GIGANTIC LOVEFEST ENTRY! WATCH YOSELF! SO BIG IT NEEDED TO BE TWO PARTS!
THE REVIEW
This was it, the big number 100. My 100th rave of my entire life since I started raving so many years ago. This kind of milestone I needed something special-something that would really be different from the rest-something huge with goodvibes.
The San Francisco Love Parade. They call it “LoveFest” in honor of the largest rave in the world (Berlin Love Parade) and every year tens of thousands come out and celebrate a wondrous event this country has never experienced the likes of before. These 25 or so floats take over Market street in downtown San Francisco, California and head to City Hall blaring every genre of dance music with well over a hundred DJs, then circle around the giant park area in front of City Hall and play out until the sun sets.
The massive doesn’t end there! An Afterparty, usually provided by the most prominent promoters of San Francisco, pick up where the parade left off and go until sunrise with some of the most popular DJs on the planet.
This 17 hour massive event is a milestone in itself…the perfect place to celebrate my 100th soul-charging life-empowering event. The parade itself was free, and I only had to pay 40 bucks for the afterparty along with the price of a plane ticket and partial cost of a hotel where I’d stay with a few old friends as a home base. I bought everything a month earlier.
By the night of October 3rd, I hardly felt like I was going anywhere. I actually had to keep reminding myself of the plane ticket times in the coming morning. That’s usually the case in every rave I travel away to by myself-everyone I come in contact with doesn’t talk about it because they aren’t going, so it doesn’t seem like the party even exists. It’s a weird feeling, but it’s kind of nice because then I don’t get over excited and possibly disappointed because I expected too much when I actually get to the event.
My friends were over my house hanging out with my room mate Luis (Blitz Kid) and I was just casually hanging out with them also. I had my hookah lit and the whole mini-travel hookah lounge setup ready to go outside when we changed our mind and moved from Luis’s room to the outside to smoke. Before that I was out at dinner with them all and drinking enough to keep a good buzz going for most of the night. Seemed like a normal Friday night, so I had to keep reminding myself to get ready for the plane ride in the morning over and over again.
My girlfriend went to sleep around 1am so she could wake up at 4:30am in time to take me to the airport without passing out at the wheel. That was probably the biggest reminder to pack my things to go, and by 3am I finally split from the group and started getting ready for the trip. It didn’t take me long, even with Jason hanging out with me while I got ready I still managed to shower and pack my single “For the two days only” bag by about 4am. I wasn’t bringing much, just my rave outfit, the clothes on my back, some lights, and of course my camera. I also decided to bring my hoodie because the weather forecast said sadly that the entire day was going to be rainy and cold-not good for the parade. I hoped and prayed that wouldn’t be the case.
Lindsay woke up and took me down to the airport by about 5:15am, which is great because I had about a half an hour to snooze by the terminal gate after all the security checks and what-not. The flight boarded at 6:40am, and we were loaded up and ready to go at 7am-right on time.
…except, we didn’t go just yet. Out of nowhere, the plane SHUT OFF. Yes that’s right. Shut. Off. As in, no power AT ALL to the plane. This stayed like that for about 10 minutes, and then everything came back online and the captain said “Uhh sorry about that folks, the APU failed temporarily. We will be in the air in a few more minutes” Now my military Avionics experience worked in my favor of making me quite nervous about the whole situation. The APU on a plane is the power distribution panel for the entire airplane…basically the heart of a human or the CPU of a computer. If that fails…the whole thing is dead weight…could you imagine in the air?
Our plane starts to back out to head to the taxiway….and it shuts off AGAIN. Now everyone on the plane is freaking out by this point. They all start demanding that we get off the plane and board another because they don’t trust this plane going dead in mid-air and us plummeting to our doom. As nervous as this made me, I know there’s no possible way their protocols would allow the plane to continue on its mission unless this big-deal issue is dealt with. Sure enough, the captain comes on again and explains to us that our flight is going to be delayed now while maintenance comes out and brings us a brand new APU. Our flight was only delayed an hour because of this, and I wasn’t worried thanks to that 3-hour time change (minus 3 hours when heading to the West). A long 5 and a half hour flight which I was asleep most of (the first solid sleep I got in the last 30 hours) and we touched down in San Francisco at 10:45am.
In the terminal, I try and check on the status of the friends from Las Vegas I’m supposed to meet up with here at the airport. Sara, the girl who planned this whole thing, is an old friend from back when I used to live in Las Vegas and go to their raves all the time. Her and I were both part of a group of promoters and DJs in the Las Vegas scene called “ERaver” and she is one of the handful of kids I still keep in touch with on the internet since I moved to Florida over a year ago. I hadn’t seen Sara since LAST October when I went to Devils Night 10 in Las Vegas on my way to Monster Massive in Los Angeles. She was originally bringing along her close friend Mike whom I know as well from the club scene in Vegas, but he cancelled on her and she’s now bringing some guy I don’t really know but I guess was in the scene right after I left. The two of them were supposed to meet me in the airport at about 11:30am, so I was a bit surprised that I kept getting text messages from Sara the entire time I was eating lunch that her flight kept getting delayed by 20 minutes over and over again due to weather. Las Vegas having bad weather? Nope. Turns out the forecast seemed to be right about San Francisco. Huge dark clouds rolled down the mountains like a plague of killjoy and blanketed the sky above the terminal. Showers all day the forecast said…crap.
