Zig Zag # 16

Have you ever won something?

Oh, I’ve won tennis matches, board games at game nights, and intense bouts of “Go Fish”. I've even won an amateur pie-making contest, which garnered the coolest prize ever: A Kiss The Cook bright pink spatula. Sadly, it got tossed in my many moves. But for a good year, it was my favorite kitchen utensil. But I digress...

The winning I’m talking about plays with the concept of the luck of the draw. A chance occurrence. For whatever reason, at that moment, the odds are in your favor.

I’ve never won the lottery, but I once won a radio contest.

In my early days in Washington, D.C., I met a friend who liked to go out to dance and flirt with boys. For me, with enough liquid courage, I was up for doing both as well.

One night, my friend got a group of us to head out to a seedy dive bar in the heart of Adams Morgan. This bar has since closed, but I will never forget the name: Chief Ike’s Mambo Room. Yup, it was going to be that kind of a night.

On this particular night, Chief Ike’s was playing 90s music all night long. This was the music I grew up on so I was pumped! After a few libations, we realized it was a radio station-themed Heineken night. There were Heineken brand ambassadors all over the bar, passing out blinky pins and drinks.

The ambassadors and the radio station set up a registration table for tickets for some concert sponsored by Heineken.

I noticed there was a particularly good-looking guy manning the registration table. So covered in Heineken blinky light pins and all the courage I could muster, I went up to register for the contest. The guy was fun so I got another drink and registered again for the contest. Then I did it again.

After dancing the night away and grabbing a late-night slice down the street, I really didn’t think much more about Chief Ikes or the contest.

Until my phone started ringing a day later. It was the radio station from that night. I had won two tickets to Heineken’s AmsterJam in New York City! I had to head to downtown D.C. to claim my wristbands and my roundtrip train tickets. What!?!

Of course, I wanted to take my friend I had been with since if it hadn't been for her, I would have never been at Chief Ikes that night. But it was summertime and the station had to know who I was taking with me right then. My friend from that night was working. I was a teacher so I had the summer off. The roommates I lived with at the time were also teachers. So I asked one of them. We were pumped!

Two days later, my roomie and I got on a train and then a ferry to Randell’s Island in New York City. We were armed with wristbands and a bunch of drink tickets. I was super excited for the line-up: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Foo Fighters, LL Cool J, Busta Rhymes, Tego Calderón, and Yerba Buena.

It was such an interesting line-up, to be honest. But Heineken was trying something new. AmsterJam was a rock festival based upon the concept of the mashup fad, by transferring it to the live stage and matching up two different artists to perform their own mashups - songs or compositions created by blending two or more songs together, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental track of another. Thanks, Wikipedia for that little explanation. And I’ve also come to learn that AmsterJam only happened two times in the history of music festivals. It kinda feels special now.

It was a wild afternoon/evening of drinking, dancing, and listening to great music. All on Heineken’s and the D.C. radio stations dime. I had a blast.

I haven’t won anything as cool as that since, but I’m remaining open to the possibility of it all.

So go try and be caller 97 on your favorite morning radio show. Go sign up for that free lunch drawing at your favorite restaurant. Go talk to that cute guy at the registration table. Who knows what might be around the corner ;)

I wish you a zig zag kind of week. Until we meet again.