If you have to ask, darling...

I think it reveals something about my personality (and my issues!) but I can't help but walk into a social club and feel as though I'm going to be kicked out for some shortcoming or another. Might have to do with the time that I told my then-boyfriend, now husband, that he shouldn't wear a jacket to our dinner at the Cosmos Club because I didn't want to feel under-dressed. Well, I was, and he was forced to put on a house jacket that was 2 times too small. A trifle humiliating.

So on Saturday, when the Electric Arc Radio Show was held in the Woman's Club of Minneapolis, I felt the familiar clutch of insecurity, impropriety, and ineptitude as we traipsed up the carpeted stairs in our snowy shoes. We used the wrong entrance and ended up in a lobby where well-dressed women deep in conversation huddled and the demeanor was decidedly less irreverent radio show and more power lunch and cocktail. Yet as we descended a stairwell to reach the auditorium, I realized that if a club like this were willing to host an auditorium full of 89.3 The Current listeners, they must not be that stuffy. I enjoyed how the venue seemed so disjointed from the event. Elegance meets scruffy. I also loved how this club is tucked between a bunch of apartment buildings and overlooks Loring Park--giving the whole area a very New York or Chicago feel. So maybe this experience will change the way I feel the next time I encounter velvet ropes, engraved stone, and a well-heeled lobby.