Cheap Thrill Date Night Edition

Our Cheapskate Daters

We begin our first edition of cheap thrill date night in Old Town Scottsdale at the Gelato Spot.

This particular cheap thrill date night is sponsored by Groupon. I picked up a Groupon for the Gelato Spot. The cost was $12 and that gave us two entrees and two small scoops of gelato. The food was molto delizioso!  On a side note, did you know that gelato is lower in calories than ice cream? So basically that means I could have had a large scoop but I didn't. I am getting so moderate in my 40's.

With our appetites satiated, we headed on over to Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMOCA). On Thursday the Museum is free and it is open until 8 PM.

 

I should have been on the Price is Right!

We checked out the Extended Collapse exhibit which is an installation that depicts architecture and design history and the implications of boom culture. Yes that was taken straight from the brochure but that is such a good summary why mess with it?  One of the pieces is a chunk of the marquee from the United Artists multiplex movie theater that was torn down in 1999 and replaced by the current location of SMOCA.

Here's a picture of the marquee. This is taken with my cell phone. I was being stealthy because I didn't know if we could take pictures in the museum. 

There were some other exhibits and SMOCA is really cutting edge. If you have a smart phone with the ability to scan, you can scan in the little bar codes at the beginning of the exhibit and read all about the artists and whatnot. This is WAY cooler than the old school head phones and the walk-man style players around your neck. What? Don't they do those anymore?

After the tour of SMOCA we decided that we had not seen nearly enough art so off we went to the Scottsdale Art Walk. It is free and it is a recurring event, every Thursday from 7 PM to 9 PM.

My little artsy take on the artwalk markers all along the streets.

We started our tour at the Bonner David Galleries. There were some pretty cool things in there, like this one that I call the cat lady in the wooden bowl.

She's a colorful cat lady

Then we sauntered on down to Madau Homan gallery. Mike liked this one the best. It had some seriously cool metal sculptures like these two.

Because of course I like the lady jumping out of the window and the robot holding a bunch of wine.

As we continued our loop, a few of the owners we chatted with mentioned that it was unusually quiet for Thursday night. I noticed this as well when we didn't have any trouble parking, which to me is a bonus. I didn't mind it being a slow night, it felt more intimate to be able to talk with the people and enjoy a glass of champagne with the other art walkers and gallery owners.

Here I am at the Occasions! By Design gallery. 

So, with that I will wrap up our Cheap Thrill Date Night. We had a lovely time and with the weather getting cooler this is a great thing to do.

I have a few tips. First, the parking is pretty easy for SMOCA. You just head East on 2nd Street from Scottsdale Road and the free public parking garage is on the North side of the street. There are also tons of restaurants around there so you could grab an appetizer or a snack if you get hungry.

Second, you can hop on and off the trolley to get around and make sure you hit all the sites. Here's the link to the Trolley Routes They keep it running until 9 PM on Thursday nights.

And lastly, wearing heels is probably not the greatest idea no matter how cute you look in them. Trust me,  I have a few blisters to prove it.