Supper club in Sedona

I had an unusual Christmas Eve this year. My sister, whom I’m visiting in Sedona for the first time, arranged for us to go out to a “supper club” holiday dinner.

It’s sort of a mix between dinner theatre, a night club and the early-bird special. There was a four-course dinner and then a small, uh, entertainment group (singers, instrumentals and really, really bad patter). Evidently it was the first time this particular establishment has done this, and they hadn’t quite worked out the pre-show organizational bugs, but the food was actually quite good and the musicians were accomplished.

What they didn’t explain was that, in order to get more people into the venue, which isn’t that big, if you were a party of two, they sat you with another party of two. When we arrived at our table, we found that a (retired) couple from Seattle were already ensconced there and had eaten all the choice bits from the cheese platter.

This pot luck seating is one of the reasons I’ve never fancied taking a cruise. (The other one is that I am not what they call a good sailor and I’ve never seen the point in paying money to spend all my time hanging over the rail, if you catch my drift.) To be seated for five hours (less the 90 minutes of the two musical sets) with a prime example of the self-absorbed, self-satisfied inhabitants of the Emerald City was just plain mean.

In all the time I was there, the husband (John) asked me exactly one question about myself—where in the Bay Area I come from. That was just a foil for him to go off at great length about how he and the wife always go to San Francisco, “which is really comparable to Seattle, although it’s not as big”.

Oh, in his bleeding dreams.

The entertainers are obviously well-known to the audience—I expect that in a town the size of Sedona, people get to know the local performers. (The Seattleites assured me that there’s a massive music scene here.) Plus—the fans were clearly well-oiled.

It was actually an enjoyable experience once I got over the whole bad-PNW-fairy thing. Definitely an experience I would ordinarily not have touched with a barge pole. So, hurrah for the Christmas spirit.

Today I’m on my way back to the Bay Area, glad for the break, for seeing my sister and for trying something different.