Name: Nikki Vee
When and where: Sunday, February 5th, 2017 at Panera, Newport, RI
Beverage: orange ginger mint tea
Last time we met in person: probably at the Todd Rundgren show in May 2016
Friends on Facebook: since July 2012
Friends in real life: I think we probably first met in person the following summer at Newport Folk

I got to know Nikki via her husband Ken, who is the new music editor on Popdose and writes a regular column there. When I noticed on his author bio that he’d recently moved to Jamestown and we had a couple of Facebook friends in common, I sent him a friend request. Nikki had a beautiful German Shepherd named Jett who would often appear in Ken’s photos. I have a particularly soft spot for the breed as we had one named Caesar when I was young, and he was the sweetest soul you could ever hope to meet, so Nikki and I first bonded over our love of dogs. We’d often meet up at concerts and parties, but hadn’t seen so much of each other since they moved from Jamestown to Wakefield a year or two ago.

When I saw that the Bolshoi Ballet’s production of Swan Lake was coming to the Jane Pickens Theatre in Newport, I asked Nikki if she’d like to go see it with me. I knew she’d been a pretty serious ballerina in her youth, and had danced with the State Ballet of Rhode Island at one time, so I thought it would be interesting to have her perspective on the performance, which was streamed worldwide from Moscow. After the show, we walked down the street to Panera for a cup of tea and a chat. We talked about many things, including ballet, her business, her and Ken’s search for a new home, exercise and fitness, and—of course—dogs. After dear old Jett passed away at a very grand old age, she and Ken adopted Rufus, a coonhound, so we had many hound-related stories to compare.