Our friend Lance Morgan runs a magazine called Brilliant which is a bible of society, style and luxury for Texans. The magazine celebrated its fifth anniversary at Pangaea, a bottle club that took over the old Alamo Drafthouse (near fourth and Colorado) site with a velvet-roped, safari-themed bar. Because we figured this might be our one and only visit to this bar and because we love Lance and knew he'd invited all the usual suspects, we went. [Disclaimer: Nothing against safari themes, bottle bars (although how many people do you need to spend hundreds or thousands on a bottle of booze?) or any of that. It's just that we tend to do our drinking where the we know the bartender's name and they know what whiskey we prefer and there are good snacks and no percussion.]

It's not a great picture, photo-quality-wise, but Lance and the cake and the lady helping look dashing.

As to the venue: the DJ'ed African music with a live congo player was loud but we did manage conversation. The old Alamo stairs are still there and I couldn't shake the image that it was going to be revealed as a promo for some Alamo silliness. The place is supposed to look like one of those high-quality safari 'tents' where people dine on good food and drink and peek out or drive to see the big five. Not that I've done that. I leaned over and asked my good friend sitting next to me if he had and he said "Yes, in Kenya." Then we moved on to talk about gas wells near Ft. Worth. There were lots of people we knew there and, when we slipped out about 7:30, there were more people we knew standing behind the velvet rope trying to get the guys to find their name on a list. (Another reason we don't normally go to these places. The ropes!)

We are very proud of Lance and his magazine and when the photographer came around we got in the picture with some important friends so maybe we'll get a picture in the magazine. And now we've seen inside the place and looked at the bottle menu so that's checked off my list!