Speakeasy Afterparty
The ATypI conference was in Montreal (Canada) in 2017. Conferences are primarily to see old colleague friends and make new ones.
12 September 2017. Catching up with friends. Montreal.
13 September 2017. Finishing work at a reception I suppose. Montreal
September 14 is known in the industry as the “Variable-fonts day”, since we announced variable fonts on 14 September 2016 in Warsaw. Peter Constable gave an update talk on variable-fonts. I don’t think I spoke at this conference.
14 September 2017. “Variations day”. ATypI conference. Montreal.
When in Montreal, you try the Montreal smoked meat sandwich. Though not at Schwartz’s this time:
14 September 2017. Montreal smoked-meat sandwich. Montreal.
The conference flew by. Before we knew it, it was closing day, to be followed by an after-party.
I had booked a large Airbnb that was a spacious loft, literally on top of a busy night-club in Montreal’s trendy clubbing neighborhood, Saint-Laurent. It had four rooms and room for 10 people to sleep, which I filled with friends and colleagues from the conference. To get to the apartment at night, you could skip the looong line for the club and go to the bouncer and say: “I’m going to the apartment.” and they would let you in!
The loft host had prepared a booklet of rules for us! The first rule of the house: “No parties.”
The conference closing-party was to be short, closing at midnight. So I had a genius idea: I could throw an after-party at the loft! So I made a Facebook thread and started inviting people. I invited about 100 people I knew from the conference.
Then with the help of Cosimo, we went liquor-shopping and anything else needed to make cocktails. Finally, I set up the bar:
16 September 2017. The party bar. Montreal.
At 11pm I left the dull conference party to go to the loft and prepare. People started showing up soon after midnight. The party was on!
16 September 2017. Mixing cocktails. Montreal.
In the end I think about 60 people showed up, and the last person left at 4am. There were some (possibly underage) young friends-of-volunteers who crashed the party and were acting inappropriately (dancing on the table, etc), which I had to kick out. Also, the only bathroom was overtaken by people who had one too many drinks. But in the end we managed it all, and the day after I cleaned the loft spotless.
I spent 600 CAD on booze for the whole party. Later, my director was surprised that I would do that. But hey, how much did it cost for that closing-party’s sponsor? I bet an order of magnitude more!
29 April 2024
Edmonton
[CC BY]