RADO, Main Ingredients, and Raglands

We had the pleasure of attending Riverside and Avondale Development Organization (RADO)’s Harvest Gala, which was held in the 5 Points Theater building Saturday night. It was a silent auction with drinks and food, followed by a main event (see below). The building was filled with incredible art from Ali Isabelle (nee Fuder), a RADO participant (or client? We don’t know what the right word is here). But, several large pieces were for sale, and someone got a great deal on another big piece in the silent auction. The silent auction also had gifts donated by Violet, Anomaly, Peterbrooke, Moon River, The Resident newspaper, a spa, and a bunch of others we unfortunately cannot remember.

However, the highlight of the night came when the event portion of the night began. DJ Triclops (who we think is an owner of Shantytown?) got on stage and the Main Ingredients break dancing crew took the floor. Some of you may be hesitant about a break dancing group, but if you saw these guys, you would be won over in about one second, as was the entire building (including one drunk lady near us who kept yelling “Whooo! Eminem! Whoo! Eminem! Yeah!” every few seconds, for some reason). These guys were doing things that Olympic gymnasts would have trouble pulling off. We’re talking full-on head spinning, horizontal full body spins on just their hands, and all kinds of other stuff we cannot even describe. If you have ever seen the Beastie Boys’ ’Root Down’ video, these guys could easily keep up with anything in that. Tony Allegretti told us that they travel all over the country and are highly respected, and he himself seemed pretty excited to see them. We may have been able to talk them into performing at the next First Friday-- we're keeping our fingers crossed.

After that we headed over to Raglands with some friends for some beers on the back deck. We haven’t really been going to Raglands enough, especially given that it has the a great patio on the back deck, which was even better with the great weather. After several drinks at RADO and then a beer at Raglands, we needed a snack and ordered up a huge order of some dank onion rings and fries. Before too long, we had to head home, where one of us vomited, a sure sign of a good night.