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Greek, Stir-Crazy, and Getting Older Every Day

February 4, 2010

Major snowfall in DC, such as the one seen here on December 19, 2009, have kept people from attending events in the Greek Community this Winter.

Yesterday morning we caught a friend of ours R.C.'s Facebook status, oddly fired up on a Wednesday morning about a Greek Night at Ultrabar on Saturday night. One of his friends posed the obvious question that DC and the rest of the mid-Atlantic has seemingly dealt with every weekend this winter, "What about the foot of snow that they're calling for?" This weather has added to a season that's already been light on Greek events to contribute to a stir-craziness not often experienced in the Greek community in this town. It's really rare to see anyone outside of the promoters themselves getting excited about your seemingly average Greek Night prior to the day or evening of the event itself, particularly not on a Facebook status. Up until this post the only noteworthy buzz about this Greek Night outside of a guest DJ from New York was that six birthday parties were being celebrated there all on the same night. So we're thinking that this has the makings of an interesting Greek Night pitting cabin fever vs. common sense and adding six random celebrations that could be the ultimate wildcard of the night.

What about that foot of snow that they're calling about? Seriously how starved for Greek parea do you have to be to venture out on slick roads with no visibility? The truth is that Greek life in DC is event-dependent and these events are dependent on people from as far north or east as Baltimore or Annapolis or as far south and west as the Virginia suburbs to actually be able to make it without the help of Metro, certainly during a snowstorm. The number of Greek young adults that live on a Metro line, particularly within walking distance of the underground portion of the system that sometimes is the only thing working during a heavy snowstorm is quite low. It's hard to improvise a Greek social life when you can't even leave the neighborhood as few of us are lucky enough to have other Greeks in the same building or subdivision. (We realized we were suffering from Greek withdrawal this past weekend when we were hoping the roads were clear enough on Sunday morning to be able to make it to church.) There's plenty of people like us who try never to miss a Greek event but there are times when you need to bury your head in the sand (or in this case the snow) and not miss what you weren't there to see. But in the case of this Saturday, we're hoping that Metro's Ride Guide is somewhat accurate and that a trip from Ballston to Metro Center and back is possible.

Despite the snow we predict that it should be a pretty well-attended Greek Night just based on six birthdays alone. (That could be half the crowd alone.) We're not sure what to think about celebrating a birthday at a Greek event, much less a Greek Night. It's not fair to (and sometimes not fun for) your non-Greek friends who are there to celebrate your birthday to be surrounded not only by all your Greek friends, but all these other Greeks as well. Should your non-Greek friends who love you enough to come out and celebrate your birthday really have to be subjected to music they don't understand and the inevitable questions of whether or not they're Greek and why they're there otherwise? One or two tables at a Greek Night can be enough to break up the party into certain pareas; with the help of ropes or elevation it could be much worse if there were six such barriers built to a free-flowing Greek Night. But the biggest question about celebrating one's birthday at a Greek Night has to be "Why?" Why would you want to draw attention to yourself in a negative way? Given how age conscious this community can be at times (for both girls and guys) do you want to be celebrating anything higher than your 21^st birthday at Greek Night? We really think that by a certain age, the only parties that should be celebrated are bachelorette parties. A bachelorette party is actually a graduation party of sorts. It tells the Greek world, "I don't NEED to come to Greek Night anymore, and the next time you see me, it will be because I really WANT to be here. Oh and by the way, I brought six to ten of my hot single Greek girlfriends with me."

While we're on the topic of age, one of our visitors writes, "Have you been on [Greek dating website we all know and peek at from time to time but won't admit to]? What is considered an acceptable lie (not that I would do one) on ages. I've seen a few people I know lie by 5 years or more." The answer, of course, is that it's never okay to lie on one of these sites, except when it can have you appear under traditional search queries that you would be on the edge of otherwise, basically rounding down to the next benchmark, particularly the older you are. It's like when you're trying to sell a $510,000 house, and you list it at $497,000 to attract the attention of those who limit their searches to under $500,000, because you know that could sucker a buyer into laying down $525,000 if the house is really nice, but that's never going to happen if the house doesn't come up in their MLS search. Given that these sites and sometimes people themselves aren't smart enough or too stubborn to adjust their search criteria as they themselves age, sometimes it's okay to pretend to be a couple of years younger on these sites. For example, say that a girl signs up on one of these sites when she's 22 and states that she's not looking for any guy over 30, and you happen to be a 31 year-old guy at the time. But now it's three years later and she's now 25 and you're 34, and 11 months, and definitely not celebrating your birthday at a Greek Night next month. While you both have obviously aged linearly, her search criteria should have changed exponentially, putting you square within her target range now. So if it would saved her two years of dating some 26 year-old idiot she met online or at someone else's birthday party at a Greek Night three years ago, perhaps listing yourself as 30 back then would have been doing her a favor.

 

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