Royale Derby Party
Ladies, procure your finest Derby hat and spring dresses. Gentlemen, get your seersucker suits pressed and your hats boxed. It is time to cheer on the ponies at the 6th Annual Royale Kentucky Derby Party on Saturday May 7th. We have a contest for best male and female hat as well as best dressed race jockey. Proper Derby dress code will be enforced.
Miss Jubilee & the Humdingers will be performing the ragtime jump blues on the courtyard. Mint Juleps and featured cocktails will be available at an additional satellite bar in order to keep the cheer flowing and a special food menu to quell the peckish.
Young grade school scholars Tom and Molly Stein will be selling 50/50 chances on horses benefiting the Cabrini school.
A limited number of advance $6 tickets(2 per person) will be available on April 22nd at the Royale, and there will be allotted tickets available on the day of the race.
The party starts at 2pm with music starting at 3:30. Post time at 5:04.
Derby Day at the Royale from bill streeter on Vimeo.
Read MoreACLU Happy Hour – Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
What: ACLU Happy Hour – Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
When: Wednesday, May 11 · 5:30pm - 7:30pm
Join us on Wednesday, May 11 and raise a glass to civil liberties. Liberty Lemonade and special drink specials await. Appetizers provided.
The ACLU is the only organization fighting for the fundamental freedoms for all people in this country. Join us in making the ideals of this nation a reality. Together, we can ensure that you have the liberty to pursue happiness.
This is an ACLU event so expect the unexpected! See you there.
Valentine’s Day & Vinyl Side Monday
A special edition of Vinyl Side Valentine’s Day this week- bring in your favorite love/hate recording then recite the lyrics for all to hear.
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Instead of staying at home suffering under the crushing weight of solitude this Valentine’s Day, join love magnates Stefene Russell and Thom Fletcher at The Royale, where they will give you the tools you need to win the heart you deserve. It’s easy to speak your mind freely to somebody once you already share an established relationship. You can say things like “In Holly-rock her name would be Mary Stewart Mastodon” or “Please don’t talk about Flinstones to my coworkers, Thom”. But when you first have your soul-mate in your sites and it’s time to make your intentions clear, every word counts. What will you say? What words will be the key that fits the most important lock? Let’s face it; you need some serious help here. You could look to Shakespeare or Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but they don’t really describe that yearning of yours to rock one like a hurricane, or how much you like a cold beverage, yeah, like a cold beverage, yeah, like a cold beverage. On Valentine’s Day the lyrics of our generation’s greatest balladeers are in your hands and the whole bar is waiting for your recital. Find that special someone in the room, make eye contact, and let them know just how you feel with the words of Richie, Mothersbaugh, Yorke, Cent and Rotten. Singing will only obscure the words – this must be spoken, and spoken loud. Dutch courage available for those with weak knees. This year when you see cupid flitting about the Royale, you don’t need to call animal control. Instead bring a badminton racket and we’ll serve him up right.
Read MoreFootball Match Viewing Experience: This Sunday
This Sunday evening, The Royale will join the 99% of bars, taverns, restaurants and assorted gin mills and flophouses in the Western Hemisphere, showing the Championship Football Match between top teams of the American Football Conference (the Steelers of Pittsburgh) and the National Football Conference (the Packers of Green Bay, WI). Throughout the match-up, The Royale’s two color televisions will showcase the encounter, while the volume will be turned “on” for the duration of the game, including the extremely-popular interstitial programming (aka commercial announcements). We likely will even feature some of the day’s nine-hours of lead-up information, featuring heart-rending stories about the players, coaches and fans of this year’s contest, each of the feature stories mixing emotional visual and auditory content.
Limited food and drink specials (nachos, anyone?) will be offered during the game, alongside our normal, high-quality pub fare. Also, The Royale’s Sunday signature, The Cocktail Museum, will be presented. Due to last week’s frigid temps, many were not able to sample from the menu: The List of Unfortunately-Named Drinks. That same group of selections will be offered this week, after 9 p.m. compliments of staff mixologist Robert Griffin.
