Well, the first holiday party of the week wasn't actually a holiday party as advertised. It was more of an open house that just happened to be a week and a half before Christmas. The Tower Investments property at 1040 N. 2nd St is weird. It's a new type of living space with condos and retail space all intermingled into a pseudo city cul-de-sac or something. New, yes. Would I want to live there? Never. They're billing it as some kind of artsy habitat. It isn't. It sorta blew through the whole dingy to artsy to hip to thoroughly yuppified process. It went from industrial abandoned straight to über yuppified.
There were a couple interesting shops there. A boutique called Delicious which specializes in corsets and funkdafied dresses; Lady loved the dresses and they're well priced. One red with black polka dots dress was $125, I thought it would be at least double that in such a boutique-y store, but nope. We stopped in a coffee shop on the Walk as well, 1 Shot Coffee. One of those exposed brick wall places with books to read and funky furniture. The winner piece in the space? The Frogger machine! It's the sit-down tabletop kind. I blew at it and went through three lives and 25¢ quickly. I'm more of a Pac Man player, love the tabletop at Taco House.
I'm not a coffee drinker [unless it's iced coffee with lots of sugar, black], but they offered me some hot chocolate. Lady had the mocha which she liked. The hot chocolate was good, nothing out of the ordinary. The décor was nice and inviting. Cozy even. I overheard a conversation one of the baristas had with one patron saying that the space they were in was formerly a different coffee shop. I noticed in one corner that there was some Isaiah Zagar looking mosaic on the wall. I wonder if it was really his doing.
We also went into Art Star [which just turned one], a funky shop with handmade looking wares. Ornaments, artwork, flatware, jewelery and the Pulp Fiction wallets pictured above [they're $40]. They also had some clothing as well. Their wall of ornaments was pretty cool. Lots of cool little trinkets to hang up if one had a tree or the space for them.
While it was a bit of a let down, not a horrible waste of time. Friday night should be much more wild and crazy. But I got a photo gig first so we'll be late, but I'm sure the party will go on pretty late.
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