I was in the waiting area for Sara and her friend to arrive when I got yet another text message saying their flight is just NOW leaving at 11:30, and it takes them an hour and 15 minutes or so to fly up here-but the Parade starts at noon, and I wanted to be somewhat near the start time, so I was getting kind of fidgety to be out of the terminal. So, on a will of my own, I decided it’d be best if I walked around the beautiful city close to the hotel we would stay in until they arrived so I had something to do. Funny story: I went to take my camera out of it’s protective water case I have on it to avoid the cabin pressure of the plane destroying the lens (it’s done it before) and the pressure is so great the lid stays on and requires something to wedge in there and pry it open. So I go to the travel agent desk nearby the terminal exit and ask for her scissors. She freaks out when I open the scissors, grab the blade with a fist, and stab into the water case with a loud POP. I hand her the scissors back and walk calmly past the bewildered woman, dazed and trying to figure out what just happened.
The taxi speeds into downtown in a matter of minutes, and as it does a drizzle coats the windshield. I pray again that will be the most rain we have all day. As fast as the taxi got into town, it wasn’t as quick as the cloud movement! The clouds literally whisked themselves back over the other side of the mountains and the sun started shining on the overlook of San Francisco as I flew towards it. I never had such high hopes for a great day in my life when something so guaranteed seemed to change in favor for me in a blink of an eye. I was dropped off on the corner of 7th Street and Mission-right near the Civic Center where the Afterparty would be held much later that night-and started aimlessly walking with a skip in my step and a smile on my face. Memories of this city from the last time (and my first time) I was here flooded my thoughts as I gazed at the beautiful city. This city is probably one of the most cultured and gorgeous places I’ve ever been to. Being here just gives you a sense of another world. Everything has a feeling like what you experience when you watch a movie. I felt like I was drifting through the town, not really there, taking in all the people and buildings and traffic and noises and just the bustle of everyday life in this massive city. The buildings looked like they’ve been there for a long time, yet still stand dominant and proud as they have when they were first built. You can tell free people live here. People who choose to do what expresses their spiritual side and makes them feel fulfilled in life. I walked past art galleries with people’s visions reflected on canvas…and right nearby graffiti art in it’s most intricate designs poured out onto brick with the master’s hand. The first store I randomly walked into on Market street had nothing but pipes, bongs, and various smoking accessories for the publicly accepted pot users in this town. Every store after that dance music was blaring out the doorway trying to pull people in with their funky basslines and groovy beats. Being in this small area of Market street gave me such vigor to see how the Love Parade was going to be that I felt like I was going to burst.
At the time I thought the parade was going to go down Main Street. Technically, Market street IS Main Street, but I didn’t know that. I was just browsing down market street at about 12:05pm when I noticed an insanely large crowd starting to gather down the road. It was then I took my attention off the sun-glistening buildings above and noticed all the people walking quickly by me…ravers. They were all dressed in hippie outfits, weird costumes, and stereotypical raver clothing and were heading in the direction of the large crowd down the street.
I think I just ran into the parade.
I was talking to my friends in Florida at the moment I realized this, and quickly got off the phone with them to walk down to the crowd myself. The first thing I saw was two police cars with their lights on hugging the opposite curb of market street pushing people from the street onto the sidewalk and causing cars to take the detour out of there onto another road. This was it! Those cop cars came by and people flooded into the streets to give the first large group of people dressed up in giant rainbow outfits with signs that said “FREE HUGS” a whole crapload of hugs. Right behind them was a large truck that looked something like the Reading Rainbow Bus except more colorful with tons of people on top of it dancing and waving to everyone below. House music, playing loudly and proudly, seemed to be pushing people out the sides of the bus with it’s soundwaves by the way these particular people were hanging out the bus and waving wildly.
I slipped in between onlookers to get to the street right next to this bus and took it all in. Everyone seemed to be laughing and having just a great time, and I was already ready to jump into the giant area of costumes and dancing people in between this bus and the float next in line without even so much a thought about the hotel or the bag on my back or anything. The sun was warm, the people were warm, the vibes were warm…and it was only the first float! A few unusual costumes came by such as circus ringleaders and these plant-suited people (green suits with branches and things coming out of them) and the next float was upon me. This float was playing some bangin good Electro, and it was way bigger than the first float. It actually looked something like an outdoor club in Miami would look. It had palm trees and tropical bushes surrounding a huge white sun-filtering archway over the DJ. This float made me want to stay with it and dance, which apparently means you get sucked into the whole Love Parade experience the minute to take a step in the same direction the float is headed and bob your head. I was on the sidewalk where the onlookers were one minute…and the next minute I was jumping up and down with these 4 dudes right next to the edge of the truck…and I was laughing! I don’t know the whole way it happened, but I was dancing, then jumping with these dudes, then as they started cheering like drunk frat members I started cracking up at the weird things they were chanting. The DJ reached out and handed me a CD along with a few others nearby, and that calmed me down enough to realize the sun, dancing, and my hoodie were not a good mix-I needed to get into my rave gear and really celebrate this thing.
I sadly tore myself away from the river of dancing people and popped out by the buildings on the other side of the onlookers. It was like I went indoors after being outside. The vibe was muffled, a lot more quiet than what I had just felt. I could see the parade float I was just near and hear it fine, yet it didn’t feel the same. It felt like I was looking out a window at something big going on, and I had this odd urge to jump back in there…
What a strange sensation. I resisted with the goal of getting into my rave clothes and ran ahead of the parade looking for a restaurant or some place with a bathroom stall so I can change since the Vegas friends still haven’t arrived yet. I eventually found a Carls Jr. fast food joint and waited in line ten minutes to get into a stall and change in a matter of two seconds.
