miguel23

This is nothing but shameless promotion. I have not been writing for a while. My excuse? bad women and hard work. Nuff said, right?

My least favorite holiday of all time is coming up. Valentines Day! Boo. I am one of those Valentine day haters, along with a few others. I was offered to dj an Anti-Valentines Drink the pain away party at the Argus Lounge, located at 3187 Mission St at Valencia in the lovely city of San Francisco of course. My Dj Buddies:Tau G and Saiman will be sharing the decks with me.  $4 Fernet Shots!!!

The music? Hateful love songs a la techno electro booty shake redemption. Yes. I should have started the promotion like three weeks ago, but like I said, bad women and hard work. To those girls out there who have been kicking my heart around like Diego Maradona kicks a soccer ball lately, I dedicate this to you. ha ha ha ha haaaaaa.

I will be back with more quirks, news, and ridiculous opinions soon. My day job has been squeezing every drop of my time. I woke up this morning dreaming about funnel pages, user experience and email subject lines. The first word I said this morning coming out of a deep dream was “conversion.” Yes folks, that is how crazy I am becoming. Marketing to your minds.
I will be attending one of my other favorite Anti Valentines day events in San Francisco earlier in the night however. The massive pillow fight. Here is a video from last years Valentines day pillow fight extraordinaire:

Eric Corey Freed is an architect who became well known for green building design and consulting. He has earned a place in the green architecture elite and thus was chosen to write the official Green Building For Dummies book.

Call it 8th grade humor, or just plain tipsy on cheap book-signing-wine, but upon looking at the signature table I couldn’t help to point out the admitted “dummies” all around, getting their Dummies book signed. Yes me included, but I ended up there by chance that night, I swear. It was held at my favorite club Temple.

It is typical that a green book signing would also take place in a club deemed to become the worlds first green nightclub. But they are not alone in this pursuit, a club in the Netherlands is making waves.

It is the green nightclub race of the decade. Temple’s club’s sustainability director, Mike Zuckerman also has plans install a power generating dance floor next year. He feels confident that they have found the person to do it. In the meantime, he is starting with something a little less ambitious which he calls a vertical garden shown here:

Elsa Wenzel at Cnet.com, whom I met outside of this book signing beat me to this story because it is her full time job to do so. She deemed this club the Chia nightclub in her Cnet Crave blog story. Look at the future vision of Temple nightclub in her entry and it will make sense.

This green night club business is great and all but it does nothing to offset the pollution created by those dj’s that fly millions of miles around the world year after year. Techno demi-god Richie Hawtin decided to do something about this problem and made an environmental pledge to his fans with this press release (PDF): Minimize Your Impact - by Richie Hawtin. I have not read any articles suggesting that others are following his footsteps, then again, Richie is always ahead of the curve on most things.

It is only a matter of time until we will all need to dance to keep the lights on.

Last Sunday was the last Sunset party for 2007 and it went out in full San Francisco style at Golden Gate Park. True SF beat fanatics came out to groove in the sunshine but this time to a very different beat for the bay area, Techno. The West Coast is finally representing real beats. This party was blessed by the special guest, up and coming superstar dj and producer from New York, Superpitcher . I also can not think of a better team to do this than the Sunset Crew. This party was like walking through a burning marijuana plantation by the way.

This is one of those events where you see everyone you have ever met in San Francisco who is or has ever been involved in underground music in any significant form. I saw mad heads including my man Alvaro, who decided to ‘retire’ from doing turntable repair jobs. I think he might be the only person in the Bay Area who knows how to fix and calibrate any tone arm. He undermines how valuable this skill set is.

Regardless, this party was one to not miss. Here are a few more pictures:

So, this is how it started. After spending some time dancing under a bus stop , we ended up taking our selves to Cafe Revolution in the Mission District. The usual goatee scratching communist types, hipster girls, and crunchy but not hippie fellas smoking and sippin’ Chamay beer. This place is best known for it’s cool outdoor sitting area and a bohemian atmosphere.

A slick fella in a black leather jacket pulls up roaring some deep soul track in a custom designed colorfully lit bicycle with powerful sub woofers in hand crafted detailed fenders. (Please bare with the phone camera pics) He parked his bike, met a friend, shook some hands, meanwhile a dance frenzy stirred up around his bike, in no time there was a party halfway onto the corner of 22nd and Bartlett. The tipsy crowd became infected by the thumping break beats that this dude’s sick bike provided. So many ladies were dancing.

Meet Paul Freeman. Inventor, bike enthusiast, and owner of Rock The Bike knows how to rock a party like white hip hop star. He has game. He designs bicycles with great intentions and goals. For example, he designed and produced a unique “convertible” bike seat system that allows riders to ride in 4 different positions. You can ride it like a chopper or haul ass in a stand up position so you can get to work quick like me.

One of Paul’s great missions is to educate people on the coolness of riding a bike to music. It’s lovely. Paul offers weekly community rides with the music blaring about town. He is poised to transform bike culture and enthusiasm by showing people first hand how much better it is to ride to music blasting. I would personally love to blast deep sexy baseline driven beats on my way to work every morning.

This street party went on for over 2 hours strong without letting up. Paul had a microphone on his bike which turned the music set into a live performance by Paul and other ‘rappers’. The dancing, hootin’ and hollering were out of control fun. It was an evening to remember. When in the neighborhood of 22nd and Bartlett, keep your eye our for the dude on the music bike.

