Solar String Light

Mintz: When it rains, this cocktail club pours

The weather is a traitorous silent partner when planning any outdoor event in Toronto.

I’m in charge of the food for the June edition of Lowbrow Highball , a monthly-ish, Wednesday night, amateur cocktail club co-hosted by Beth Palmer and Jen Quinlan — grad students both — and structural designer Adam Kohn.

At four in the afternoon, we’re cleaning the roof to make space for about 30 guests. The sun, centre of our solar system, hovers just inches over our shoulders. Our sweat is sweating.

A few hours later, having gone home and showered, I’m on my way back when a mean wind throws dirt in my eyes even as it threatens to knock my bike off the road. Fingers of lightning reach down from a suddenly darkened sky.

Do we move everything indoor, or chance it on the roof? In the half-hour before the party we change our minds several times. By showtime, the thunderstorm has passed over the northern tip of the city. Guests are arriving and it’s too late to set up my prep table outside. So I spend most of the evening in the kitchen downstairs. But I like it like that.

The three friends began the not-for-profit club just for fun, as an excuse to meet regularly to create cocktails. They host it out of a loft space in an alley on Dundas St. W., a communal office — long table for meetings at one end, artist’s metal workshop at the other — that Kohn shares with about 20 people. The previous events I’d attended featured a mix of familiar and unfamiliar faces in an environment conducive to the two merging. As one friend put it, “This is what I always dreamed being an ‘adult’ in the city would be like.”

Two weeks ago I’d been at a drink-planning session in Palmer’s stiflingly hot apartment. They’d passed glasses around, all agreeing on the cucumber gin and tonic. Some (me) thought the beet vodka with horseradish syrup should be less sweet. Voices were raised over the third drink, which eventually becomes the most popular of the night, grapefruit juice and gin, muddled with arugula, salt and pepper.

Rather than a buffet, I make snack pairings for the individual drinks, based on some firm beliefs about passed hors d’oeuvres. When people are standing with a drink in one hand, the other needs to be free to greet friends, gesticulate and text. Food should be no more than two bites, simple enough to not require plates, cutlery, a lengthy explanation or a dark sauce fated to stain clothing.

Should you use solar or traditional patio string lights for your ...

Do you plan on adding patio string lights to your home now that Summer is finally here and aren’t sure what kinds are readily available? The most common types you’ll find at your local home improvement store are strands of colored or white lights that are four to eight long and have the small lights spaced every eight to twelve inches on them. At one end there is a electrical plug so that you can plug it into a convenient outdoor outlet on your patio.

But there are many different styles and types of string lights that are available (and many lighting manufacturers, such as Baldwin outdoor lighting products, are just entering the field of patio lights) so you’ll easily find a type that will reflect your homes decor and your sense of style.

When it comes to patio string lights there are two main kinds for you to choose from: solar string lights and traditional 12 volt string lights. Both types have their pros and cons and one type may be more suitable for your home than the other. Both types of lights are available in the same styles and designs, so you’ll just need to decide which kind best suits your home.

Solar string lights have become more popular in the last ten to fifteen years or so because of advancements in solar technology and because they don’t use any electricity to power them. Instead, they have a small solar panel attached to the light strand when ordinarily an electrical plug would be. The main benefit of using solar string lights is that they don’t cost anything to use, while the biggest downside of using them is that if they don’t get charged your lights won’t turn on.

The biggest advantage of using traditional string lights is that your lights will always turn on when you want them to with just a flick of the light switch. But they do cost electricity to use, unlike solar lights, and if your home loses power you won’t be able to use them at all.

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