Swing City Update

What could be better for Valentines that the Hounds of Sounds themselves, the Love Dogs! Join us tonight for some romance and dancing!

Plus, West Coast Dancing in the Annex is tonight. If you want to get your groove on come by the Annex for this monthly dance. There'll be a special guest host and teacher tonight and DJ's Randy Payne and Missy Harvey will be spinning some groovy, motown and soulful tunes. You can get two dances for the price of one.

Check out last week's photos in the Photo gallery

Update on Intermediate Lessons

We've received a lot of good response on our proposed Adv. Beginner/Intermediate lesson program. In the next few weeks, were going to launch a new set of lessons at Swing City which gives you a choice of three, count 'em, three lessons!

1) Intro Swing, East Coast/single step. Fun, exciting, easy, designed for the first timer or if you haven't danced in a long time and want to brush up the basics.

2) Adv. Beginner/Intermediate, triple step, taught by some of your favorites, Boston's finest Swing talent we've been featuring plus some new folks you'll want to meet. This lesson will assume you already know basic Swing dance steps and it will feature something different each week so you'll be able to learn lots of new skills and brush up some of your old moves.

3) The Annex downstairs: featuring on different nights, West Coast, Chicago Steppin', 2-step, and more.

All three lessons will be from 7:30-8:45 as usual. For 1) and 2), if you're a more experienced dancer, you'll have a lesson you can take while any novice friends you brought can take the intro class. Both will upstairs concurrently (trust us, it works...!)

We hope you'll join us.

This week's Raffle Winnner:

Ykies! We ran out of raffle tickets last week! But we'll have more tonight. The winner each week gets a a pair of tickets to Swing City plus occasional other stuff people give us for you.

More items:

• Please join our Facebook Group
• A look at some of the responses about Swing City
• Advice on getting to Swing City (it's EASY!)

Facebook: Are you familiar with Facebook? It's the modern phenomenon in internet social networking. Please join our group and literally keep up with the Joneses! You need to create a free account if you don't have one, and "become a friend" of Swing City. Go Here »

Comments on our recent requests for feedback:

We got a lot of great comments and suggestions from people in regard to improving Swing City. One thing was somewhat common: a lot of people simply haven't come out to Swing City recently, some folks even dating back to the move to Newton (!).

Thus, a brief Swing City FAQ or sorts:

- MYTH: Swing City is far away and hard to get to. It's not! On the map it looks far for the people coming from the 'burbs, but if you made it to Newton, the Somerville location takes literally only 5 minutes longer to reach from Newton Corner/Mass Pike than the MacKenzie Center. It's easy highway driving all the way, and just three blocks from the highway exit. Getting to Swing City probably even takes less time than going through traffic lights to the various past and present Watertown/Cambridge spots. Coming from Rt. 2 via Alewife is obviously local roads, but its not bad once you have it down.

- Call to action: Swing City Needs You! Many people haven't made it out to the new place yet. Now is the time! Given the economy and all the competition, it is YOU, the grass-roots past and present Swing City patrons, who are going to determine the future success. The old Huron Ave venue has been demolished, and the West Cambridge Youth Center is likely not going to host the old dances again at this point. Some people just don't know why they haven't made it yet. Come join the party! Swing City is a great community and a lot of people would really like to have you there! Also, Swing City is definitely a great, yet inexpensive night out.

- What's up with the smokiness? Resolved! we have pretty much succeeded upstairs in sealing out the smoke from the basement members' lounge, and made good progress in the Annex too. It is much better and will continue to seal off the few remaining "leaks".

We know the City Club is not the "perfect" venue, but what place is...? The bottom line in this day and age is that this place likes us, we like them, and to that end they are willing to let us fix it up incrementally as we need. But, we need everyone's support in terms of attending the dances to make that all work. So please don't stay away until you "hear that it's good", which I hear through the grapevine from many people.

If you have your own comments to share, we'd love to hear them. Please email us at olaf@swingcityboston.com

See you this Friday!
-Olaf
on behalf of all of our entertainers and staff

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Getting to Swing City: Quite a few people have griped about finding the City Club. I ask them how they got there, and they all say, "I used my GPS". AH! NO WONDER! Trust me, it's REALLY EASY if you just follow our directions. We're just off the higway. GPS will take you on the scenic "shortcut" through Cambridge and Somerville if you're coming from the Pike for example, because it thinks its shorter distance. It is, as the crow flies (by a 2-3 miles), but you have to go though Cambridge traffic light hell. Take my word--take the highway route!

Thus, for those people coming from south and western 'burbs, just take Mass Pike to I-93 North, take exit 28, make a left, left again at the second light, and park in the huge lot. From the Newton Corner exit it's maybe 10-15 minutes max.

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