This Dancing Dilettante’s High Expectations, Squashed on the Fanatic FIFers’ Rooftop
Ratings: Venue (2.5/5), Food (2/5), Speaker Content (3/5), Networking (4/5), Likeliness to Return (5/5)
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Ratings: Venue (2.5/5), Food (2/5), Speaker Content (3/5), Networking (4/5), Likeliness to Return (5/5) 〰️
I am so eagerly looking for community lately, but I am definitely picky. Not by choice, but in my soul, I can’t stand people who are full of performance and inauthenticity. Acting “too cool for school” or hiding behind implied knowledge/wealth. It’s a mask, a shield, and I am not here for it. I’ve seen these events promoted for a long time, now, and wanted to see what they’re all about. This group: YPN. The attendees all speak so highly of the founders, though I’m yet to know them well. But, an invitation to unlimited food, drinks, and music at a cool rooftop - of course I’m dressing my BEST and heading up to the party. Although I’m 100% sober these days, I still love to have a great time and stay up late laughing and dancing, so this was kinda perfect fit.
Why Attend: The hosts traded me a ticket to attend in exchange for a blog article on the event, so here we are. I was hyped to attend since I met a lot of people who are part of this community (or looking to be, potentially), I love food, and LOVE dancing. So, let’s head up to the rooftop, wait for the FIFA hype to die down a bit, and groove. It was advertised to go past midnight and just sounded like it’d be super fun. What more can you ask for?
Photo Collage and Commentary
Notes from the Event
Usually, I write my blogs in the moment, but for this one, I’ve had to wait a few days. I had my daughter over the weekend, and we were extra active. Also, I’ve received two updates about this event, which are kinda surprising to add.
(1) Ads were made for this event! Paid ads inviting people on social media! Who knew?
I found out cause, spoiler alert, I ended up ditching an after-party to go dancing (which we’ll get into later), telling a friend about it while we danced, and then he texted me later that night saying he saw a paid ad on Facebook for this event. Surprising but not.
(2) Photos were shared… and surprisingly, I was only in one of them. And my shawl/cape does not look at “the level” which it was. I’ll show the photo + one I took of myself, here.
Then again… there were at least 200+ people on that small rooftop, so it was a lot of people to take a picture of. But many people came up to me and said that I was so easy to spot on the roof cause of my highlighter pink dress. Which was fortunate, because I spent most of the night wandering around waiting for the dance floor to materialize.
Now, let’s walk through the experience of this event, and let me preface with a quick story of my youth:
Growing up, my family would always patronize me and guilt-trip me, saying, “Kelly, you set your expectations too high. It’s why you always get let down”.
As I’ve grown older, I push back at that, thinking: no… broken promises, adults not following through… instead of anyone addressing their behavior, I got told my expectations were the problem.
But I'd rather just naturally react; perhaps that means I’d expect a lot from time to time, and then occasionally get let down, rather than expect nothing and never be surprised.
On top of all of this (which I’m hinting at but haven’t yet said) - I’m also 100% not a soccer fan. And just part of me thought: probably a lot of other people aren’t too. So, just cause this was advertised as a viewing party… would people actually care about viewing? Or just be like “viewing, schmewing, let’s have unlimited food, drinks, and party” like me. At a friggin’ Brazilian Steakhouse at that. I mean, hello!
So, it was “somewhat my fault” to think people wouldn’t be so amused by hte soccer games… because I spent most of this event feeling ‘ready for the party to finally start’ - once the games ended. But I was entirely wrong. I think a lot of people were having a great time watching the game - and that was that.
Spoiler Alert, finally: The event was described to have unlimited food, drinks, and music - to go past midnight… but the food (unless you stood by the table to grab good food within the few minutes it was delivered), you ended up with two styles of french fries, bread, and condiments.
The drinks, they ran out of non-alcoholic beer a few hours in (this was an 8+ hour event, remember).
Then the DJ left at 9:30…. :(
Also, I want to note. I made a personal goal to myself that at this event, I’d break my norm. How so? Lately, my mantra is “you are a flower” - exist and let the bees come to you. You know? But I set it as the goal that, f*ck it, I will go ask people to dance at this event. Just feel like they’ll need it. Then I can kick off the partner, dancing, and get everyone to dance all night!! Sometimes people just need permission.
So… when the DJ left at 9:30 and then the MUSIC CUT OFF AT 9:45, I was truly stunned. (And thinking about all the people who HAD spent $100-300+ per ticket for this event, ones who came late just wanting to drink/eat till midnight & beyond?)
I felt I’d spent the entire night for the games to end, and THEN finally people would start dancing. No.
They stopped serving all drinks by 9:45 and food, too… but apparently, you were just allowed to hang out till midnight? But… idk. I left.
A girl who insisted that she’d previously met me before at a guy (fake name) named Jody’s house, invited me back over to his house for an after-party. I went, but upon arrival, “Jody” didn’t recognize me. Nor did I recognize him. LOL. Knew it. But she’d been drinking; there was so much alcohol at his house. We’d invited a few people from the rooftop to join us (some of my acquaintances + hers), but then I saw that a few people were getting excited over a tiny clear plastic bag with some white stuff in it, and I just said to myself, “ugh, don’t know - don’t wanna know” and walked out the door. Right before I left, as I was putting on my cape/shawl and grabbing my purse (which broke, btw, it was the first time I used it, from my ex-in-law and i guess it couldn’t handle holding my heels), one guy who hadn’t introduced himself to me was like, “Are you sure you wanna leave?” but I said, “Yeah, I wanna go dance!”
Then I took myself to go country music dancing for the rest of hte night - had a BLAST - dressed WAY too exceptionally for a country music bar, but finally got all of my dancing energy out of my system.
I was laughing, dancing, so happy. Jumping around. I had so much energy and hype in me - so I just was really proud of myself to get out and go dance… not needing permission from anyone.
Now, let’s kinda jump back to the beginning of hte night, arriving, and just talk about what happened up until I left.
my dress
changing shoes
check in
food (one of the most famous meat restaurants in the world)
standing in line for the bar (lol and tehy’re onthe front of one of the photo pages)
seeing a friend
amazing shoes girl
charger
small details guy
short conversations
wet couch
music
fan as a dancing accessory
douchey finance guy
VC
recognizing people but letting them see me (flower vibes)
after party
