Brian Lawrence Live

Saturday, June 9
I haven’t attended Zoomerang in about 5 years, but I decided to go this year since our friends Stuart and Suzanne Amos are the honorary chairs. Since I’d only be staying for the early part of the evening, I arrived at precisely 7:30 to find that already the parking lot was filled with about 200 cars— making me wonder just how early people had started arriving, given that doors didn’t open until 7:30— had they been waiting in their cars? The conventional wisdom is that this event inevitably occurs on a freakishly hot evening, and this year was no exception. And usually there is some sort of sudden, violent downpour at some point in the evening, which, happily, didn’t occur this year. However, the humidity was crushing. The tents over much of the party areas acted to trap the damp heat under their canopies and make the atmosphere stifling. The only way to avoid it was to huddle into the one air-conditioned venue, the Mansion House, where I caught up with The Examiner‘s Anne Boone-Simanski. The party was much as I remembered it: lots of people clad in black tie evening wear shoveling food into their maws at every turn. Thankfully, there were adequate bars also at every turn. I also remembered that I always wonder why this is planned as a black tie event: 20 minutes into the party, my tux was a damp mop. Strolling around I chatted with Celeste Corsaro from Baltimore Eats, Sarah and Mary Moran, Un Kim from IXIA, PR maven David Nevins, “Downtown Diane” Macklin, Sloane Brown and Steve Sobelman. Sloane, who covers society for The Sun, had her handy digital camera with her, and was busily recording guests for her fun online blog. An hour and a half later, with the party in full swing, I headed toward the exit, stripping my soaking tie and damp jacket off as quickly as I could. Browse the photos from Zoomerang in our Social Seen pages.