I was not prepared for what happened when I turned the corner of Fillmore onto Haight. A mob of about 150 people were dancing their brains out to old school house music around a mere Muni bustop. As cars and buses went by, bus stop ravers would unite in a hollerin’ fit while keeping their rhythm going strong to the beat. It was irresistible to avoid. My curiosity mounted until I found myself on their side of the street freaking out at other passer byers. The drinking and smoking were definitely in effect keeping the status quo of the Lower Haight.

When the police rolled up curiously at the flash dancing mob the first time, the music automatically shut off and everyone stopped dancing and pretended to anxiously wait for a bus. The creator of this spectacle rigged the bus stop with a mini sound and laser light system that was remote controlled. It was semi concealed in the upper-inner vestibule area of the canopy. The crowd ranged from the typical hipster fixed gear dude, your 60’s hippie still on acid, the random homeless guy, the cute working girl types, the usual emo-hipster chick, and your classic geeky types who got off on discussing chemical reactions at the bus stop.

I was interviewed by this girl who wondered what I thought of this bus stop flash mob action. I told her that I thought this was an evolution of the urban public space remixing culture. This bus stop temporarily had a different purpose from its everyday purpose and use. It was now a mash up bus stop/rave party. There were even underground party fliers on the ground from promoters who targeted this motley street dancing crew.

The urban public space remix concept is well explored by my friends Matt and John B, who on this same day had their annual Park(ing) day. Let me first disclose to you that these guys are pranksters at heart and they treat their work in a scientific manner. Park(ing), in case you have not heard, is paying for parking spot, and turning it into a mini park. It’s yours, you paid for it, you don’t have to necessarily park a car in it. Instead you can put park bench and some grass, read the paper why not? Hence, park(ing). Clever. There has been so much written on them already, but check out their other work. Unfortunately I was not able to make it park(ing) this year.

Eventually the cops curiosity amounted and they hung around the corner for a while trying to figure out the mob. They did not once realize that the structure was rigged with a sound and light system. After the crowd broke up a little bit, this guy displayed some strong feelings about it.

The beats came back and the party started up again with lower numbers but just as much energy.

Nobody does house music quite like Chicago. It’s true. Most of the greatest house dj’s formed there and many other great unknown bless decks in the windy city nightly. However, not many take the cake like Cajmere, aka. Green Velvet, founder of the classic Cajual and Relief Records, and widely known for the timeless jakin’ house anthem, “The Percolator”. For those who know house music though, this is just a sliver of his work. This man has produced countless underground anthems and last Friday September 14th at Zentra Club in Chicago, Cajmere displayed how deep he can take his rhythm. Here is a horrible picture taken with my phone camera early in the night.

The night started with twisted deeper techie cuts that preserved the original Chicago house hat hit that sets the mood. It progressed smoothly into deeper bass grooves with asynchronous clack-like sounds that teetered yet maintained funk. House head bopping was inevitable. I went with my deep homie ‘Mole’ with whom I first discovered Cajual Records back in 1992. He went on to being a deep hippie in the woods of Montana with a ZZ top beard. But on this particular night ‘Mole’ was throwing down some house jakin’ dance moves in his hometown of Chicago to the sounds of Cajmere. It was great to see, we both went back to the basics.

Dajae, the original Diva of Cajual Records came out and did all the greats “U Got Me Up” and “Brighter Days” included. It felt good to hear the Windy City sing along to the lyrics. Groovy! here is another horrible picture (I’ll get a camera soon):

Anyway, it was dark, I used my phone. Please cut me some slack.. I know the picture quality sucks.

As you can expect U Got Me up made the crowd loose their shit, but even more so was when we all heard the undeniable funky beginning beats of the “The Percolator”. Wow! Chicago, thank you for representing for your own sake. It was fucking great to see the love Cajmere get out there and actually perform the percolator live with a microphone in his hand. He actually showed us what the percolator dance looks like. Feast your eyes on yet another crappy phone camera picture. Here is a glimpse of Cajmere dancing the Percolator:

The guy to his right is one of his new artists whose name I can’t recall. After this apex moment, Cajmere took back the decks and continued to dj for another 2 hours. He stayed true to himself and played some of that ultra hard techno which he produces frequently under the alias Green Velvet. Personally speaking, another large highlight for me was when he dropped Plastikman’s ‘Spastik’ and Chicago welcomed it hootin’ n’ hollerin and jakin’ to it. I personally live between Chicago, Detroit, and Berlin as my favorite music epicenters so this was a special moment for me. Here is a picture taken at the moment he was playing it:

I ran into my old friend Tim Baker, founder of Elephanthaus Records, Detroit. He ran an early techno operation that spawned the Ann Arbor to Detroit techno contingency in the early 90’s. An old school head, great to see and catch up with. Another great surprise was seeing and hanging with yet another important Detroiter, Brian Gillespie whom I had the pleasure of knowing and rubbing shoulders with back in my party throwing days in Ann Arbor/Detroit.

I was happy to go home with this great auto graphed souvenir by Cajmere. I plan on framing it.

quick prop delivery and a picture with Cajmere. Good times. Back in San Francisco now.