Venue Scouting: Union Hall and Sweet Carolines

Last night, Matt and I made our way over to the newly opened Union Hall in Park Slope. I had to review the place for Newsday and Oppenheimer was playing so it worked out rather perfectly. In the hall, outside of the music space, was sitting Rocky of Oppenheimer. We being the music sluts we are, couldn't help but introduce ourselves. It ended up it was Rocky's birthday. "21?" asked Matt (honestly, I thought he could be 19). "No, 24, everyone thinks I look younger." confessed Rocky.

As previously noted, the Irish love to talk and are generally an outgoing and congenial bunch. Rocky was no exception. We talked all about his tour, how they djed at Don Hill's the night before and it took them 3 hours to get back to NJ, about his mates waking him only an hour after he had gotten to bed at 5am with a birthday pizza and where the name Oppenheimer comes from (they just liked how it looked and Shaun wanted something German sounding since they originally wanted to be a bit more like Kraftwerk). I also got a staggering bit of information, Edie from Art Brut is engaged to one of the girls from The Chalets. My dreams of marrying him myself have been crushed.


Due to a member of staff at Union Hall being rather daft and instead of just telling Matt on the phone when the bands would go on, asked Matt when he wanted the bands to go on and then ended the conversation with "Well you know bands!" click. We couldn't stay for Oppenheimer. The 9pm set time was actually 11pm when we got there and we were set to meet up with members of Band of York in Times Square at 10pm.

Before hopping the train to midtown, Matt and I sat in the Union Hall bar and had a drink whilst watching people play bocce ball. First off, none of these people knew how to play (obviously not Italian) and second, they were all preppie wall street types obviously transplanted from Long Island/Northern Jersey/Westchester. About half of the crowd wore wedding rings and there was even a pregnant woman sitting up front. Though the drinks were fairly cheap and the setting was really rather beautiful, this was not our scene (please note picture above).


The escape to the newly opened Sweet Caroline's in Times Square was no less of a culture shock. Full of tourists requesting Elton John and paying for over-priced drinks, it was a bit dingy but fun. Since we knew the piano player, Paul, we had some fairly good tracks thrown our way "This one goes out to The Music Slut.org" he yelled before launching into 'Take Me Out.' I drank one very large LI Ice tea and sat there for three hours singing my voice away to Guns n Roses and the Beatles. The best was knowing that all the tourists there left thinking that they got a real, NYC experience. Bless.