the holy trifecta of free parties

Last night Sarah and I went to the Daily Candy Holiday Fete at decadestwo on Melrose, sponsored by Disaronno. This party had what I affectionately call the "holy trifecta" of free parties.

Element 1 - free booze. Lots of parties have this. This one was no exception. The disaronno was definitely flowing

Element 2 - free food, ideally in the form of something created by a fancy catering company. This is a bit rarer than free booze and sometimes isn't even announced, but if it happens and you can get to it without competing with ravenous vultures and shameless old people, it's pretty awesome.

This place had passed hors d'oeuvres of: steak on potato cakes, tomato/mozzarella/basil on skewers, chicken salad sandwich on almond bread, whipped blue cheese on frisee with fig jelly, salmon with creme fraiche with fennel on lavosh, and an amazing cheesecake thingie for dessert :d

Element 3 - the goodie bag. A really good party will have elements 1 and 2, and as you leave, one of the workers should hand you a goodie bag. It's contents can often be dubious or even lame, but it's always nice to walk out of a party carrying a little paper bag and feeling cooler than all the plebians walking around empty handed.

The contents of this goodie bag last night were: book of Daily Candy Lexicon (MSRP ~$15), a set of disaronno refrigerator magnets made of little tiles with cocktail recipes printed on them (tres chic!), lip plumper gloss, a sample of pantene blonde expressions shampoo/conditioner, and some marketing materials (aka throw away cards). Not bad! :D

Decasdes two is a cute little store with super expensivo second hand stuff by all the big names: Prada, LV, Chanel, Christian Louboutain (sp?) discounted from their retail price of $1000+ to around $200-500. It was like being in a fancy clothes/shoes/bag museum.

But after about an hour of all this eating/boozing/shopping, we were ready to bounce out. Ambling along a rather dead Melrose ave at around 8pm, we saw a neat looking store/event space. Turned out that it was the highbrow lingerie/sex toy store Kiki de Montparnasse. We were greeted by a super friendly awesome gal who worked there (wish I got her name) and she was showing us all kinds of neat fancy lingerie and "classy" sex toys. I liked how these toys had a multi-functional element to them. Jewelry/art by day, naught toys by night... haha.

We made a quick pitstop at Winchells Donuts on Melrose. This place is ghetto fabulous! A dingy little donut shop sandwiched between hoity toity stores and restaurants. As Sarah and I walked out, the creepy old guy eating at the table waved at us to say "hi". What are creepy old guys thinking when they wave to hot girls like us? Do they expect us to stop and say hi and flirt with them at Winchells? I don't get people sometimes....


Our next stop was to meet up with Caroline at Cafe Wa s. I normally don't like places with gimmicky names like this, but that's another story.... I always thought this place would be a dingy little diner next to the Arclight, but turned out to be a beautiful French Renaissance-style restaurant with a rotating piano platform at its center. There were lots of cute little rooms to eat, hang, or have a little party. Considering how nice this place looked on the inside, I thought the food prices were pretty reasonable. Oh, and the staff here (mostly male) are all so cute and nice, both gay and straight! I was majorly crushing on our waiter. Oh what's his name.... carlos? He was just so friendly and adorable. ;)

Finally, we hopped over to the Hungry Cat next door. I love how this place does such a great job at incorporating seasonal ingredients into both their food and cocktail menu. I had a persimmon margarita (reposado tequila, persimmon juice, lime with a cinnamon sugar rim $13). I loved that rimmer!! Cinnamon on the nose, salt on the tongue, my senses were in a state of confused bliss.

All that activity and I was still home before 1am. Not bad :) I hope some more crazy adventures unfold this weekend! :D