As I popped out of the restaurant, reflective black raver pants and LOVEFEST T-shirt I made myself (complete with my trademark hat of course) I was facing the first float-great timing. I ran down the road a bit and jumped right into the big crowd on the side of the second float and started dancing with the people there. Wearing the clothes I intended for this party kind of felt like I had an all-access to the party pass, and so forgetting about meeting up with the Vegas friends or even a friend from Los Angeles I was supposed to see sometime today I started to dance in the opposite direction the parade was going to check out the other floats.
Each float had it’s own theme to it and it’s own style of dance music. Floats like the giant inflatable plants float had groovy house music you can dance to at a calm pace while other floats like the dark gothic ones played industrial or drum & bass making you bang your head and jump around screaming with all the other people in just as fine a mood as you were feeling. Something was unique about all the floats too: The Solid Gold Jacuzzi float had an actual hot tub you could get in if you climbed onto the float and there was this guy in the tub splashing the crowd as the float went by. Another float was made entirely of real plants-grass, trees, and bushes! A military float preaching about politics and how our government is involved in some sort of conspiracy ironically played house music, yet you’d think with all the camouflage there’d be some drum & bass involved. The Spundae float, a popular nightclub string in California, was probably the only float that played Trance music, and they had some pretty big headlining DJs later on in the day play on it like Donald Glaude and such. Another float which I didn’t like really was this big float that had giant orange movie reels on it that would spin around…I didn’t like it because they had hardly any music playing that was worthwhile and it was too low to where the nearby floats drowned them out. One thing these and the rest of the 25 floats had in common where they were littered with people. Tons and tons of people on the top, sides, and even the back of the float were crowding around dancing and waving to all the people dancing and following the float on the street level. It seemed these people just simply climbed up there of their own free will, and despite the expensive equipment all over the float whoever owned the floats actually helped these random dancers up there. That’s the joy of the dance world-tons of trust. These people up on top seemed to excite the crowd below even MORE, and there were many times I would get stuck dancing at one float for more than I wanted just because the sheer volume of people bouncing around me was too much to push through. Girls were tossing off their tops and shaking their boobs to the crowd with each item thrown at them-be it beads or CDs or whatever. You could see the float rocking back and forth from all the people on it dancing. It was chaos, yet somehow extremely balanced and uplifting.
Down on the street where I was the entire time people were kind of fenced in by a wall of on looking people that would flake into the crowd a few overly excited watchers from time to time. You could say we were trapped…but by love. As corny as that sounds, everyone that was on looking was laughing and bobbing their heads and excitedly pointing out the costumes of the dancers in the street. Very accepting. I actually enjoyed the attention of all these people watching myself and a group of people doing the Melbourne Shuffle at the same speed the float was moving during certain parts and just yelling and screaming and bouncing with my hands in the air during banging good tracks. Out in the street is where the majority of the craziness happened. I couldn’t tell you how many naked men and women were dancing at each float, some wearing nothing but cock rings or flowers in their hair. On top of that the multitude of costumes varied from people dressed as ringleaders of a circus to giant peacock people and then some. There were quite a few dancers around each float that were actually part of the float crew, which you could tell by their costume reflected whatever the float looked like. For instance, there was this all pink float in the shape of an elephant and the men and women around this float were all dressed from head to toe in pink fuzzy clothes that stuck out in the throngs of people. I ran into people dressed up as Pikachu, which is funny considering I have a friend back in Florida that always uses the phrase “I see Pikachus!” whenever something is going insanely crazy. There was a lot of cool body paint going on too, a large group of guys were painted silver from head to toe and kept stopping in the middle of the dancing onslaught to do the robot dance.
I kept dancing the opposite direction of the massive wave trying to pay attention to what’s happening on the float, what’s in front of me, and all the crazy costumes around. My camera was taking pictures without me even paying attention to what I was shooting just so I could have a 2nd look at a spot where I might have missed “The clown guy” or “GIANT RED MONSTROSITY!” or something of that nature. I kept stopping alongside certain floats because of a bunch of people would grab me and pull me into their dancing circle and I can’t help but join that kind of fun. I kept getting recognized for the shirt I made too, which was nice because a lot of people actually thought I bought it. I really loved being in this dancing crowd. I could literally feel this excited, happy-go-lucky aura pouring off everyone around me and drowning me with ecstasy. I kept bursting out, screaming so loud I thought I was going to lose my voice-which then caused hundreds of people circling me to erupt in a cheer that would send chills down my spine each time. I had about 10 times what I deem “The Moment Of Zen” which is the whole reason I go to raves-it’s a feeling that you are alive, where you’re aware of yourself and every situation around you…and then you reflect upon where you are, whats going on, and what other people not here might be up to…and you feel great about yourself. In each of these moments of Zen, I took into perspective the sky, while using my peripherals to view the party I’m currently involved in. I kept thinking about the fact that I was by myself…5,000 miles away from home and everyone I know…yet felt so comfortable as if I was with family. I thought about the fact I was in San Francisco, with tens of thousands of others, enjoying the sunshine and dancing to amazing music…and this is a feeling most people in their entire lives don’t get to experience…and I would yell…and get chills again as more people cheered with me. What a fantastic time.
