If you've known me longer than 10 minutes, I've probably roped you into watching comedian Chris Fleming's "Paint Nite" video on YouTube. With his singular brand of free-associative humor, Fleming decimates the popular social art-making-and-boozing format. Making delightfully hyperbolic connections to Hitlerian utopia, lobotomy ("After enough Paint Nites, you can actually fail the Turing test!"), homophobia and Sandals Resorts, he nails the discomfiting feeling I associate with paying to enact "creativity" en masse. When Drafts N Crafts popped up in Winooski this spring, however, it gave me pause. Paying $20 or $30 to drink wine and paint the same sunset (or snowy tree or bird or lighthouse) as everyone else in the room was, to me, akin to getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick. But paying to drink beer surrounded by craft supplies? That somehow seemed different. And extremely appealing. If my snobbery about Paint Nite could be so swiftly undone with a slight tweak of circumstances, was I a miserable hypocrite? Were my nearly 30 years taking a larger toll than I had thought? Was everything a lie? After months of feeling low-level existential angst every time I entered the Winooski traffic circle — Drafts N Crafts occupies the former site of ill-fated gay bar Mister Sister — I finally had the chance to prod the bear. On the evening of September 12, with two good-sport girlfriends (let's call them F1 and F2) by my side, I crossed the threshold into the realm of commodified creativity. At 7:30 p.m., we were the only customers save two young women posted at the bar beneath a gigantic American flag. They left shortly after we arrived, and no one else replaced them. We took a seat at one of the long, paint-spattered wooden tables, surrounded by samples of projects hanging on the wall and on windowsills: Vermont rendered in green string, intricate quilled paper birdies, abstract canvases of swirling paint. Steve Roberge, who runs Drafts N Crafts with his sister, Amy Pelkey, swiftly brought us menus — for drinks and crafts. "We're out of the bird house," he informed us apologetically. Eager for inspiration, we ordered our drinks — a Switchback for me, Chardonnay for F1 and F2 — and set to flipping through the three-ring binder of potential projects. (Note: Crafting isn't obligatory at Drafts N Crafts; less interested parties are welcome to simply toss back a…
If you've known me longer than 10 minutes, I've probably roped you into watching comedian Chris Fleming's "Paint Nite" video on YouTube. With his singular brand of free-associative humor, Fleming decimates the popular social art-making-and-boozing format. Making delightfully hyperbolic connections to Hitlerian utopia, lobotomy ("After enough Paint Nites, you can actually fail the Turing test!"), homophobia and Sandals Resorts, he nails the discomfiting feeling I associate with paying to enact "creativity" en masse. When Drafts N Crafts popped up in Winooski this spring, however, it gave me pause. Paying $20 or $30 to drink wine and paint the same sunset (or snowy tree or bird or lighthouse) as everyone else in the room was, to me, akin to getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick. But paying to drink beer surrounded by craft supplies? That somehow seemed different. And extremely appealing. If my snobbery about Paint Nite could be so swiftly undone with a slight tweak of circumstances, was I a miserable hypocrite? Were my nearly 30 years taking a larger toll than I had thought? Was everything a lie? After months of feeling low-level existential angst every time I entered the Winooski traffic circle — Drafts N Crafts occupies the former site of ill-fated gay bar Mister Sister — I finally had the chance to prod the bear. On the evening of September 12, with two good-sport girlfriends (let's call them F1 and F2) by my side, I crossed the threshold into the realm of commodified creativity. At 7:30 p.m., we were the only customers save two young women posted at the bar beneath a gigantic American flag. They left shortly after we arrived, and no one else replaced them. We took a seat at one of the long, paint-spattered wooden tables, surrounded by samples of projects hanging on the wall and on windowsills: Vermont rendered in green string, intricate quilled paper birdies, abstract canvases of swirling paint. Steve Roberge, who runs Drafts N Crafts with his sister, Amy Pelkey, swiftly brought us menus — for drinks and crafts. "We're out of the bird house," he informed us apologetically. Eager for inspiration, we ordered our drinks — a Switchback for me, Chardonnay for F1 and F2 — and set to flipping through the three-ring binder of potential projects. (Note: Crafting isn't obligatory at Drafts N Crafts; less interested parties are welcome to simply toss back a…