When I first moved to DC I joined my sorority’s local alumni club. I had tried to join the alumni club in Harrisburg, PA, but they met for lunch in the middle of the week because it was a group of retired ladies who spent most of the time complaining about the effects of Agent Orange on their husbands. So, needless to say, that wasn’t really my scene. DC’s alumni club is significantly younger and more my speed. If I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m a Pi Phi (or Pi Beta Phi if we want to be technical about it). I was super involved in my chapter in college and have (kind of surprisingly to me) continued to be involved post-graduation.
I love the DC Pi Phi alumni club. It’s fully the Nation’s Capital Alumni Club since it includes women who live in the greater DC area. Originally I joined the club because I didn’t know anyone in DC and was looking to make friends and I’ve stayed a member in the club because the women are so nice and welcoming and because we have fun events!
Every month the club has a “monthly mingle” where anyone (you can be a member or you can be thinking about joining or you can be a visiting Pi Phi–I’ve taken sisters who have been visiting me to alum club events before) can get together and do a different activity. The host of the monthly mingle rotates based on who has an idea for what we should do that month. I hosted the monthly mingle some time last summer because I wanted to bring everyone to Whaley’s Rosé Garden pop up. Hosting probably seems like it’s a huge deal but honestly all I had to do was show up first and stake out a table. For events that require tickets it probably means having everyone Venmo you money for the tickets and buying them in bulk, but even that is pretty low-key.
Most of the monthly mingles I’ve been to have been at pop up bars or shops or at bars that have fun events. I went to an event where we learned how to make flower arrangements while drinking bottomless champagne and got to leave with a cute vase filled with our flower arrangements. Other events have been going to a National’s game or checking out a new exhibit.
A few weeks ago the monthly mingle was at Calico for craft night. Calico is a super cute bar with a big outdoor space that hosts a craft night on certain Mondays (I’m a little hazy on the details of the arrangement since I hadn’t heard of it before). The craft on the day we attended was learning how to make paper flowers. Now, I’m not a super crafty person–my creative skills just aren’t in the visual arts. But even so, this was a fun event. We got to talk and drink (more on that in a second) and try to make paper flowers out of a highly complicated Martha Stewart craft book. I’m not joking, Martha Stewart literally wrote a book teaching you how to make hundreds of different types of paper flowers. And the bar just handed it to us and told us to knock ourselves out.
Aside from the hilariousness of trying to make paper flowers from complicated instructions while imagining how disappointed Martha would be in us, Calico has fun drinks. They’re locally famous for their adult juice boxes so obviously I had to order one. They really do look like Caprisun juice pouches. Complete with the annoying straw. Thankfully the bartender punches the straw in so there are no exploding juice box situations. It tasted exactly like a juice box as well, which I could see being dangerous, but it was also too sweet for me to want more than one. But if you’re at Calico, I’d say you pretty much have to order one.
Calico is also in Blagdon Alley. Which is, you guessed it, an alley. Not an alley where you feel like you might get murdered, but an alley where you will question whether your Lyft driver knows where he’s going. I had a brief moment of horror when my driver turned down the cobblestone alley, but he (as usual) knew more about where he was going than I did.
I’m sure I’ll be back again, both to Calico and to the Pi Phi monthly mingles. Who knows, maybe I’ll even host one again!
xoxo,
J
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