One of my videos I was shooting got interrupted by what I thought was someone calling my name. Now considering I’m so far away from home there really is only like a handful of people I would think would be here. I felt a hand on my shoulder and I turned around…KITTEN! This girl was a raver that’s good friends with my buddy SuPeR K! And I haven’t raved with nor seen her since May of 2007! She’s an L.A. raver too, and a lot of them usually don’t travel up to NorCal for whatever reason. So that was cool.
The first float parks at an angle blocking off the street into one lane and drops a big sign which points to the right saying “LoveFest Entrance” to mark the start of where the parade would wind up at in front of City Hall. All the floats were to pass by this first float in the left lane, make their way around the buildings, and circle in City Hall, whereas the ravers would then veer to the right, go down the main entrance of the park, and come into the circle through one large opening. I keep using the word “river” to describe this seething mass of dancing people, and this was no exception here. Everyone started pooling in front of this first float, crowding around to get a final bounce or two around their favorite float as it slipped by. Here I took a few more pictures with people and finally stopped dancing to catch my breath and cool down a bit. This circle was getting more and more crowded by the minute as the river emptied here, so I eventually decided to see where the actual entrance was.
The path to city hall was this huge cement parkway with giant buildings as walls preventing anyone from seeing the area from the street. There was a giant fountain right behind me with huge marble pillars engraved with what looks like direct quotes from the document that turned California into a state from the original Big Bear Republic. In front of me rose stone columns leading to this statue of a guy on horseback facing the same direction I was looking. The statue was coated with a thick layer of ravers climbing all up on it to pose for their next myspace.com default picture. This entire area between the columns was littered with ravers heading in the direction the horseback rider was facing, and with the exception of stopping to see a TV channel “The CW” give some interviews and taking a few pictures with random people I chatted with by the statue I was among those about to be awestruck.
City Hall was still quite far away, yet its presence rose high in the background like a light tower showing a lost boat to home. It looked so much like a capital building you’d see in Washington DC, some giant figurehead of politics yet it was just a governing body of San Francisco. The gold point on top of its already-noticeable detailed dome reflected the sun’s rays in such a way it drew us like a moth to the flame. I felt another Zen moment, and realized this whole day already has been one breathtaking sight after another…and it’s only been 2 hours.
Oh yeah! Sara and her friend should be here by now! I checked my text messages right smack dab in front of where the entrance of the LoveFest circle was asking for donations and hesitated to go inside when I realized Sara had sent a text saying they made it to their hotel. I called her up and told her I would head down 7th street and look for the building if I can find out where the heck I was to begin with. Thank God 7th street was only a few blocks away, because on top of not knowing where the parade route took me I also kept getting distracted by random ravers in the streets and on the fountain doing hula hoop tricks and double staff spinning. I headed down 7th and with a few more phone calls to Sara found them standing out on the balcony of their hotel just two blocks away from Market Street and 7th (closer to Mission Street).
I entered the lobby and hit the elevator button. The doors opened and a pretty girl with a huge smile on her face jumped out and hugged me. What a neat thing to think about: I haven’t seen this girl since I last went to Las Vegas in October of 2007, and now one year later I meet up with her again in a completely different city. How cool is that?
Her hotel room was exceptionally futuristic and very organized. Every single item in that room (including the board game boards smack dab in the middle of every mirror) had a unique repeated pattern that would play with your eyes if you looked at it too long. It was actually a very lovely room. They had a 2 bed main room and a pull-out bed couch side room separated by a small bathroom. The back door led out to this gigantic balcony where you could lean against the wall and look down the road through downtown which was lovely. Out the front door and you’d be in another patio-like area that made off an illusion that you were on the first floor the way it was set up. This area had no roof and you could feel the warmth from the sun on your neck standing there too long…felt real good actually. Sara’s friend, Brandon, was sitting on his bed when I came in and introduced himself. I had never met the guy before, but he seemed like he’d be the type of dude I would have hung out with if I still lived in Las Vegas and according to Sara he is into the club scene out there and its surprising I never ran into him. Him and I got acquainted while Sara got ready for LoveFest and then the two of them tried dying their hair red with this spray-on color that royally fucked up the towels in the bathroom to where it looks like we murdered someone in there haha. Came out great on them anyway, but Sara for the rest of the weekend had a red tint to her hands (she’s been caught red-handed for killing them babies in the bathroom!). They wanted to eat something before leaving, so we stopped off in Subway real fast to grab some food and hang out a bit longer in the hotel before everyone was ready to leave.
I knew where I was going now that I’ve walked around the whole area looking for the hotel, so I led the way up to the same statue I was just at about an hour ago, and we entered the LoveFest circle at 3:00pm. I donated 10 bucks to the cause, mostly because when they say a party is free and go through all this trouble and then later ask if you WANT to donate please do I like to. Reason being is I’m a big fan of the scene, so donating makes me feel like I helped contribute to keeping the scene alive for just a little bit longer. They in return gave me a couple plastic cards with free pay-per-download cards (20 free downloads) as a thank you, but I like these cards because they have the whole top information part of the LoveFest flyer on them and that came in handy later on as a great label when I was stringing my huge 100th rave heart pendant on my collection chain. The place, obviously packed, caused an overwhelmingly exciting chill to wrack my whole body when I gazed upon the massive moving wonder. A wall of sound, more from the float off to the left of me hit me hard in the face as I entered the circle as if I crossed over some border from reality into a new dimension. It was the way the acoustics had been set up-to project into the center of the circle, so ring just outside the circle you couldn’t hear as much and then BLAM! Super loud once you crossed a point into the circle. There were people everywhere, this time nothing like a river but more like a ball pit where the balls kept getting scattered all around in different directions as they scrambled to the edges of the circle where all the floats where. City Hall was on the opposite end of the circle yet it’s massive structure cast a shadow even out as far as we were, kind of dividing the circle in two halves-the right side sounding like it was harder and faster music and the left more chill and groovy sound. Brandon suggested we find the “Spundae” float, and since I vaguely remembered what order they were originally in I thought it’d be more towards the right-so we headed that way. Each float I stopped to dance just a little simply because the song would grab hold of me the moment I stopped walking (to avoid bumping into someone) and throw me into an energetic frenzy where I just couldn’t HELP but bounce to the beat. This helped out Sara and Brandon catch up, who were still following me but were so overwhelmed with the amount of people here they started slowing down their pace and getting a bit nervous. I don’t really understand the anxiety about large crowds of people, but then again I’m used to going to so many massives and the mentality I have of being able to PLAY WITH ALL OF THEM!!! Is what usually excites me to the point I burst into a little hyperactive child.
