The Shrining

Today my office took a little field trip to check out some places for an event we're having. On the list was the Sphinx Club, a Shriner temple down the street. As I learned today, Shriners are an order of the Freemasons that wears red fez hats and loves the Middle Eastern aesthetic.

I have to admit that coming in through the side door, going through the dark and twisting hallways, and seeing all of the masonic symbols kind of creeped me out. Maybe after watching the Simpsons episode about the Stonecutters, a parody of the Freemasons, I was expecting guys in cloaks to come out. I was also expecting trap doors or secret meeting rooms since the place was eerily empty.

The Shriners, Masons, and other similar fraternal organizations are all intriguing to me. I read that they prefer to be called "esoteric" rather than strictly a secret society because there are only certain things that they wish to keep private. The select privacy only makes me want to figure out what it is.

I don't really plan on going back to the Shriner temple to figure out though. Even creepier than the dark hallways was the 60+ year shriner giving us a tour and hitting on me infront of my bosses, fellow interns, and a lawyer from a big firm the whole time. They all thought it was hiliarious and the remarks were so crazy that I couldn't help but laugh either. It definitely made our already strange tour even more memorable.