An Introduction

For a while now, some of you have probably heard about Magkes & Koukles, our bachelor and bachelorette auction that is going to take place in February.  A lot of you seem to know the basics… that it’s taking place in February, that there’s going to be some sort of auctioning off of single guys and single girls, etc.,  but that’s about all that many of you know about this event. This lack of knowledge has been our fault in not wanting to publicize this event too early without working out many of the final details.  Yet since this event is less than two months away, we’ve decided to give you an introduction on what we hope will be the most fun and unique Greek event to hit the DC area in a long time, and the best part is, its for a good cause, the building of a new community center for St. Katherine’s Greek Orthodox Church in Falls Church, VA. 

Magkes & Koukles is being held on Saturday, February 2^nd, from 8:30 P.M. to 1:30 A.M. at the State Theatre in Falls Church, VA.  For those of you who have been to the State Theatre for concerts or other events, you know that this is a very special venue, unlike any place where a Greek semi-formal event has ever been held in this area.  We were originally thinking of having Magkes & Koukles at your run-of-the-mill hotel ballroom, but when we stumbled upon the State Theatre, we knew that this was the perfect off-beat place for such an off-beat fundraiser.  It’s an old renovated movie house, with a stage that’s perfect for the introduction of our bachelors and bachelorettes, with both a dance pit and a raised dance floor, and an upstairs lounge, which leads to perhaps the coolest part of this local landmark, the original balcony from the old theatre.  You can see everyone and everything from these row of movie seats, which makes it the perfect place for every Greek’s favorite social sport… people-watching.

The ticket price for this event is $45 pre-sale, with a higher ticket price at the door.  (For planning purposes we’d like to have many of you purchase tickets in advance.)  What does your $45 dollars get you?  Well, we’ve lined up a live Greek band, Apocalypsis, featuring Xristoforos, to play all your old-school Greek favorites and an American DJ to handle the non-Greek side of things.  Xristoforos and Apocalypsis will be playing New Year's Eve this year at the Doubletree Hotel in Tysons Corner, so many of you will get a chance to check them out then.  The American DJ is Arlington’s own dj2nutz, a regular at both the Clarendon Ballroom and Clarendon Grill, and at Dewey Beach during the summers, so we guarantee that the party won’t stop just because the band is taking a break.  We’ll have a buffet at the beginning of the evening, mostly catered by your favorite Greek and Greek-owned restaurants in the area, so we’re not talking vegetables and dip, or chips and salsa.  (Have you ever been to an event catered by a Greek restaurant, or better yet, several Greek restaurants and left hungry?  If there’s one thing that separates a Greek party from a party thrown by anyone else in this town is that Greeks know how to feed a crowd.)  Admission into Magkes & Koukles also gives you the opportunity to bid on some great items from all around the DC area and beyond in our silent auction.  We’ll be busy in the next couple of months getting donations of items that young adults would want to bid on, from your favorite Greek and non-Greek restaurants and businesses in the DC area, to sports tickets, personal services, and other fun things that you won’t be able to pass up.  Sure we could have gotten some expensive luxury items, like paintings and oriental rugs, which would bring in a lot of money for charity, but what would be the fun in that?  We want everyone to feel like they can afford to bid on at least one item, so that they don’t leave this event empty-handed. 

We feel that all of these things that we just described would be a great deal for a Greek event, especially a Greek fundraiser, where you can expect to pay a lot just to get in the door.  But none of these other events have the main event of the evening…  The Magkes & Koukles Bachelor and Bachelorette Auction.  We’re in the process of finalizing our line-up for this event, but from what we can tell you thus far, this is a stellar group of guys and girls that have generously agreed to volunteer their time for such a good cause.  They’ve each come up with some great ideas for fun evenings and a lucky few of you out there will be joining them as their date.  We’ve got dinners at nice restaurants around town, tickets for shows, and some other non-traditional date ideas, that we won’t be revealing right this minute.  The guys and girls are fun, interesting, attractive individuals from DC, Maryland and Virginia, some many of you know, some that are more of a mystery, representing all the major Greek young adult organizations in the area, from professionals to college students and everything in between.  We’ll be officially unveiling our bachelors and bachelorettes and their finalized date plans on DCGreeks.com in the next few weeks, but for those of you who are curious, just click through our Photos section, and you’ll probably see many of our Magkes & Koukles amongst the crowds of beautiful people that have been at Greek events in the last few months. 

