Let’s set the scene: You’re single, you live in Lincoln Park, and you’ve met someone who’s perhaps a bit creative, perhaps a bit right-brain. What’s something unconventional, something outside the box you could to impress on a date?
Tucked away on Armitage Avenue just east of Halsted Street, you’ll find Glazed Expressions, a paint-it-yourself pottery studio. Upon first glance, it may seem like a repository of screaming children on field trips and little old ladies whittling away the afternoon, but its proprietors assure this could is not the case when the weekend rolls around.
“Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights we get the couples on dates,” said manager Jennifer Hansen, 26. “The best part is that there aren’t many awkward silences because you’re doing something with your hands. It also helps that we’re BYOB.”
That’s right Glazed Expressions, the only pottery-painting establishment in Lincoln Park, lets you come in and drink while you work on your mug or ceramic statue of liberty.
“And if the date goes well,” said co-worker Angela Dabruzzi, 24, “It helps that you have to come back in a week after we’ve glazed and fired your pieces. Again assuming it went well.”
Dabruzzi and Hansen explained that the date nights they see at Glazed Expressions are about more than doing something different.
“It’s an opportunity to do something creative with someone else,” Dabruzzi said. “It’s fun, it’s goofy, it’s a relaxing atmosphere, and you’re fiddling with your hands, so you’re tapping into that other side of your brain.”
“I wouldn’t do it midday or on a Sunday,” said another staffer, Lisa Provorny, 28, as she carefully moved a brush down the length of a plate. “That would be more like the best form of birth control ever,” she said, referring to the kids who are the biggest customers during those hours. “But on the right nights, people bring their wine in and end up getting totally trashed.”
Studio fees are $8 for adults, plus the cost of whatever piece of pottery you choose to paint. Hansen warns that there is no throwing wheel, which is the devise Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze made famous in “Ghost.”
“It’s just painting. We don’t have candlelight either,” she said.
Walking his dog along Armitage Avenue, Matt McCall, 34, said he was skeptical how many guys would be into a first date of that nature.
“I could see it if your girlfriend really wanted to do it, but it seems like kind of a cheap-o first date,” he said. “I walk by here every once in a while but I didn’t know they were BYOB. I guess that’s interesting.”
For an even more adult-themed night, Glazed Expressions will host Risque Bisque on Friday, Sept. 23. Patrons will paint “naughty and inappropriate” items including “penis mugs” and a type of plate that cannot be described on a family site like this.
“You just have to see it,” Hansen said of the item.
Glazed Expressions
717 W. Armitage Ave.
Risque Bisque lasts from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. and costs $35 to participate.
