Sing it with me: “Go, go, go shorty, it’s your birthday, we gonna party like it’s your birthday …”
50-cent would’ve been proud because a birthday there was and partied we did. And by we, I mean half of Charlotte. Seeing as how we opted to celebrate at The Forum’s College Night, the birthday was by no means the main attraction at this party. There seems to be a large percentage of Charlotte’s population at The Forum every Wednesday. It’s a nightlife staple in Uptown, which is precisely why I wanted it to host the party for the first anniversary of QC After Dark and the fifth anniversary of my 21st birthday.
The dance floor, which pretty much comprises the entire lower level, was so full you couldn’t see the floor. Everyone was dancing with a drink in hand, with the exception of those with X’s on their hands; they were just dancing without the need for the rhythm-inducing lubricant that is alcohol.
I meanwhile was making my own dance floor upstairs on the mezzanine level among fellow Loafers, my uptown girls and our boys, Hokies, and the Charlotte Crew. The Forum’s Kevin Mitchell set me up a table equipped with bottles of champagne and the Creative Loafing Street Team provided the cake. In synopsis, it made for the best birthday party I’ve ever attended, let alone thrown, and that good time wasn’t exclusive to me. It’s the perfect setting for an intimate private party surrounded by a club environment. Book your party now then send me an invite! Lazy Day was on hand taking so many pictures they had to post three different pages. For visual effect, log onto www.lazyday.com and see for yourself. The presence of my readers made for the best birthday present, but the icing on the cake was when Anthony Hamilton sang me Happy Birthday.
I continued to party like it’s my birthday for the remainder of the week, starting with Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s PBR clash at the Bobcats Arena. Who would’ve thought that watching bulls, which are more like massive beasts, fling cowboys would be so amusing?
I then went to Club Tempo for the bittersweet final performance of Soulganic, the official best band in Charlotte. Soulganic went out with a listening party for their debut album, All Directions Forward, then rocked it out hard one last time. Then on Sunday I went to see Rent at Ovens Auditorium and now I can’t stop singing: “Five hundred, 25,000, 600 minutes/How do you measure a year in the life?” … I’m going to interject and say that would be with a party at The Forum.
This article appears in Feb 7-13, 2007.
I’ve been a reader of Creative Loafing for a long time (at least since the mid 1990’s), so it’s with some experience that I say Charlotte Cason’s column is the most trivial, useless crap you’ve printed in all that time. I’m not opposed to nightlife articles per se, it’s just that no one in Charlotte writes a good one. Cason’s is no doubt the worst. She’s like some Junior League marm trying to convince everybody that she’s hip. The sad truth is that she’s a lousy writer, and her column is so bad, it borders on fraud. And no, I have no connection to any local club or bar. I’m just a CL reader who thinks the paper is less than it used to be, and that Cason is one of the reasons.