While The Royale is not a house of wagering action, per se, far be it from us to not offer a prediction on this popular sporting event. So: we envision the loss of all-world rookie center Maurkice Pouncey to essentially ensure a jailbreak-type scenario, with the Packers front-seven practically establishing a zip code in the Pittsburgh backfield. This destruction of the Steeler run game will force Pittsburgh’s once-despised/now-lovable Ben Roethlisberger to strafe the Green Bay DBs with a blitz of vertical passing, with Hines Ward turning back to the clock on a pair of touchdown scores. On the other side of the ball, angry Pittsburgh defender/cheap-shot artist James Harrison will lead the parade of marauding Pennsylvanian defenders celebrating sacks behind the stout Green Bay line. While hamstrung offensively, Green Bay will use some unusual markers (a pick-six featuring a backward pitch, a kickoff return brought back to the house) to help eke out a 27-23 victory at the Palace in Dallas.
But, really, as long as it’s a good game, we’ll be happy.
Would you care to join us for all this fun on Sunday? And would you join us in telling uber-rich NFL commissar Roger Goodell that we’re watching THE SUPER BOWL without paying for the use of the name? Ha-ha. Take that, The Man!
Read MoreTonight: The Old Time, Modern Times Digital Destruction Show
David Lazaroff, of The Brothers Lazaroff musical group, will be manning the sound system of The Royale this evening, under the guise of The Old Time, Modern Time Digital Destruction Show. We caught up to him via e-mail and asked some questions.
How did this form of playing come together for you?
When I decided to start getting into mixing music, I would do little mini-sets for my brother and our band (Brothers Lazaroff) after our weekly rehearsals to test out the sounds. So, when I got my first gig at Pop’s Blue Moon I asked Jeff what I should call the act. He e-mailed me some ideas and this one seemed to sum it up. The name comes from the idea of combining all forms of music: Old Time (fiddle tunes, old country, cajun, string band, old jazz and blues stuff, etc.. ) with more modern styles, ala Rock, Dub, Hip Hop; and, with the help of effects processors, mix them together. Sometimes literally (so that a field recording of an old fiddle tune from the 1920′s could be blended with a King Tubby Sparse drum and bass dub track for example). The result can be chaotic or more subdued depending on the venue and crowd. I’ll bring out toys to create live soundscapes to help ease the transitions, as most of the music we play can’t be beat-matched. For bigger stage shows, I will often read from a Charles Bukowski collection of poems and show archived field recording footage from the ’20s and ’30s running the audio through the mixing board so we can use that, too. I always love the term Old-Time, referring to country music before bluegrass and The “Modern Times” is a shout out to Dylan’s 2006 album (which was a shout out to Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 movie).
The Joys of a Tavern on a Rainy Day
Let’s consider a couple of truisms as we sit at the bar of The Royale.
We’ll start with the notion of “the hive mind,” a hot topic in the world of pop sociology. Can’t listen to two-hours of NPR without hearing about the idea that “the hive mind” is taking over our world, especially with social networking becoming a daily part of our lives. (Look! We’re all involved in it right now!) In the broadest terms, we’re apparently getting smarter through our immediate interactions, as we take in influences from those in our vicinity. Meantime, a world of links take us to places that we can’t, on our own, find. We need assistance. We need comforts. We need collegiality. We need tips and leads and motion, in order to learn on our own.
We offer those things today at The Royale. In one corner of the room, a pair of young people are planning to launch a podcast. In another sector of the bar, a young man crunches through word puzzles. Music has been selected by all parties, adding to the unpredictability and ambiance. Together, we’re not just having lunch, or a mid-day sip. We’re engaging in “the hive mind,” with discussions already having taken place on meteorology, the values of home-schooling and audio design.
We also have beer on-tap, so don’t assume it’s all Poindexter-ish up in here.
Tonight, Robert Griffin’s walking the slats. He’d probably be talked into making some of the drinks found on last night’s Cocktail Museum menu. At some point in the day, the late afternoon drinkers will roll in, and there’s no better conversationalist than a member of that tribe. We’ll listen to album sides until then; already, we’ve segued from Stereolab to The Who.
With stores down to the barest of supplies – some rock candy, lamb shanks and sweet-’n'sour Polish relish is all that’s left at the local Aldi’s! – we can offer you the basic needs. Food, drink, collegial hello’s and a spot at the bar where you can add your voice to the chorus.
Maybe today’s not a day to get crunk, though. We’ve been hearing something about ice.
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