This weekend is the Arts & Crafts Conference at the Grove Park Inn and since time immemorial (6 years) I have gone up there on the Friday evening for a drink in the grand lobby bar, or rather, out on the terrace. I used to actually have to do this as part of my job - really. Really, I did, although adding a Cosmopolitan to sitting at the art museum table selling posters and books was my own refinement, I admit. This year, of course, I no longer work for the museum. But my friend J does, and so I met her and our friend P, who is a museum volunteer, for a drink on the terrace. There is just nothing quite like the Grove Park Inn.
I can only afford to go there once a year ~ you don't want to know how much a martini costs there, you really don't, and even a pint of Gaelic will set you back $5.50, gulp ~ but it's so damn beautiful. The view is beautiful, the bar is beautiful, the objects in the Arts & Crafts vitrines in the lobby for the weekend are beautiful. Why are the people not beautiful?
It drives me crazy. I dress up to go to the Grove Park. I like to imagine myself as Zelda Fitzgerald, or Tallulah Bankhead, or someone, anyone, really, more glamourous than me. I waft elegantly down the halls glancing at the pictures of celebrities; I admire the giant stone fireplace; I hope in vain to see the Pink Lady; I wait in vain for a mysterious, dashing, handsome millionaire to see me and fall madly in the kind of romantic 1940s love that has vanished from the world. Fat people in sweats at the bar wrecks my illusion. I disapprove. This is the Grove Park Inn, people, for gods' sake can we have one place in the world where sweat suits are not okay?
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1 comment:
E-spouse's and I's favorite date is to walk up there on a Sunday afternoon, split a beer on the terrace and a little cup of that yummy spicy mix, then walk home.
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