GAIAN MIND PHILADELPHIA - Sat 8.23.08 w/ Arahat LIVE/DJ & More!

After all the fuss, I just could not resist taking a ride down to Philly for this one...
I was feeling a little stressed out and I was up for ample helping of both negligence and irresponsibility.

Or, failing that, beer, music, and pretty girls. Which usually adds up to the same thing

Well, this event did not fail to deliver! For once, truth in advertising...

I met up with my cohorts for the evening, onTonca and Neph.. and we braved the screaming Chinese ladies and got onto our bus for the ride of shame.. New York to Philly, Chinatown Bus style. Of course the bus left late.. but our driver broke several laws of physics and at least a few laws of New Jersey, discovering a new subatomic particle, two black holes and many potholes along the way.. getting us to Zot just as things were really starting to heat up.

Out on the sidewalk I immediately spied several familiar and friendly faces including two friends from Connecticut! But alas, Mark was not one of them.

Neph had brought artwork for the chillout, so we got upstairs and went right to work, helping her put her flouro flowers and pinwheels around the room. Chay was there and had already put up some of his always-excellent work so it was quite a nice effect in total. I saw some of his work in the main room as well, along with a very nice array of Mizue's work.

The music in the chillout throughout the night was excellent. I am sorry to say I don't remember everyone who played in there, but the music was very good. I enjoyed the set of a reddish haired guy from Brooklyn who I hadn't really met before for some reasons. I think he was opensourcecode. Jamie Kilowatts was also great as usual but I won't say that because I hear he is modest

Step two was to get into the main room and catch some of Fractal Phono's (Rory) set, which had a fairly packed dancefloor going even though it was still early. I also took this time to enjoy my first beer of the evening, a delicious frambois lambic.. YUM! Delicious, I will never enjoy Lindemans quite so much since I have had this stuff.. I am spoiled now Did I mention that this place has hundreds of different beers, both bottle and tap? Rorys set spanned a bunch of subgenres, all good tracks, and the dance floor was starting to really move.

Next up was Arahat, and I was really eager to hear his set, because he was cut off abruptly on his first or second track at our New Years Eve party, when the very fine NYPD came to protect and serve us. Well, it was very good! Somewhat dark, somewhat tweaky.. but not too dark and not too tweaky.. but just really trippy with enough drive and groove to keep the floor really packed and happy. And it was nice to see Arahat again, he is really a cool guy. One of these days I will get my ass to SF.

I got myself another beer, I didn't know any of the beers they had on tap because I am a beer igoramus, and I could not find The staff Gaian Beer Experts Dave or Lauryn to help me choose, and Pat was still in Portugal.. so I just went eenie-meenie-miney-moe. Just like that, really. It was delicious. Did I mention that this place has great beer?

Also, pretty girls were in abundance. Some of them even seemed happy to see me
So at that point, the evening had fulfilled its promise.. but irresponsibly, we kept GOING...

Last but never least, we got a full-on tag set from Lauryn and Eggbot, some nice old tracks, some nice newer tracks.. all of them bangin'.. which had the place going like crazy.
Nobody wanted to stop.

The usual Pensylvania witching hour is 2AM, but in true negligent fashion, we went until 3AM.. the owner of this new spot loves psytrance, it's much nicer than at Ulanas...

It was really a great party.. great music, beautifully decorated, nice atmosphere, really great crowd of people. A real family feeling and not one bad interaction the whole night. It is so nice to see this much energy go into a party that can't go all night.. but everyone comes out early and really makes a night of it, so you really feel like you've been to an EVENT! Totally worth the bus ride.

But ultimately it had to end.. so at 3AM we sadly packed the deco.. and left.. to go to the AFTERPARTY!

The afterparty was at the "Awesome House", and really, I did not understand why they call it that, because I had never been there. But really, it is a fucking awesome house. It's awesome. I kept saying awesome, at least three times an hour the whole rest of the night, and all through the next day, except when I was sleeping on their quite awesome sofa in the awesome living room. I cut it down to twice an hour for sleeping... Until Neph and I got on the bus Sunday evening, still saying awesome quite a lot all the way back to NYC. For all I know she is still saying "awesome".

Anyway, we got a ride to awesome house, were greeted by many awesome people.

I then went down to the awesome basement and DJ'd for a couple of hours while awesome people danced. Which was awesome fun.
In the morning, someone took the sound system out to the back yard. The back yard is awesome. We played with the awesome dogs, we went on the awesome roof, they fed us awesome food, made us awesome drinks. I took an awesome shower in their awesome abundant hot water and went out for an awesome breakfast. I had many awesome conversations, heard awesome music. There was awesome beer, and oh yes.. awesome pretty girls
We spent an awesome night, morning, afternoon...

Finally I had to tear myself away and go home

We took a taxi, then the Chinatown bus. We were stuck in traffic, which was not awesome.
But the bus did not catch on fire, we did not make any unexplained detour into Brooklyn to drop off Chinese illegal aliens. Or just aliens. We arrived back in NYC safe and sound, which was very awesome.

Took an awesome cab back to my awesome apartment, fed my awesome cat, fell into my awesome bed (I specifically had put clean linens on just before I left) and slept.

It was awesome.

I'll see you there next month.

Awesomely, negligently, irresponsibly yours,
-Ben (light-o-matic/PSI) aka Hypnotoad

http://lightomatic.com/