So I kept stopping to dance while they sunk in everything around them. There were so many more costumes I didn’t notice at the parade, including a woman dressed in the color pattern of a vagina holding a sign that said “I Love Vagina!” and random guys dressed up in drag jumping up onto some of the floats to sing their big gay hearts out. I started chatting with some random girl who complimented the shirt I made, while Sara and Brandon finally got the feel for the party and let the vibe break them into a fit of dancing. YES! Now the fun begins! We continued to head in a counterclockwise direction looking for this Spundae float, but we stopped off at a few others to dance it up including this one float called “Local Love” That was definitely my favorite float of all because they played banging hard and fast electro house music which rocked my world. I remembered I was supposed to meet up with Shelley (AKA Jellybean) and her boyfriend Spongebob-two Los Angeles ravers I see every once in awhile and talk to online quite a bit-at some point in this party and since the text I got earlier insinuated her missing out on the parade part I knew she’d be somewhere in this circle by now. So I texted her and the three of us went searching the center grassy area for where she said she was sitting until eventually she found ME and we all hung out for a minute. I would’ve liked to hang out with them longer, but I was way too energetic to relax in the grass which is what they seemed to be doing so I took a few pictures with them (because it’s always awesome to see someone who normally lives thousands of miles from you at the same party you’re at) and told them I’d meet up with them later. Sara, Brandon, and I continued on.
In front of City Hall the temperature was ten times colder than the other floats. City Hall was so big it had 3 floats under its chilly shadow, including that Cinema lame float I saw earlier…so obviously there wasn’t a “whos the best float? Be in front of City Hall!” order to the circle like I had originally guessed. The very middle float had some hardcore breakbeat tracks blaring out of it’s DJ spaceship cockpit looking thing so we stayed there for a little bit and sometime during that I took a picture of this real pretty girl with some awesome hair and makeup on that made her all futuristic-like. As I was bouncing past her, she grabbed my shoulder “So you’re not even going to introduce yourself?” I apologized “Oh I’m sorry where are my manners I’m Tommy Danger.” She curved this ridiculously sensual smile that got me all giggly and said “Mmmm hi my name’s Rain.” I couldn’t help but get another picture with her. Sara looked at me like “Cmon now Tommy.” And I continued on with them out of the real cold shade to the first sunny float on the far left side of City Hall. There, at this float, I was surprised to hear a really fantastic song “Chocolate Puma - Touch Me” which I couldn’t help but record the entire track while I danced and sung along. Brandon and Sara danced like crazy here too, and all three of us only stopped dancing at this float when we had to catch our breath and point out some big giant dude in tiny multicolor underwear doing this crazy dance that just made me laugh. Ahh the joys of the Love Parade: No matter who you are or HOW you are you are accepted and loved…and I felt it strong the whole day already.
We finally found the Spundae float ironically one float shy of the place we first entered (we should have started to the left!) and the Trance group “Deep Voices” were playing this really REALLY slow melodic trance that wasn’t even very pretty and we were not feeling at all. Probably because of the fact we were just bouncing from float to float and each one was fast and happy-go-lucky and this one was just super mellow and seemed boring. So we turned back around and went clockwise through all the floats again, cutting across the grass center to head to the Local Love float which was my favorite float of the day. On the way, we ran into a few more naked dudes, which Sara was so shocked to see people just walking around with their dicks hanging out but that’s the thing with the Love Parade: Absolute freedom to do what you please. The only thing I wish is these people that plan on getting naked-guys and girls-should seriously think about working out or getting a tan or something first before running around showing off their flabby ass to everyone. But apparently you’ve gotta be real comfortable to run around naked ALL day with this many people so I assume they don’t think they need to improve themselves for public display.
Anyway back at the Local Love float and we danced in between that float and the float to the right of it because the two kept changing up some great tunes. Out of nowhere, this guy comes by and hands Brandon a flyer for a rave on November 1st in Las Vegas called “Fabulous Fest” and he shouts out that he lives there and is already going. This got the guy to ask who lived in Vegas already because I guess he was too and BAM! He just hands Sara and Brandon free tickets to the party! How awesome is that? How RANDOM is that too? The guy turns to me and asks me where I’m from, which of course I say Orlando but I used to live in Vegas and he asks if I’m going. I say maybe, so he gets my name and number and if I decide to go I just have to call him and I can get in for free also! Very nice dude lemme tell ya. Then again everyone at this party was nice, but this guy was generous!
