There are safety issues with turning out all the lights in a restaurant, especially in the kitchen where there are a lot of hot appliances, but with a few modifications we managed to do une petite hommage to the idea of saving energy on Earth Hour 2009.
Earth Hour started in Sydney Australia in 2007, by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the local paper and spread across the world in 2008.
For 2009 Wikipedia mentions 88 countries and more than 4,000 cities turning off or dimming non-essential lights between 8:30 and 9:30 pm.
We started a little late. A few tables asked if we were doing anything for Earth Hour around 9:30. We started by turning off the big lights and dimming the others. Everyone was enthusiastic so we turned them all off (except in the kitchen). The bartender turned off the music. We argued a little about turning off the fireplace, but in the end it went too, since natural gas is not renewable.
There was applause from a few tables. The other tables laughed as we explained what we were doing and handed out more tea lights. I wish I had had my camera since it really was quite pretty.
Jesse, our bartender saw the lack of light as a challenge to his skills and took up measuring his concoctions by sound.
The other event from that evening that stood out was the singing.
Without the music in the background it was quite quiet. After discussing singing and live music Zoe and Paloma spontaneously broke into the chorus of a Spanish children's song about chocolate. It was cute and one table applauded when they finished.
