Haymarket’,
who had 36 votes, and ‘Deschutes’ who
had 37. With the fate of the beer world
on my shoulders, I double counted and proclaimed that ‘Deschutes’ was indeed the winner.
As the organizers went inside to
announce this decision, I went back to the entrance, to help distribute goody
bags to the VIP guests who were leaving.
Next task was to go back to the main floor and all of us were to spread
out amongst the crowd as the organizers asked for donations. If anyone raised their bid cards, we were to
go over and ask them to fill out a “Pledge
form”. A young woman took to the
stage and told us about her fight with Cystic Fibrosis. She said that the generosity of the guests
this evening enables continuing research and it was due to such medical
advances that she was down to 20 pills a day from the 40 that she used to take
earlier during her diagnosis. And to
think I used to complain about taking one pill as a part of some antibiotics
course whenever I got sick as a kid.
This is no way to live, and I was glad to see several hands go up as
people opened up their wallets. I
personally handed forms to at least 3 people and several other volunteers did
the same.
Our shift was at an end and Kinga
told us to go have some fun. I went to ‘Deschutes’ booth and told them that
since they had won, there’s was the first beer I wanted to try. I caught up with my friend Amy and then left
after what had been another productive evening. The
smell from the Steakhouse was still in the air as I walked away, knowing that
as long as One Brick continued to support CFF, I would show up for the
projects.
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