Here’s what we had on the tables on Saturday night. Photo by Darren Day Photography.
One of the things I do with my skills is volunteer my time to the Rogers Park Food Co-op. I’m currently the chair of the Events Committee for this start-up business. In case you don’t know how food co-ops work, here’s a short summary:
A co-op is a community-owned business. The backing for it comes not from a corporation or from billionaire investors but from individual share sales to members of the community. As you can imagine, this is hard work. In order to make it work, it is necessary for hundreds or thousands of people to come together, raise money, and make it all happen. And it is all powered by volunteers.
Once a year, we have our Annual Owner Celebration, a gathering for everyone who has bought a share in the business. It is a time to make sure everyone knows what is going on and to energize everyone to work toward our goals. And my small committee plans everything.
It’s a big deal event: rental venue, catering, photography, decor, speakers, meeting activities, tons of stuff to be transported, dozens of volunteers, and so on. We were expecting 130 people to show up at 6:00 at the Levy Center in Evanston. Set-up started at 4:00.
But, at 2:30, my phone rang, a call from an Evanston Park District manager with some very bad news. Levy Center was closed for the rest of the day because of a MAJOR sewer back-up that affected the entire building. The bathrooms were unusable; the kitchen was unusable; the entire building (reportedly) smelled of sewage. Plumbers were on the job but they would not be finished any time soon–and then the place had to be cleaned up.
It was the exact script of the event planner’s nightmare. That’s how it always goes in bad dreams. Only, in the actual nightmare, no one will help you, there is no equipment, and you flail about trying to salvage an impossible situation. Reality was actually much better.
The saving grace was that they were able to offer the use of another park district facility at the other end of town. The room is not as nice; the sound system is not great (and one of the reasons I wanted to use the Levy Center was their excellent sound system); and there’s no real kitchen. But at least it was a room that could accommodate our needs.
City staff hauled the tables from Levy to Chandler, brought in the sound system, and were generally very helpful. We just had the enormous task of making sure all 130 people knew about the change in plans!
Five or six of us from the committee and the board got on a conference call and worked out an emergency communications and transportation plan in about half an hour. I was texting and emailing volunteers all during that time, too. I notified catering and photographer (almost forgot the photographer!), scrambled my stuff together, and got there in time to re-do the ground plan on the fly and start wrangling volunteers.
And then, after all that, we had our event. No, no, I’m not tired at all. Why do you ask?
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