At about 6:30pm we decide to head back down the street to the hotel because we can easily leave and come back in as we choose and so we head back to the hotel to get a bit warmed up (the sun was starting to set so now EVERYWHERE at the parade was getting REALLY cold not just the shade!) and relax for a minute. I’ve been dancing since noon today, and since the temperature changed so fast my legs started cramping up immediately upon sitting that room to the point where as soon as Sara and Brandon said they were going to take a quick nap before the afterparty then drifted off to sleep I jumped up out of there so my legs could work again. I still ached for more of that incredibly addictive vibe the party was giving me, so I grabbed my hoodie from the hotel room and headed back up the road, talking to a buddy from Florida the whole way. I guess my friends were still partying it up from the night before, which goes to show you you can’t kill a Florida raver’s energy I guess because over there it’s about 10pm on Saturday when they started around 4pm Friday.
I walked right back through that circle around 7pm and the sound wall struck me again so hard I had to hang up on my buddy because I couldn’t hear him anymore. It was dark now and there were a lot less people to where I could actually get a hold of security and ask them if they had any idea how many people came to the rave today. He said the entire team tried to count heads, but lost track somewhere around 76,000 people by 5pm. 76,000? That would mean that’s the biggest rave I’ve ever been to, beating my last record of 64,000! I may never know if that number got any bigger or what the exact number of people were there, but 76,000 is a huge number to have as a somewhat accurate count of, so that was super satisfying to me. I headed up to the front few floats where City Hall was, and the building now with it’s giant yellow lights looked even more like the Capital building of the country than the small governing body of a city. I danced up at the spaceship float some more when something really green caught my eye. The Cinema float, now rocking back and forth, had lit up! The big orange reels on the float were glowing bright green and the whole float was rocking back and forth as the weight of too many ravers climbed all over it and danced on it. The crowd around it were punching their fists into the air above their heads, and I heard this raunchy electro house bassline ripping apart the chilly night air. It wasn’t lame anymore! I ran to it and danced my ass off hard for most of that remaining hour until the three floats in the front played out their last songs and shut down to people sighing in sadness that it was over. I followed the train of desperate ears to the Solid Gold Jacuzzi float which was still banging…out it’s last track though…it too shut down after a few minutes. One by one, as me and hundreds of other ravers moved in a clockwise motion from float to float, the floats played out their last songs and said their goodbyes at 8pm. The Love Parade had sadly ended.
I said goodbye to the people I was dancing with and walked by myself out the same way I came in still taking in all the crazy people around me. Singing along with a group of people “Bohemian Rhapsody” kinda got me distracted at where I was for a moment, but lucky for me the singing group told me to follow them into the nearby Carls Jr. which thankfully was on the corner of Market and 7th. I waited in line for about a half hour just to get a shake, but that half hour zoomed by because of all the people around me. I saw a guy in a gorilla suit take off his mask and look just as hairy as the suit he was wearing, as well as heard a hobo trying to sell Brandy to these two drunk ravers who couldn’t be more than 19. One of the ravers kept trying to buy it from the guy for 7 bucks because that’s all he had, but the hobo only knew one word “Ten! Ten! Ten!” It kept going for the last 10 minutes I sat in line, and eventually caused me to jump in and drop 3 bucks on the table for them to get the bottle. They offered me some, but I merely joked “Have fun getting fucked up tonight!” got my shake and got out of there to get back to the nice warm hotel my frozen features were begging for. Apparently one thing the weather forecast was right about when I checked it out yesterday was the “Nighttime temperatures gonna be 45 degrees” part. Brrr!
I tried quietly opening the door to the hotel room with the key Sara gave me so as to not wake them up, but they were already awake and just looked at me funny. The three of us sat down and ate some food at this burger joint inside the hotel and then went back into our room to find out where the Bill Graham Civic Center was located in relation to our hotel. It took us a minute to find it, but we were quickly ready and out the door by about 9pm.
The Civic Center was just up the same way as the Love Parade’s location, except it was a bit more to the left of City Hall. We headed up there, huddled against the freezing cold wind because we knew it’d be hot in the massive afterparty so we didn’t wear our jackets. We stopped for Sara to grab some cash at an ATM, and there this guy asked for directions to another club that was having another afterparty. He kept coming back though, asking other questions and basically having some small talk with us before revealing something funny that I related to in an instant and him and I started chatting it up as we walked to the Civic Center (and kinda pulled him away from the direction he was going but we were too cold to stand around talking to this guy). We had to split from the guy when the wind picked up and sort of make a mad dash to the entrance of the Civic Center to get into this nice warm place.
I’ve been to this place before, It’s a decently sized main floor with a huge overlooking balcony wrapped around it that has stadium seating. When we actually got into the place, the first thing I did was lead Brandon and Sara up to the 2nd floor to see the thousands of people down below. It was a very pretty sight. Very much like your typical Los Angeles massive rave, except this was San Francisco’s AFTERPARTY. All you saw was a mass of dark shapes and glittering lights from all the glowsticks and toys below…then a multicolored light or laser beam or something along those lines would shoot out across the floor revealing individual people completely filling up the place. You could tell there were tons of people there already, but it took a breathtakingly beautiful Trance music breakdown to really show you where you were. The lighting effects guy would time it to right when the breakdown ends and the heavy bassline drops-and illuminate the entire area bright white. This showed you all the people in one quick flash of dumbstruck amazement, and everyone would cheer in this hissing roar that sends chills down your spine and renders you speechless from euphoria grabbing you by the throat and squeezing tight. It’s always so wonderful each massive, and it’s the main moment where I get my moments of Zen from…he would hit the light, I would Zen out. From this vantage point on the 2nd floor we found out there were three floors total, and also had a real good view of the visual screens, which portrayed hummingbirds, flowers, various plants, all moving slowly and growing closer to the screen every time they’d come up, which is always a real soothing view that is very common to house music lounges and chill areas. The side visuals had a camera just above the mixer at the DJ booth, showing the DJ at a direct level as if you were looking through a peephole in a door. A giant laser which changed from red to green to blue from time to time depending on what was playing in the song was cast across the crowd, and various lights and professional dancers surrounded the DJ booth in the center of this whole area.
