That was an interesting night.
Photo courtesy of Kevin Kranzky
The Embarcadero on a beautiful low-70’s, Indian Summer, clear night, really is a glorious place to be in San Francisco.
That Taking Back Halloween team-up between Flashdance and Skatin’ Place was a very well-executed idea. A great Small Victory on the Death of Fun campaign.
Thank You, San Francisco.
RELATED POSTS –
Skatin’ Place at Burning Man 2001 – 2002.
Flashdance Party at the Ferry Plaza. August 1st, 2009. FREE.
That West Fest Woodstock day in Golden Gate Park was kind of a mess.
Here are some tips to help the promoters move forward when they plan their next, inevitable, Woodstock reunion party.
1) Make sure you have your DJ Tent, that you advertised online as being part of the line-up, set up under the boundaries of your park permit. That way they can actually play more than a few records before being shut down.
2) Invite the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition to help with bicycle parking. I’ve been to several of these festivals over the years; some with 80,000+ people, and this was the first one where there was almost no regard what-so-ever for the thousands of people that rode their bike there. West Fest goons were threatening some people that locked their bikes to fences and steel barricades that their bikes would be towed and prevented others from trying to park there. I saw thousands of dollars worth of bikes locked to shrubbery and small trees. Get it together people …
Deep just won a Best of The Bay Award for Best Block-Rockin’ Bike in the city. Score! It’s all kinds of awesome whenever someone wins one of those one-of-a-kind awards that the writers of the Guardian made up specifically for that person. That’s a very unique gift, it’s a very public compliment that was just broadcast out there for all of San Francisco to see. Definitely gives you some unique street cred as well.
I got to the Embarcadero Plaza at exactly 8PM. No flashdance party but there was something else going on. I went over to investigate and discovered that some high school kids already had their own flashmob going on and were breakdance fighting. Awesome!
That Hansel is so hot right now!
Anyhoo, my party was setting up nearby at the Ferry Plaza.
And into the night it went.
I really like this part of town. The Embarcadero is a great location for flashmob types of events. This is where Critical Mass starts every month. This is also where they had the Valentine Day pillow fight that caused $30,000 in damages to that god-ugly fountain and was the catalyst for the city’s Death of Fun campaign. It’s almost a textbook definition of how to create a Temporary Autonomous Zone. Normally it’s occupied by skaters, tourists, and homeless guys passed out in a pool of their own vomit, but I really like it. I live for free outdoor parties and it’s the renegade ones that have that added thrill that acts like a magnet and attracts some of the more interesting people in this city. This party is fast becoming one of my new favorite San Francisco rituals.
You can find out more about the next flashdance party over HERE
UPDATE # 1
Rad video of the parties Bollywood peak from raunet.
I’m telling you, The Embarcadero is an amazing place for renegade parties. It has a lot of character.
RELATED POSTS –
I was really surprised when I heard about this block party. San Francisco’s Death of Fun campaign has been pretty successful so far this year. Congratulations, gentlemen. You have already claimed the life of the future BYOBW block party. That was really brave of you. You almost killed the How Weird block party and don’t think we’ve forgotten about you DNA Lounge. Fuck you and the taxes you pay every year.
So when I heard that there was going to be a new block party under this hostile regime change I knew I had to check it out.
And this is what the Super Hero Block Party looked like at 2:30 PM.
What’s funny is that if this was Sunday Streets the permit would have official expired over half an hour ago.
If this was the Haight Street Fair it would have been packed.
If it was the How Weird Street Fair it would have been in what House DJ Architects refer to as the Barn Building stage of the party.
That’s another Burning Man thing that I had forgotten about. People drag thousands of dollars worth of steel and soundsystems out to this god-forsaken place, juice it up with enough decibels to kill a Godzilla, and there’s like 4 people dancing. Look at that, it’s right behind a MUNI graveyard. This is where old cable cars swim upstream, against traffic, to be gutted, rusted, and then die alone on the outskirts of beautiful Hunter’s Point.
And this was the crowded dancefloor. Let’s go back and check in the BrassTax camp.
Funny thing. I’ve been living in this city for 15 years and I’ve noticed that there’s this one demographic that seems to be permanently stuck on Hawaiian Time. It’s physically impossible for them to get out of the house before 4PM. They’re like the Twilight vampires of the San Francisco scene. I always seem to be out of step with those guys and find myself going to these amazing empty parties in weird locations and then spend half my time taking pictures of the urban decay around me. I know, life of the party…
Vanilla Ice actually lives here. He moved in 2 weeks ago when his next VH1 show fell through and his old lady kicked him to the curb. He was suppose to be performing on the Sunset stage but that fell through as well for reasons unknown to me.
And check out that boardwalk.
