Theme: Baltimore You Blow, San Francisco Hello!

Location: Foosball Palace, San Francisco

Year: 1996

Art: Mary Grace McGhee

Invite backstory: This is my all-time favorite invite. I was living in an apartment in San Francisco’s South Beach with my brother Tim - we had a foosball table so we called it the Foosball Palace. I had recently returned from a tough chapter in Baltimore and wanted to connect with my Bay Area friends.

My sister Mary Grace did the art and captured the hopeful theme perfectly with a party sail boat arriving into San Francisco harbor. I love the party goddess figurehead and Golden Gate Bridge sails. The flags advertise the theme as well as foosball and artichokes and if you look real close, you can see my brother riding a shopping cart on the bridge, harkening back to the years he raced electrified shopping carts in an Alameda Warehouse.

The full invite (below) has an interesting twist. My childhood friend Randy Spurrier had this great idea to integrate a board game of my life into the invitation. Good things move you forward (eg ‘go to Europe with orchestra: never drink wine out of a bottle bigger than your head’) moves you forward and bad things move you backwards (eg ‘Sister Barbara is cute but mean’. The invitation includes a dice and two artichoke pieces to cut out so you have everything you need to play the game.

I started the tradition of using the hard copy invite as my Christmas card. After the happy holiday’s, the p.s. says (please put me back on your Christmas card list; I was too busy designing this invite to send cards this year)

Party Highlights:

We had about 45 guests at the first party. I cooked all the artichokes and we served them all steamed. The kids party was a hit. I remember someone noticing that I hadn’t dusted the top of the light that was hanging above the dining room table, which was where all the food was. I also kept all the backup artichokes and drinks on ice in the bathtub, which was noticed and commented on by many of the guests on their way out of the single bathroom.