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Events

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The new venue for this annual goth costume fest, the Alameda Hotel Ballroom, was beautiful and appropriately atmospheric, but a bit too small for the most well attended PEERS event of the year. Gina, Crystal, and I were three witches (crone, warrior, and maiden respectively) with black dresses, pointy hats, and brooms in addition to our accessories which highlighted our individual personas. Gina had a variety of skull items including a 5 foot skull staff. Crystal had her black leather waist cinch (of course) and a nifty little battle ax. I had a cute little crystal ball and a home-made deck of tarot cards. There were many other amazing costumes at the ball and black was the color of choice. The dancing was a bit difficult due to the smaller dance floor and the attendance of so many non dancers, but this ball is more about costumes than dancing anyway.

This event was a total blast, due in no small part to our excellent costumes and a visit from our friend Alex (he's a great dancer and easily blackmailed into saving dances for us as payment for sleeping on our couch). Gaskell's is usually a good event, but tonight it was great. There were a multitude of cool costumes including a fantastic black wasp lady, Crystal's Alice, an unrelated set from Wonderland (white rabbit, mad hatter, queen of hearts, etc.), and Him and Sedusa from the Power Puff Girls. The dancing was wonderful as well thanks to Brassworks who were really on tonight with a wonderful selection of ballroom tunes in perfect tempo (not too fast, not too slow, not changing every minute). There was no lack of partners and the dance floor wasn't too crowded (I didn't get stepped on once!). If you love to dress up and dance the night away in Victorian style, don't miss this event at Oakland's beautiful Scottish Rite Temple.