Don’t walk, do party

The extent of a hangover is usually a great indication of how good a night was. Today I am crippled, I don’t even know if I’m typing coherent English; it’s safe to say the Dont Walk Launch Party was phenomenal.

It all started, and probably ended for the drunken messes amongst us, at the Vic. When an event is hosted at a standard weekly hangout, it tends to bug me that one has to pay money for entry. However Dont Walk made sure that it was well worth the expense. We were greeted with a glass of champagne, or at least something that tasted kind of like champagne, which was nice and very civilised. Entrance was quick; they had their act together to ensure that we didn’t catch pneumonia queuing in the cold. Big thumbs up for that.

When I first got there, the party wasn’t especially pumpin’, but who gets to any event on time in St Andrews? The advantages of arriving early meant that I could take my free shot without having to wrestle other alcoholics out the way, this made me happy. The free shots were themed, a different ‘flavour’ for each of the female models. This was an original take on the ‘one, two, three, down it’ experience. Having pictures of the girls next to the flavours was also a great way to publicise the models in a non-aggressive way.

Then I used my special press privileges to saunter into VIP where we were faced with a goody bag – I’ll discuss in a moment – and the opportunity to have another drink on the house. Although the espresso martini wasn’t my particular cup of tea, I still drank it, and appreciated the thought and effort that had gone into to giving us a drink that wasn’t made of shit vodka and some form of soda.

Rifling through the goody bag – which was actually decent, a first in my experience – I managed to pocket some Lush shower gel and The Body Shop blusher (a fact I was only told after I had put it on my lips…) as well as a pen – useful for all students. There were also Bibi’s cupcakes available. The only thing that I could possibly criticise was that there wasn’t much for the boys. I didn’t see anyone looking too devastated by this though. Slightly hyper and slightly drunk I headed back into the main room, which was now packed; the dance floor was crowded, the music was, well I can’t remember what they played, but it was loud. Everyone was enjoying themselves.

The after party was also very professional and incredibly fun. There was a makeshift bar in the kitchen, some scary bouncers, a lot of music and a lot of dancing. When I stumbled home at 3am, the party was still raging.

All in all, Dont Walk put on a fantastic party and set a great precedent for the show: Bring on March 2012!

Photos: © Celeste Sloman