A looked at Zorvino's Winery's website. It said that there would be a wine-tasting from 6-8 pm, followed by dancing and partying until 11. It said dressing up was optional, and at first I thought I wouldn't bother. But about an hour before we needed to leave, I thought, why not, and decided to dress up in 80's wear.
The problem was I really only had a vague notion of what 80's wear meant. I really don't remember the 80's much at all. Well, yes, I do remember them...I remember being pregnant, twice. I remember giving birth, twice. I remember 8 years of babies, toddlers and little kids. That's what I remember!
But, what did people wear? What did people do when they weren't changing diapers or rocking babies (or working, I worked fulltime too)? I remembered a lot of padded shoulder dresses and jackets. I did remember all the big hair, but my hair is too short (or should I say small?) to try to emulate that. I have one really nice circa 80's jacket I've hung on to in the back of my closet, but one glance at it and I knew I would have to try to go another route. Its still beautiful but I have nothing anymore to wear with it. You can't make a costume out of one jacket!
So I got online and apparently 80's parties are all the rage. There are lots of resources for putting together an 80's-appropriate outfit. At first I thought maybe I could do punk, but that would have required getting a black t shirt with appropriately ghoulish designs, and there was no time for that. Then I came upon Joan Jett.
I didn't really remember her, but I did remember her big hit ("I Love Rock and Roll"). And her look was something I could do! Jeans, big metal belt, lots of costume jewelry, a black turtleneck, a thin scarf around my neck, a black leather jacket, boots. Lots of gel in my hair. Lots of black eyeliner. Check, check, check!
I was pretty happy with my look. I don't know how authentic it looked, but I didn't look like myself, and I looked kind of rocker/punk, so I figured it would do.
Off we went. Zorvino's Winery is in Sandown, New Hampshire, a small town around 20 minutes from Salem. I'd actually tried their wine before and I didn't think it was that bad. For New Hampshire, anyway, not exactly the epicenter of wine culture. When we arrived a party bus was just disgorging its passengers so we entered with a large group of Flashdance/Madonna wannabes, accompanied by leisure-suited men, and a few Ninja Turtles too.
We immediately realized we were going to be the oldest people there. That's not really surprising. It made perfect sense to want to attend an 80's party if that's the decade where you enjoyed your teens and twenties. So, we were out of our usual comfort zone. Winter in New Hampshire, its TIME to get out of your comfort zone!
The next thing we noticed was the music. It was loud, very loud. Lee and I are both losing our hearing a bit, and very loud music was going to accelerate that process. Well, we could be all huffy and crabby about it, or just go with the flow. One night wouldn't kill us, hopefully.
We looked around for something resembling a wine-tasting, but couldn't find it. I ordered a glass of their Malbec. It was okay, not wonderful, but not terrible either. Lee was less than impressed and quickly changed to beer. They had plenty of great appetizers so we set about trying to find a place to hang out where we weren't right in front of the speakers, eating snacks and waiting for our friends to show up.
The other Newcomers arrived eventually. There were two other couples and another lady and that was it. I thought more people would have been up for this, but never mind. We were ready to have some fun!
The other people remembered the 80's a lot better than I did. Soon, the women were dancing, and before too long I was dancing too. I am a terrible dancer, but I tried hard to copy other people's moves so I didn't just stand there flailing about. The men in our party stood at our table, drinking beer and looking amused. Lee had no intention of dancing, but that's okay. I pretended that I looked cool, and tried not be be self-conscious. Everyone else on the dance floor knew all the songs and sang along. Sometimes a song sounded familiar, sometimes I even sort of knew the chorus! I kind of sang along too. It was so loud nobody could tell that I was just making up words as we went along.
It was a lot of fun. We made it all the way to 10 pm, kind of the witching hour for us, bid our friends goodbye, and headed out into the freezing, buzzing New Hampshire night (buzzing because of our temporary hearing loss). I was actually a bit sore the next day from dancing, which apparently requires different movements than running!
I posted pictures on Facebook and several people said they thought I should dress like that more often. I don't know how to take that. The black turtleneck and the leather jacket are doable, perhaps without quite so much jewelry. But the copious amounts of gel in my hair are a non-starter, and as for the thick black-eyeliner...well it was fun being Joan Jett for one night, but one night was enough. Now I just need for someone to decide to do a 60's night. Now THAT I could rock!
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