The Edwardian Ball San Francisco 2012

The Edwardian Ball at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco is an annual extravaganza that just can’t be conveyed in pictures or words. Yesterday, my friend Mary called and asked if I would be interested in changing our plans to celebrate her birthday up in San Francisco at this heralded event. Trusting her uncanny knack for discovering cool, quirky, and culturally-rich things to do, I agreed.

Checking out their website, I immediately discovered I may have agreed to more than I bargained for! Period costume, though not required, was encouraged. And so I found myself in downtown Santa Cruz, first at the Thrift Store, then the Hat Shop, then standing in front of the mirror, complete with a mustache and eye-liner (haven’t worn that since the 80s…) ready for action.

“For 10 years now the Ball has proven, through its collection of the best in local and far-reaching performance talents — from the circus to the music hall — and its inherent power to inspire and produce the utmost in imaginative creativity, to be one of the most defining events of San Francisco.” - SF Examiner

We started the evening at a nearby sushi restaurant – Wayo Sushi – and met her interesting friends Craig, an attorney that plays and writes music and meditates, and Laura, a well-traveled, warm and diverse Osteopathic  doctor – the perfect pair to join us for this evening of debauchery.

Just a block away, the multi-story Regency Building, boasting 2 ballrooms, a neoclassic, Scottish Rite, and beaux arts style architecture, and built in 1909, was our destination for the evening.

Immediately upon entering the building and taking in the sights and sounds, it was clear “We’re not in Kansas anymore…” While almost everyone sported period dress, this was unmistakably 2012 San Francisco, where (almost) anything goes.

We decided rather than foisting ourselves immediately into the main ballroom to visit the vendor faire downstairs, where the juxtaposition of Edwardian-meets-goth-meets-sexy was everywhere, and took the opportunity to pick up a commemorative bauble for my awesome girlfriend, Stacy, back in Santa Cruz. Booth after booth of everything from leather corsets, jewelry, to costume ball masks worthy of Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut”…

From there, we visited the nearest bar, and the drink of the night was Absinthe. But being the designated driver, I opted for something less hypnotic. The Grand Ballroom was everything I’d heard it would be – vast, ornate, and …well… grand. The band was somehow synthesizing period ragtime and waltzes with a techno-rave beat. I still don’t know how they did it, but anything that gets yours truly to dance (let alone waltz!) is worthy of mention.

Taking the intriguing, antiquated elevator to the top floor, we witnessed a vast array of quirkiness – performers jumping on broken glass, a groove-beat ukulele player, and installation art that included apocalyptic scenes reminiscent of “Road Warrior”

But there’s something indescribable that was happening last night. It was in the way that attendees greeted each other, smiled at each other, complimented and amused each other. It was a recognition that we’d found another “tribe” that we belonged to. Unlike Halloween, when everyone is expected to get dressed up, this event was voluntary. Harking back to its’ Edwardian origins, which signaled the end of the repressive Victorian era around the turn of the century and heralded in a greater appreciation for the hedonistic and things cultural, the Ball gives us an opportunity to completely shed the stigma, the persona, the stress of who we are in 2012, and jump on a timeless merry-go-round for a few hours.

“The 10th Annual Edwardian Ball was a fitting, San Francisco-style homage to the cartoon-Gothic writer and illustrator Edward Gorey with a riveting multimedia extravaganza of music, dance, video, art installations, and aerial acrobatics.” – SF Weekly.com