This is the second year that the Florida Suncoast Chapter has organized two Holiday parties for our membership. For the North (Tampa Bay Area) party FSC returned to Bascom’s Chophouse in Clearwater. This year there was a bit of a snafu with Bascom’s scheduling two groups with music.  We booked first in the fall and Bascom’s later added the second group for the same night. We had a few issues with noise leakage, but the staff went to great lengths to make up for the mistake. The buffet food was very good and the supply never seemed to run out! In fact, Bascom’s supplied to-go boxes for anyone who wanted to take some of the delicious items home. We had the usual assortment of small, door-prize gifts in addition to the five ticket-bid prizes. The grand prize this year was very nice – a framed, BMW themed, photo-art piece.

The Tampa area party had about 46+ attendees. Coupled with the Naples Party of about 40 people, FSC continues to have very good turn-outs for these events; surpassing our attendance numbers for the single Holiday Party held for many years in Tampa and other bay area locations. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the cost of holding these two separate parties is, as you might imagine, quite a bit higher than just a single event. The FSC BOD has had some initial discussion about this issue and will probably come up with several options to present to the membership for opinion and preference. Having one big party in a single location? Alternating the party North and South in odd and even years? Raise the ticket price to help off-set the cost of two parties? These are some of the options you might hear about at a meeting or read about in the newsletter or website.

In the meantime, I’d like to thank all of you who attended the party at Bascom’s this year. Your continued attendance at this, and other FSC events makes all the hard work worthwhile.