After many a summer dies everything beautiful. My wife Lynn and I learned at the annual Equinox wine dinner this Thursday that a big chain has bought the historic hotel and plans major renovations. The sum of $40 million in improvements was tossed around. A large increase in room rates will pay for it all.
The Vermont hotel was first a tavern, founded in 1769, from which part of the American Revolution strategy was plotted by Ethan Allen’s brother and his Green Mountain Boys. I am sure that the Marsh Tavern will be upgraded into something spiffier, too. Right now it looks old – and beautiful.
We were also told that the new owners are thinking about discontinuing the annual Champagne event, an upscale Dionysian wine and food orgy. I love the people who attend it. Pretty much the same people year after year. Lynn and I have gotten to know many of them and look forward to seeing them again every year.
The new people are fun, too. Where else would I be able to drink, talk and dine with a beautiful 21 year-old who looked about as much like Cameron Diaz (when she was young) as would be possible.
But the regulars are what make it. For the last five years a large, red headed transvestite dons a beautiful gown, false breasts and stilettos so that he soars above most of the crowd with his broad, masculine shoulders and tattoos. We got into an elevator with him the next day upon leaving. He had put on bright red leather pants, and a regular coat, but still maintained his large breasts.
We talked about the probable loss of the tradition. I said it was my only Christmas celebration. The man said it was his, also, and that he planned to write the new owners and make the best case he could for keeping the ritual.
When I wrote another post this morning to Hoke about the wine god, Dionysus, I was thinking about this guy at the Equinox. In some ways, certainly visually, he was the leader of the celebration. Masculine but androgynous, artistic and forceful, just like the wine god. As always happens, when such an archetypal event finally ends, you think, or link back, on how absolutely perfect it was. I am just so glad I have experienced as much as I have before it all ends. It was a beautiful evening on Thursday.