holiday

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Company Holiday Party at SPiN

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We’ve been so busy this year with so many projects on our plates that we almost forgot to plan our company holiday event. In the past we’ve gone to dinner, but we wanted to have a great company party and to do something different this year.

Last year the ping pong bar/club SPiN opened up on 23rd Street off of Park Avenue. Ending a romp around town during an ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair) event in May ’09, we ended up at SPiN. My dear friend Arthur Young-Spivey, the man about town who led us there, pointed out one of the club’s owners, Susan Sarandon, as she was showing Demi Moore & Ashton Kutcher around the bleachers to a dark corner lounge chair. That proved to be one of my best celebrity sightings ever!! As savvy New Yorkers, we satisfied our furtive glances, then turned our attention back to the two dapper pros whipping balls back and forth across the premier table.

We couldn’t get a table to play that night because the reservations have to be made way in advance but I knew we had to come back and try it. So this year after mulling over bowling, ice skating or billiards, we booked us a table at SPiN.

Just about everyone has played ping pong at some point in their life. Some contest their expertise, some challenge others, and some down play it.. Got to watch out for those. haha Either way, we were having a blast whacking those orange balls around. The best thing about this company holiday event is that there are so many great people who have helped us make Yeh IDeology what it is today. We were able to invite quite a few friends to the table (pun intended) and celebrate.

A little decadent detail about this club was that we never had to pick up any of the balls we were letting loose. Roaming the club were special attendants with nets on sticks who deftly scooped up all the ping pong balls. It was a good thing too because we played singles, doubles, and sometimes we were just trying to shoot as many balls at each other as fast as we could. We laughed so hard our cheeks ached.

One game I’ve always wanted us to try is Round Robin ping pong. There were seven of us, each with a paddle, rotating around the ping pong table. As one person hit the ball, the next person would step up to hit the ball. It got to a point where we were dizzy from circling the table, skipping sideways. There are ways to make the game more challenging, like sharing only two paddles between everyone and reducing the numbers down to two as people miss their shots, but this was about letting everyone have fun and we had a blast.

We noshed on delicious food from the restaurant Ducks in the back of the club. The sliders were delicious and the vanilla popcorn addictive and not at all as saccharine sweet as you’d expect. They had a great selection of beers, wine and cocktails too. What you don’t realize is what a workout you get from ping pong. Definitely have those waters ready.

All in all a fun company holiday party. Can’t wait to figure out what we do for next year.