New Year’s Eve @ Union Hall

January 2, 2007 by alex

Last week our friend who owns Union Hall asked if we’d like to DJ downstairs at the bar for New Year’s Eve. Karen and I had tentative plans and we decided if we could get Manlio (in from San Francisco for 3 days) and Kevin to take on some of the DJ duties, we’d do it. Lucky for us they were in and the plan was in place.

Before the festivites kicked off we met up with Matt and Freya at Ginsa in Park Slope with the hope of ushering in the new year with hibachi, tossed broccoli and little onion volcanoes.

Here you can see a blurred image of Kevin making his move on the airborne vegetable headed his way. He was successful and as a whole our table went 4 for 6 - well done.

We got to Union Hall around 8:30 and set up our iPods and CDs and Karen got ready to kick things off. Don’t Karen and Kevin look like they’re on some sort of psychedelic life-sized dollhouse? Karen started us off with some great indie rock and took us to Manlio who slayed with his set.

Someone should have brought him a stick to beat away all of the girls sweating him beind the DJ table. One girl grabbed his iPod (a real faux pas for those of you taking notes on party etiquette) and told me “I like Jeff Buckley! Can he play that?” Me: “Um… Jeff Buckley isn’t really the kind of vibe we’re going for tonight.”

Manlio did an admirable job entertaining everyone’s requests and around 11:30 passed the baton to Kevin who played some killer 80s tracks and became the master of ceremonies when the clock struck midnight…

Kevin led the crowd with the countdown and champagne toast and then dropped some Rat Pack Auld Lang Syne on everyone’s asses.

Kevin wrapped up his set (for now) around 12:30 and I took a shot at the “decks”. Only half of the set I had dutifully prepared for hours on Saturday was still relevant (don’t worry indie rock, I still love you. I’ll play you some other time.). I worked through some electro and layed down some fan favorites to keep the dance party going. We were supposed to go until 2am but after I was done at 1:30, Kevin and I brought it back to our college radio show days and went back and forth playing songs until everything started to die down at around 3:30am.

After leaving Union Hall, Karen and I headed up 5th Avenue in the rain back to our apartment. On our way to Union Hall earlier in the evening we had seen that a local restaurant, Perch, was planning a New Year’s Brunch from Midnight to 4am. What a great idea, right? We were sold and showed up at 3:45 only to find a deserted restaurant and not waffles and breakfast meats. Less than 4 hours into the new year and Perch is already on our list.

All in all this was one of the best New Year’s I can remember. We got to spend it in one place (I feel that New Year’s used to be about hopping from place to place and spending most of your time in cabs, not enjoying gins and tonics) Everyone was in such good form and everything went so well and I’m happy I got to spend it with the people who were there and we drank 6 gin and tonics for those that weren’t able to make it (we missed you Gabe and Carin!).

Happy New Year!

[ check out Manlio's recap of the night ]

[ see all my photos on Flickr. Manlio and Karen also have some up there. ]

Tags: brooklyn, karen, kevin k., manlio l.

Posted in Events, Food & Drink, New York