Here I was actually growing a bit tired, the long flight here and a days worth of dancing and feeling the utmost of enjoyment and excitement had finally caught up with me, so I must apologize if this sounds like I wasn’t too excited about the afterparty. I was just a bit on the tired side, and was actually quite used to seeing massives of this magnitude (and bigger) all the time, so this wasn’t anything different to me than an ordinary Los Angeles rave. When they said “Afterparty” it literally had that vibe of an afterparty-something amazing just happened and now we’re all still pumped from the rave to do something so we throw our own event right after kind of thing. I’m not by any means saying it was bad, just a lot more calm than what I had just experienced earlier. I’m a bit spoiled I guess, but I’m sure it was because the genre for the night was mostly Melodic Trance-a calmer music already.
The three of us sat up on the second floor just taking it all in and enjoying ourselves for a bit until I got the desire to leave them and head down to dance to the last few songs of Kyau and Albert’s set. The duo did a fantastic trance set and played a few of their own songs like “Kiksu” and “Are You Fine.” I danced a whole bunch to their pretty music while trying to make my way closer to the stage. I wanted to get closer because I had never seen two artists before that were both going to play one after another at this rave: ATB and Above & Beyond. I was more excited for Above & Beyond because I heard they were a fantastic show, but I also really wanted to see ATB for nostalgic reasons-growing up listening to every CD he put out made me hope he’d play some of his more popular tracks just because I haven’t heard them in so long. There was actually quite a lot of room to slip up closer to the stage surprisingly, and even still about an outstretched elbow’s length on each side of room in the area I finally decided to stop and dance in. Normally such places get shoulder to shoulder crowded, and the guy in the street earlier said this rave was sold out so I was a bit curious as to what’s the deal with all this room.
Not that that was a problem: ATB came on and I danced all over the place. I took as many videos and pictures as I could from as close as I wanted to get to the stage, but lost energy quickly the more the tracks didn’t blend together well. I went back to the 2nd floor where Sara and Brandon were about a half hour after ATB started with a little puzzled look on my face. ATB was not doing good, and they noticed it too. ATB, the famous dance music producer, was just that-A PRODUCER…NOT A DJ. He was smooth in his beatmatching on very rare occasions, but sounded more like a new DJ in his bedroom than the world famous old school artist. He didn’t seem to know about the flow of a track either, because he would put something hard and mean on in the background to a really pretty set of vocals that made everything in the area sound disappointing. I was getting physically tired as it was, and his poor DJ skills were not helping me out one bit. As amazing of an artist as this guy is, he could not DJ to save his life. He eventually even tried bringing in a Nirvana (Rock music everyone knows) track because that particular track is the track you play to get the crowd pumped up again (the trump card a lot of DJs call it because it’s not a dance track but people go nuts about it because they actually know something the DJ is playing for a change) and even messed up mixing around with THAT track. He was just not a good DJ despite my respect for that man, so I simply stayed down on the dance floor long enough to record “Till I Come” and “Ecstasy” which are two classics he made and then stayed up with Sara and Brandon the rest of the set.
Above & Beyond just had to walk up next to ATB and I was already running down to the main floor and pushing into the crowd. I was excited, a back storage of energy seemed to be found and tapped into for this set that was about to blow my mind, and for the next two hours I found the highlight of the afterparty.
Above & Beyond were fantastic. More than fantastic, they were breathtaking. Everytime a breakdown would occur I stretched my hands up as far as they could go reaching to pull down the ceiling with all the other ravers following suit. A laser would dance and flicker across my fingertips as I would cheer as loud as my little voice could ripple the drowning effect of the melodic bliss coming from the speakers all around me. I was in heaven now, completely wrapped in my own world with Above & Beyond as my tour guides. They played, and I gave out lightshows to almost everyone I saw. I even focused on the lights myself, and used them as a sort of “self-lightshow” where I danced and tried out new moves that flowed together real well. Someone touched my shoulder and I looked to see a woman with a real “Aww” look on her face and she shouted to me “That was so beautiful!” it was an amazingly good feeling to hear someone say my liquid raving was beautiful as I floated about myself, and I offered to try it on her. She happily agreed, and all the new moves I’ve been working on but wasn’t sure if I could do I did to her and I saw tears well up in her eyes! I couldn’t believe it. I’ve gotten some great, different, and unusual reactions to my lightshows before, but nothing like this. The girl was literally sentimentally attached to my dancing lights before her, and all it took was following Above & Beyond’s music. I’ll never forget that moment.
Above & Beyond played my favorite song by them “Alone Tonight” and I recorded the whole thing, then used the last minute and a half left of recording memory on my camera to capture the chorus of “Satellite” as a sort of final end to a great weekend. I went back upstairs and hung out with Sara and Brandon some more during the last 15 minutes of Above & Beyond’s set and just hung around.
