The Other Side Of The Shecky's Table

I'm very proud of my friend S.  After years of going to Shecky's to drink and shop and get free stuff, she participated in a different way.  Southpaw Sweets had a table to sell yummy cookies.  I hadn't been to Shecky's in quite some time, and I rarely have gone if at all in June since we usually go to the Hamptons one in the summer.  However, I had to see the unfolding of something exciting and good.  So I found myself weaving through crowds of women, around tables of jewelry and clothes and lotions, finding a bar at every corner until I found her table. 

I kept up that pattern of weaving until I was woven out.  Really, all the tables were selling the same stuff they usually sell.  The big difference was the booze.  A bunch of new sponsors were there. I tried the first one in the room where Southpaw Sweets was set up.  While the cocktail I asked for didn't contain whiskey, it somehow tasted like whiskey.  I didn't have much of that.  I found a different bar serving a ginger drink and I like that one much better.

The goodie bags were on a truck outside, so I went out there halfway through to get mine.  The goodie bag?  Was not much.  First off, the bag itself is horrible.  Usually, they give out Shecky's-emblazoned bags that are resuable.  This time they were reddish heavy-duty plastic bags complete with a piece of cardboard on the bottom for it to hold its shape.  You know, high-end.  Secondly, it was sprinkled with trial-sized goodies at the bottom.  The bag is the size of a small gift bag and they couldn't even fill the bottom.  There were two things that were not small in it: a can of water and a big tube of tablets that dissolve in water but don't say exactly what they are for.  This is somehow worth over $100.  Really, Shecky's? 

I heard one girl say to another, The bags are totally whack, right?   Yes, yes they were totally whack, something that I sound ridiculous saying, but also the perfect description.

I brought the bag back inside for S and C to see.  They were not impressed either, but the bag wasn't the reason they were there.  They were there to sell cookies, which they were doing. Some women were very excited about the prospect of buying a cookie shaped like a shoe.  Some women were excited about buying a cookie shaped like a pair of lips.  Some women were very eager to comment on the portrait cookies, even though one thought a portrait of S's neice was a portrait of Michael Jackson--a sketch on a cookie can sometimes be up for guessing, I suppose.

I got a Southpaw Sweets temporary tattoo as part of the deal.  I finished off my cocktail.  I chatted with them a bit.  I took some pictures of their table and them.  And then I headed out to catch a train home.  Before going outside, I switched my shoes from heels to flippies.  Instead of putting my heals in my shoulder bag, I put them in the Shecky's bag so that I felt better about it.  It now was useful for something, which made it worth more than being simply whack.  But really, seeing friends move forward in a business they love is worth more than a goodie bag no matter what.