Abby has been a favorite Slog commenter for years now; her comments have always been fair, funny, and mostly positive. (Representative quote: “Hipster: catchall term for urban things you don’t like since 2006!”) So it’s especially sad that she is hosting her good-bye party tonight in the upstairs of the Living Room, two nights before heading to graduate school in the Netherlands to pursue a degree in media studies. Why didn’t she host a blowout party in her own home? Her European apartment is pre-furnished, and she gave all her American furniture away to her American friends.
And it’s a fine collection of friends that America has provided her. Two hotties dance to Eurovision singles while sitting on comfy couches, a handful of die-hard Sounders fans begin a loud and frightening chant after a few rounds of drinking games, a woman has one of the best tattoos Party Crasher has ever seen (“Steady as she goes” scrawled across her forearm for easy reference), and a partyer stares into the depths of his sugary gin drink and proclaims, “I can see the end of my life in here.”
Above and around the party, Joey Veltkamp’s papier-mâché owls (part of a show titled It Is Happening Again at the Living Room through the end of August) peer creepily from their perches. They can see everything: the laughter, the tattoo, the anti-bobblehead rants. Abby, ignoring the omniscient eyes of the faux-birds, explains the worst part of going to Europe: no Netflix. As with all American discussions about Netherlandic topics, the talk turns to drugs, hookers, and wooden shoes. Not in that order. 
Want The Stranger to lament a guest’s keelhauling of the entire air-conditioning system at your party? E-mail the date, place, and party details to partycrasher@ thestranger.com.
“The owls are not what they seem.” God, how I loved Twin Peaks.
I also love Abby. Oh, not hugely and deeply- I’ve only gotten to know her a little bit. But what I’ve learned in the past year or so is the same thing that my namesake has learned- she’s a sweet, wickedly funny, amazingly brilliant observer of, commenter on, and participant in life.
Plus she digs soccer and is pretty effing cool.
You will be missed while you’re gone, Abby, and we are lucky that we have the internetz and skype and text messages and youtube and all kinds of neato stuff to keep in better touch than we would have had a decade or three ago.