Patapsco Arena

Oh my, where do I began? even though a few weeks have passed since I attended the Odell’s reunion party held at the Patapsco arena, the events of that great night are still fresh in my mind. My companion for the event was much younger than myself and is not a native Baltimorean so she had never been to Odell’s and I don’t think she ever even heard of it so it was extremely important to me to show her how us old school cats used to party back in the day. Let’s start with the parking situation, as big as that lot is, finding a spot was still difficult, because the joint was jumping from end to end, but I’m not faulting the venue as I don’t believe anyone was anticipating this big a turnout, especially with all of the out of town license plates that I saw, and I can’t even begin to tell you how many times throughout the evening I heard the statement made that «I wouldn’t have missed this for the world» Now moving on to the host, it was the legendary Frankski who long ago left Bmore for greener pastures in Atlanta, he did an excellent job. He was funny, engaging, mingled freely with the crowd, brought up old Baltimore memories and happily posed for pictures. Also, it was hard not to notice that he doesn’t look much different than he did 20 years ago, even my date who had never seen him a day in her life remarked that he doesn’t look like he was from «back then» Now let’s jump to facilities management, it was very organized for such a large gathering, they did a good job of directing parking, there was adequate security, and the no smoking rule was strictly enforced to the point that a staff member was stationed in the men’s room to make sure no one grabbed a few puffs in there. Since I’m not a smoker this wasn’t a problem for me. Now moving on to the patrons themselves who are indeed my contemporaries, everyone was decked out in their finest attire just as I expected, no baggy jeans or athletic wear with this group. The color coordination of some of the outfits was so perfect that I’m convinced it must have taken 2 or 3 trips to their favorite men’s haberdashery to come up with the look they ultimately achieved. I also took note that of the collective Boo’s on arms, the age disparity appeared to run about 10 to 15 years per couple, so at least I wasn’t alone in that department. Now let’s move onto as far as I’m concerned the main event of the evening and that was the hand-​dancing contest. The memory of that second place finish on that winter Thursday night all of those years ago still haunts me, I still even remember the record my date for that night and I were eliminated on [Donna Summer, Bad Girl] and I knew that on this night here was my chance to even the score. Everything started off perfect, my current date and I were knocking off couples like shooting ducks in a barrel, and then it happened. Now I don’t want to throw my dance partner under the bus, but here was the problem, she executed the dip perfectly but blew it on the double twirl, and what is even more frustrating for me is, we practiced it in my basement earlier in the afternoon and she was flawless but picked this time to screw it up. On the drive back to the crib, her excuse was that by the time the contest got started she’d already had a fair amount of adult beverages and for some reason automatically reverted back to the single twirl we do at our local hangout. And actually this brings up a good point, a missed step like that at your favorite local watering hole at 1 AM on a Saturday night when everybody is 2 sheets to the wind anyway and nothing’s on the line, will go largely unnoticed. However, in front of a crowd like this and I hate to use this term «my generation» where everyone is of the hand-​dancing era and takes it very seriously, a missed step like that is magnified 100 fold. So needless to say once again I came up short in my quest to win this thing, and my date although well intentioned, suggested that we will win it the next time. Well, that’s easy for her to say since she’s roughly 14 years younger than me and considering that they may not hold another reunion for another 20 years who knows if I will get at least 1 more shot at it because that math is not exactly working in my favor. At any rate, thanks, Patapsco arena for hosting such a fine event, and thank you for reading.