Romantic souls cut the rug at Irish Pub

By Rachel Sauer
Saturday, February 11, 2012

Perhaps we’ve had it wrong this whole time: Maybe love, or the hope of it, doesn’t require a world full of chocolates or an infinity of roses. Immortal sonnets, Trojan wars, fevered declarations — are any of those really necessary?

Maybe all that’s required, maybe the most fertile ground, is a worn wooden dance floor and the energy to twirl over it, and a circle of musicians, and a smile on Saturday night.

Maybe the Irish have it right: Matches are made, and then they dance.

So, what began Saturday night at Naggy McGee’s Irish Pub with a questionnaire led to dancing — jumbled at first, and maybe a little confusing, but lively. And if it didn’t lead to a love match? That’s OK, because it was fun.

It was an evening of Irish matchmaking, conceived by Sarah Reed and timed just right for Valentine’s Day.

“(Irish matchmaking) is usually done after the harvest,” she explained. “Then it continues through the whole year.”

The way it worked Saturday night was people filled out a questionnaire that included questions such as: “Do you like: tacos. hotdogs” (and you had to choose one). Then, matchmakers-for-the-night Robin Dearing and Sam Glenn scrutinized the questionnaires and made matches not only on the answers, but on intuition.

“He was wearing a tie-dye shirt, and she’s to the left politically, so . . .” “She likes beer and brats, and he likes JUCO, so that could work.”

So it was Ron and Kathy, George and Karen, Blake and Susan, and more, and they lined up facing each other on the dance floor. A group of seven musicians, calling themselves the One Night Band, bounced through jigs and reels while caller Ron Young explained the steps and whirled the new dancers through them.

Any initial awkwardness vanished as the music rolled and soared.

Maybe there will be lasting matches, maybe not. There will be more nights of Irish matchmaking, Reed said, because it’s fun, and because love, it turns out, is pretty simple.