In Late 1997, 12 people crammed into a tiny duplex apartment that had tables and chairs laid out from the kitchen into the living room, on top of the couch and partially into the tiny 3 ft Christmas tree perched precariously atop a endtable. The bar consisted of 5 bottles of booze and a cooler sat outside the front door with a 24 pack of beer...which, if you wanted a beer, you had to ask the person sitting at the table in front of the door to reach back, around the door and grab a beer.
Tight, cramped and poor...but the spirit is still the same.
Aloha(Love) and Ohana (Family).
In 1997, it was the first year that I had NOT gone home for Thanksgiving. Homesick, I missed the family gathering wherein close to all 35 of my west coast side family members crammed into my grandparents house for the feast.
To make up for that, my novice cooking skills and I decided to have a gathering with my closest friends and co-workers....my other Ohana...my other family.
Little did I know that it would spawn a decades worth of habitually throwing this festas (Portuguese for festival, gathering, feasting).
In 1997 I threw it together, unplanned in a matter of hours. It was cheap and haphazard. A ton of things went wrong, but that never really mattered. It was the guests and the effort that mattered.
Now, a decade later, the beast has grown. This event starts getting planned 3 months ahead now. And with this being the 10th one, and the biggest one yet, ideas and concepts were starting to be slung around clear back in May.
This gathering has gone from a handful of guests to dozens. From a cheap $140 grocery bill to well over $1200. From a underage 20 yr old with 5 bottles of contraband booze to a 30 year old mixologist with an over 120 bottle stocked open bar. A tiny duplex in Tempe's ghetto with landing airplanes every 15 minutes to Gilbert's west side house 3 times the size of the Tempe location.
The irony? This may be the last. I may not be in Arizona for next year's 11th annual. My true blooded Ohana calls for my return to San Francisco. That however, is still up to the winds of fate.
This event has seen so many faces come and go. Some have moved away, some have disappeared, some have fallen out of grace, and some have stayed. One or two have stayed around for 8 or all ten of those years.
The premise is still there, and will be there again this year. The spirit of Aloha and Ohana.
The official announcement is that the
10th annual Holiday Social will be held this year on
Sunday, December 9th 2007 at about 7 pm.
Invitations are designed and will be given out a month before the event.