I actually had a hell of time taking in my cocktail and beats as the skaters and fog flew past me. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but I thought it was ironic that the first annual San Francisco Street Fair was on the same day as the San Diego Comic Con. I used to go to that back when I was in junior high and it’s amazing to see how what used to be a corny convention of hard-core nerds exploded into one of the major multi-media events of the year. It’s on Goggle’s front page. It’s on youtube’s front page. When I grew up, being into comic books was like being into pedophilia; it wasn’t a very cool hobby and if you wanted to survive you were very careful whom you shared that vice with. Now it’s Hollywood. That’s what’s amazing to me. Anyone can do that. Anyone can take a corny thing and turn that into the next Burning Man, turn that into the Star Trek franchise, turn that into the next major multi-media event of the year.
Seize the day.
UPDATE # 1
Excellent video from Lux Vibes
This race ends in The Outer Sunset area of Golden Gate Park and that’s normally where most of the splinter parties are at, so I normally ride my bike straight there to check out the action.
Bay to Breakers is a pretty unique event and it’ a great free party with 70,000 + other people. It’s one of the few events that San Francisco will wake up at the ungodly hour of 8AM on a Sunday and then be smashed by noon. People were annihilated last year. If you’re any kind of recovering alcoholic you want to stay far, far away from Bay to Breakers.
You could definitely notice the effects of the city’s Death of Fun campaign but people still had a great time. As I type this now on Monday it’s really cold mid 50s and overcast outside. The fog has come in and even bundled up under a few layers it’s still cold. Yesterday it was gorgeous, sunny in the low 90s, with people in shorts and no shirts. Amazing how drastically the weather can change in just a single day out here.
There wasn’t anywhere near the number of floats this year, but there was still quite a few sound systems. I think in the future we’ll see smaller scale, individually powered, sound systems.
All you really need are some speakers, an energy source, an ipod, and some wheels.
The pink people were back and set up shop under the bridge again.
I had heard reports that all music had to be off by 11:30, but this was the party going off at 3PM with no indication that it was planning to wrap up anytime soon.
This struck me as an odd sight.
It’s not often that you have block party on a sunny day with not a single person in line for the porta potties.
The South of Market condos are in season again. You can see this structure has some new growth over on the right hand side.
There’s a lot to love about the 2006 How Weird Street Fair video. Love the tiki bar, love the didgeridoo guy with the megaphone helmet, loved the way it was filmed.
Not really in love with the psytrance soundtrack. But hey, it’s a free country.
What I love most about this video is the architecture the background. Check out all the Victorians. This is back when How Weird was on Howard (Get it? How-Weird) on 8th, over by the nucleus of the club district in San Francisco. They had to move the block party in 2008 over to 2nd because some neighbors that moved into the heart of the club district of San Francisco were complaining about this party.
Which kind of begs the question, what kind of people move into a club district and then complain that there are too many parties?
It’s like moving into Harlem and then complaining that there are too many Black people living next too you.
Anyhoo, How Weird survived last year, this time over by Howard and 2nd and closer to the Finical District. I’ve always maintained that the Finical District is one of the weirdest parts of the city, it really is San Francisco’s Bermuda Triangle.
During the weekday it’s packed with all this road rage energy and people that hate their lives, jobs, commutes, co-workers, ect.
Then on the weekends it’s a ghost town, but sometimes you can still feel some of that disgruntled poltergeist energy that’s been accumulating over the decades.
Very weird and creepy.
This 2008 video was shot by Lux Vibes, I like his work a lot. He covers a lot of ground in this one. Again, it’s the architecture in the background that trips me out the most. All those skyscrapers and other finical temples that create city blackness in the afternoon, or funnel vicious city winds down certain streets. It’s kind of crazy when you think about it, that the city insisted that we move this freaky block party from a somewhat public area down to this deserted area just south of the unprotected heart of our finical temples.
2009 was on like Donkey Kong!
Although this was the last year as a renegade event. Next year the promoters will have to cough up $10,000 (ouch!) for permits and paperwork. But for now it was on.
These guys were awesome. I was talking to Super Mario and was all
“That game is a classic! I just bought Super Mario on the Nintendo 64 for my girlfriend’s daughter. She had it as a kid and lost it so I picked up a copy on Ebay and that game is going for up to $50. People still love and aggressively bid on those old Super Mario 64 cartridges.”
And Super Mario was all “Yeah, Ebay is weird.”
The Princess did the entire race in character and with the dress. That’s what I love about this event; it’s not a sausage fest. There are a lot of girls and kids that race.
I biked all the way from The Outer Sunset through Dolores Park and over to Potrero Hill in under an hour and a half. I rule. It’s pretty essential to get to BYOBW early to get a good spot. I was at the bottom of the hill at the second to the last curve. It was a bit shady, but there was a small wall to stand on that was perfect protection from all the carnage.
I stuck around for an hour and then biked back over to Market and Noe where The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were having a free block party. Chances are, if you have a free party with a sound system in this city I will be there to rock the house.
Hey, Mike! You wanna go get annihilated and rock out with a bunch of queens and bears?
The streets of San Francisco were very kind to me this Easter Sunday.
Thank you.
The Outer Sunset 