Armin Van Buuren was up next, and I knew he was going to blow the crowd away. The number one DJ gets up on stage and suddenly the main floor got even more crowded than before. I asked earlier while on the floor what the population in the party was and someone told me they sold out at 30,000 people, which explains the dancing room in this place because the place holds about 35,000 people (I’ve seen it up to 33,000 last time I was in San Fran) but this time it seemed all 30,000 people crammed into the main floor down below to see this guy. I’ve seen him too many times and was too satisfied from Above & Beyond’s set to really care about Armin Van Buuren going on so I stayed up on the 2nd floor with my friends for the first hour he was on. Besides, on top of being tired, both 4 gig flash drives I took with me on this trip had been completely and utterly used up, so I couldn’t even take pictures or record anything if I wanted to. He of course tore the place apart, dropping track after track of the newest and best Trance tracks I’ve been hoping to hear at a rave for the last 5 months. He even played “Unforgivable” literally the best track on his brand new CD. I sung along at the top of my lungs to every brand new vocal track he played, and Sara just looked at me like “How the hell do you know these tracks?” Haha. During his set we met this older couple who were sitting in front of us and they decided to hang out with us for the rest of the night. Even at one point when Armin’s set was just too awesome for me to not use the last morsel of energy I had in me on the main floor they came down with us and danced deep in the crowd. We all danced down there for the last 45 minutes of his final hour, saving the very ending 15 minutes to be back upstairs so that the multitude of people didn’t kill us on the way out. On the dancefloor, the guy’s girlfriend gave me a piece of kandi, which was nice because I didn’t have any kandi with me (I don’t take em to massives for fear of any breaking) and she just wanted to have it in memory of them. They walked out of the rave with us at 4am when the party ended but sadly left us shortly before we made it to the corner of Market and 7th. I’ll probably run into them again one day, two of the more “wanna get to know better” raver strangers you meet throughout the party.
We get back to the hotel but despite being all tired out hunger drove us back out to Carl’s Jr to pick up some food. We ate out on the balcony of the hotel, which was probably the best time because we cracked jokes and made up stories such as the “Cement Mix” and other disgusting things about the very food we kept eating. It took us so long to eat out on the balcony and crack jokes and things that by the time we finished it was 6am and the sun was starting to rise. Brandon remembered a sign that said “Sun Deck” so we ran off to try and find the thing discovering more interesting things (like what was up with that fountain? Crazy!” along the way.
It took awhile, but we found it. And just in time too. The view from this particular spot was so beautiful. You could easily see the city behind us, the suburbs on all the mountains in the background in front of us, and the Sunrise changing the colors of the sky right in front of us. Other ravers were up watching the sunrise too, they were all crowded up on the roof of their hotel across the street from us smoking and drinking and just enjoying the nice lovely greeting of a new day. We took a few pictures up here with Brandon’s camera, including pictures of us with the background nothing but the sunrise from up on top the wall of this sun deck, and being as cold and wet as it was we headed back down to our warm room to finally go to sleep around 6:30am.
I didn’t want to sleep though, I had to wake up around 10am to head to the airport so I wasn’t sure if I should risk sleeping and possibly sleeping through that wake up call we requested. Not to mention I didn’t care about the cold because that sunrise was just too perfect. I ran back up to the sun deck when they fell asleep and stayed out there for another hour just taking in the beautiful San Francisco morning that felt almost like a rejuvenation of the battered spirit from the long day and night that just passed. I called my girlfriend and talked to her for awhile telling her about it all and wishing she was here with me, then finally decided it’d be best to take a nap around 7:45am
I woke up hearing Sara talking about the wake up call already happened and got all ready to go saying goodbye to them still wanting to stay in bed. I walked out the hotel and down the street a bit at about 10:45am, and with a final look at one of my favorite cities in the world took a taxi back to the airport just in time for my flight to board at 12:40pm so it could head out at 1pm. I didn’t get back into the Orlando airport (after a layover in Charlotte, North Carolina where I bought some food from a restaurant called “Bojangels” simply because that’s the name of our cat) until about midnight and my girlfriend was there ready to kiss me hello and take me back home. I got back home at 12:30am and she immediately passed out but I stayed up a little longer to unload my cameras flash drives and eat something. I thought about the Parade a lot as I layed down in bed finally back in Orlando, and it wasn’t long before exhaustion finally took it’s toll on me and I drifted off to sleep, feeling like the whole thing was just a dream.
I could not have been more satisfied about my celebration of my 100th rave if I tried. I really did feel love at the Love Parade-the vibe was incredibly intoxicating and ultimately euphoric. My favorite part of it all was by far the Parade down Market Street.I love that I was part of a freedom of expression movement for one day, and it felt like I was alive and free and could take on the world. Despite my backpack from the flight on my back the whole Parade part of the event, I felt weightless, careless, and completely stress-free. Nothing mattered or bothered me in any way during that whole day, and the final cherry on top was an afterparty typical massive I used to think was the big deal event as just a supplement to the whole day. Everything that entire day and night worked out flawlessly-including the weather! I’m so glad I got to see Sara again and that Brandon dude was a real cool guy it’d be great to hang out with him again. For a 100th, it sure was one of the best massives I’ve ever been to!
I just want to say: Thank You San Francisco, Thank You Love Parade, Thank You Rave Scene…you made this boy’s dreams come true again.