VALENTINE'S DAY IN TACOMA >>>

We love Valentine's Day! What a sweet opportunity to love your lovey, or else throw your love on a desired lovey.

Screw Valentine's Day! What a sick opportunity for third-rate corporations (the greeting card people, the chocolate people, the flower people) to guilt the in-love into spending money, or else threaten the out-of-love with feelings of inadequacy and alienation.

We love Valentine's Day! It's the one day when everyone will feel a little loved.

Screw Valentine's Day! No one will feel loved; those who do are fakers - unwilling participants in a cruel-cruel lie.

Ah, Valentine's Day ... it never fails to make schizophrenics of us all. We so want to believe in a day of love, and we so want to rage against the love machine. We so want to eat an entire box of love chocolates, and we so want to gag ourselves with a heart-shaped plastic straw and subsequently spew said chocolates onto something meaningful or expensive.

Thank Gawd the good people at The Swiss understand us. Thank gawd the downtown bar believes in true love. Thank gawd The Swiss knows Valentine's Day is a delicious cake with a creamy arsenic center.

The Swiss will celebrate both sides of love on Valentine's Day. On one side of the expansive bar will stand a Love Wall for those who met at The Swiss and later got married, to pin their wedding photo to it, have dinner and enjoy some bubbly. On the other side of The Swiss will stand the Divorce Shredder for those who met at The Swiss, got divorced and would like to shred their wedding photo. The divorce crowd is also invited to have dinner and enjoy some bubbly.

The Swiss is calling its Feb. 14 night Love Wall, and addition to dinner, bubbly and the memories, Top 40 band VIP Club will rock the party.

While it will be sweet to watch the married couple reminisce and slow dance to a Boyz II Men song, the real action will be on the divorce side, especially once the bubbly kicks in. Bring your cameras for future photo pinnings.

THE SWISS, THURSDAY, FEB. 14, 8-11 P.M., NO COVER, 1904 JEFFERSON AVE., TACOMA, 253.572.2821