Note:  If you’re interested in being a Magka or a Koukla for this event, it’s not too late to get your spot in our inaugural class of bachelors and bachelorettes.  (It’s like being on the cast of the first Survivor or the first Real World… everyone remembers the group that started it all.)  All you have to do is send us an email at [email protected] or [email protected], (if you can’t figure out which one you are, you probably shouldn’t be signing up) and give us a basic idea of what you’d like to do on your date.  We will go out and get everything for your date donated, so you get to have a nice evening in DC for free, while helping a good cause all at the same time.

We know that not everyone out there is going to be interested in bidding on our bachelors or bachelorettes.  But we hope that  you and everyone else will show up anyway.  The curiosity of the Greeks is world famous throughout the ages (like that girl, Pandora) and we’re praying that it won’t fail on February 2^nd.  For those of you who may be interested in bidding, we promise you that we’re going to do this in the classiest, most discrete manner possible for both our Magkes and Koukles and for those bidding on them, while still making it fun for everyone else.  Many of our Magkes and Koukles were worried about the remote possibility of no one bidding on them and of their arrival on stage being heralded with more silence than their grandparents’ horio at 3:30 in the afternoon.  While utterly preposterous, we have taken steps to ensure that this won’t happen.  Our Magkes and Koukles will be brought on stage for a couple of minutes each to give everyone a chance to get to know a little something about them, but the actual bidding is not going to be held as a traditional live auction.  After all the Magkes and Koukles are introduced, the music will start up and the party will continue, and there will be a place set up off to the side of the room where people can at their leisure write down their bid in a silent auction format.  Not only will this reduce the down time from the actual party itself, but it will also make people who are bidding feel more comfortable with making a generous bid for someone they thought was really cute, funny, or interesting.  Everyone will be given a bidding ID number to use when placing bids on both silent auction items and for Magkes and Koukles throughout the night, and the names of the winning bidders, but not their bids, will be posted at the end of the evening, because everyone will be curious to see who ended up with whom.  

We hope we’ve given you a good introduction for what we pray will be a very memorable and successful event.  Among all the fun and spectacle, we’d like to remind you that the proceeds from this event are going towards the building of the community center at St. Katherine’s Greek Orthodox Church in Falls Church, VA.  We realized a few weeks after the launch of DCGreeks.com this summer that we had a responsibility to use this site for good works while still having a good time.  We wanted to organize a charity event specifically for the Greek young adults in the DC area to get together just for the sake of getting together, while still helping our a great cause.  This is why we’ve decided to go with a bachelor and bachelorette auction and with a silent auction featuring items that young adults would be interested in and be able to afford.  And this is also the reason we went with the State Theatre as opposed to a more conservative venue.  We don’t want this to be an event where your parents are going to drive up in a separate car and stare at you all night while your trying to have a good time.  We don’t want to see Mr. and Mrs. Kostas and Maria Pollalefta, retired on a six-figure income, outbidding everyone on items and for tickets and gift certificates to places and events that most of us don’t have a chance to go to everyday.  Sure we’re limiting the potential of this fundraiser to raise money from the tickets sales and from the higher bids of these older adults in the community, but we wanted this event to a be a celebration of the Greek young adults in the DC area.  We’re hopeful that we can get 300, 400, 500 or more young Greeks at this event, making this a great party and a huge success for this year’s charity.  The proceeds of this year’s event will be going to St. Katherine’s community center building project, in keeping with our goal here at DCGreeks.com, to offer a place for young Greek-Americans in the DC area to get together in the spirit of friendship and parea.  This community center will give many young adults in the DC area a place to be able to get together for parties, sports, and other worthwhile causes and events.  The success of this year’s event will determine the scope of Magkes & Koukles II in 2003, which will benefit other Greek and local charities.   

With that said we humbly invite you to come to Magkes & Koukles on February 2^nd and we further ask that you put two guys out of their misery by purchasing your tickets pre-sale, either from us in person, on the phone, through the mail, or through our convenient on-line ticket booth.  (See our event listing for details on how to purchase tickets.)  In the meantime, we promise you that we will do all that we possibly can between now and February 2^nd to ensure that this will be one of the most memorable Greek events you’ve ever attended.  But please RSVP soon, so that two fundraising rookies can maybe sleep better at night between now and February 2^nd.

Read past feature articles.