Want to throw a party and invite all your friends, serve up a feast of food, drink and music and not offend the neighbors? Then, rent a hall, a combo and a caterer.
Such a scenario, for most of us, would tend to limit entertaining to once every 25 years or so during one of those infrequent lulls in the usual economic chaos. But the holiday party season comes every year and so, like most other apartment dwellers, we’ll have to make do with a gathering in limited space and with our neighbors just a wall, floor or ceiling away.
Even so, apartment dwellers have been known to throw some pretty fabulous parties. It can be done and it doesn’t have to end with the police banging on your door or your landlord threatening to evict you.
Most successful hosts and hostesses agree that, in order to pull off that perfect party, you should start with a firm grasp of reality. If you attempt to throw one spectacular bash for 100 of your closest friends, your party could very well turn into a disaster.
If your apartment feels small when your roommate has one guest over for the evening, that ought to tell you to think small when it comes to a party, even if it means you have to host two or more parties in order to include all of your favorite people and fulfill all of your obligations.
Ted Frankel is the owner of Uncle Fun, an eclectic emporium that he describes as “sort of a vintage fun house,” in Chicago’s Lake View neighborhood. He also owns the nearby Fly Paper, which features gift wrap, cards and party supplies. He’s an experienced host and party planner.
Frankel doesn’t want to fill his apartment with a milling throng, attempting to balance drinks and plates of food while standing shoulder to shoulder. He prefers smaller, more intimate gatherings that encourage his guests to relax, get to know each other and enjoy stimulating conversation.
“Before I start making out a guest list, I count the number of seats in my apartment,” he says. “I try to mix new friends with old friends but I never invite more people than can be comfortably seated.”
A Baby Boomer, Frankel admits his age probably has something to do with his more conservative approach to entertaining. “I’m older now,” he says, “and I’m not much into wild parties these days.”
You can, of course, expand your guest list a bit if you rent some chairs or if you hang with a crowd that doesn’t mind sitting on the floor. But, swarming hordes aren’t too great an idea. Realistically, 25 to 30 people can be a real squeeze in the average apartment.
If you want to invite lots of people and you live in a complex with a party room, you’re in luck. Most communal party rooms will accommodate 75 to 100 people. You save wear and tear on your furniture, too. Park Place is a full-amenity high-rise at 655 W. Irving Park Rd., in Chicago. Julie Maxwell, Park Place’s leasing manager, says the building’s party room with its adjacent kitchen is one of the more popular features of the complex. The facility must be reserved in advance. The fee is $100 plus a $250 security deposit, which is returned if party-goers clean up after themselves and don’t damage the place. Tenants are allowed to invite up to 80 guests.
“Theoretically the party has to shut down at midnight,” Maxwell says, “but, if everything is going smoothly and there have been no noise complaints, we usually let it run until around 1 a.m.”
Actually, if you live in an apartment, you may run into problems prolonging a party beyond midnight or 1 a.m. That’s because even if your guests are totally sedate and proper, the conversation and music will carry through walls and out windows to neighboring units.
Frankel believes that party music should be an inconspicuous part of the event rather than the main event. He loads his CD player with pop tunes, turns the volume down to provide a pleasant background and allows the player to run, unsupervised, throughout the evening. He’s never had any complaints from neighbors.
Another interesting problem that apartment hosts or hostesses have to face is getting their guests into their units. If you live in a secured building, without a doorman, it can present some problems. Building managers and your fellow tenants won’t like it if you prop open the entry door, which leaves the building accessible to any sort of undesirable character. If you don’t want to spend the night listening to the buzzer and activating the release, ask a co-host or an obliging friend to play sentry in the foyer until the majority of the crowd has arrived.
People feel rather strongly about the smoking issue these days. Debra Simon who, with her partner, Diane Green, owns Greenberry Celebrated Cuisine, a Chicago catering service, says a great many of her firm’s clients stipulate that absolutely no smoking will be permitted in their apartments.
However, if you’re entertaining the typical assortment of guests, some of whom smoke and most of whom don’t, it’s kinder to set aside a separate area for the smokers, even if you disapprove of the habit. For goodness sakes, don’t bundle them all onto the back porch, if you have one. You may lose a lot of friends that way.
According to Kathleen Walsh, public information officer with the Chicago building department, “We have an accident about once a year because a porch goes down with a lot of people on it and there are often fatalities. Chicago porches are not designed for entertaining. More than three or four people on a typical porch at any one time can be risky, especially if the porch is in poor repair.”
She says high-rise balconies are designed to support weight, so there is not as much danger of one collapsing, but the average Chicago high-rise balcony won’t hold more than five or six people anyway.
Walsh suggests you designate a bedroom, or another enclosed, interior room, if you have one, as a smoking area. Crack the window a tad and keep a fan going to move the smoke out and circulate the air.
If you’re on the first floor and the weather is nice, smokers can always congregate outside. Frankel allows his guests to do their puffing on his spacious, ground-floor deck.
There are a few other general rules that make party planning and execution easier for both hosts and guests. For starters, if you aren’t planning to provide an elaborate buffet or a sit-down meal, invite your guests for sometime after the dinner hour. If you feel obligated to serve something fairly substantial, Simon notes that almost all catering services and delis offer trays of hors d’oeuvres and other finger foods. They’re definitely worth the investment, if you want to save yourself a lot of stressful advance preparation.
If you aren’t hiring servers to pass things around, Simon suggests you set up the food service and bar in an area removed from the primary action.
“People tend to congregate around the bar and the buffet,” she says, “so we usually set those up somewhere away from the general flow of traffic. We’ll use the kitchen, if it’s large enough, or a separate dining room, if there is one. We sometimes use an empty bedroom.”
To simplify beverage service, it’s probably easier to go with beer and/or wine, plus a selection of bottled water and soft drinks for those who want to avoid alcohol. However, serving mixed drinks needn’t be as complicated as some hosts and hostesses tend to make it, according to Simon.
“Nobody expects a full service bar at a private party,” she says. “We tell our clients that it’s OK to provide a few bottles of conventional liquor, say vodka, scotch and bourbon and a reasonable variety of mixes. If somebody requests a drink that involves liquor you don’t have, it’s perfectly acceptable to say no and offer a substitute.”
You should be aware of the fact that the law says you are expected to see that your guests partake only of legal substances and only when they are of legal age to do so. Ignoring this could get you into serious trouble. Simon recommends hiring a professional bartender for the evening.
“Servers provided by reputable catering firms or rental agencies are bonded and insured,” she says, “which relieves the host or hostess of liability.” A professional server may also help you avoid awkward hassles with guests who have a tendency to overindulge. You’ll enjoy your own party more, too, if you don’t have to spend the evening mixing drinks.
