Our trip to San Francisco was amazing! Be and I flew in Thursday night. Steph picked us up from the Oakland airport and we caught up with each other's lives quickly on our way into the city. There, we met up with Chrissy, a friend I'd met during college when I was studying abroad in Ireland. We hadn't seen each other in 10 years!! In fact, we'd last seen each other in San Francisco. She had flown over from Queens, NY to visit her sisters for New Years and I headed down to tear up the town. Almost exactly 10 years ago. So strange how life is syncronous.
Robb Green & Mugs met up with us as well. They gave us the royal treatment all weekend, offering up Robb's bachelor pad in the Mission district and pointing us towards all the best places in town. We spent Friday at the thrift stores finding old threads. That night Be went to visit her friend Jake from high school and I went to a club in the SOMISSPO district called Mighty. It was a large brick building with an outside smoking area. Inside was a long bar and a medium-sized dance floor with a stage up front. The entire dancefloor was surrounded in 4 corners with 12-foot tall speakers that vibrated bass throughout your body. The floor was just poplated enough with smiles and people already into the vibe. There was another small room with local DJ's on the side for a different atmosphere playing minimal house and breaks. I ran into an old acquaintance from EWU. I swear the Eagles are everywhere! I can't believe people even remember me half the time.
The opening DJs were Murphstar from SEISMIC and Mancub, a member of the Space Cowboys, an SF-based burning man/entertainment group. The headliner was Krafty Kutz on his Freakshow album tour. I'm not generally into Breakbeats, but there's something about Krafty Kutz' electro funk style that made a House head like me boogie big time. Krafty Kutz reached deep into my consciousness with each breakdown and pulled up thoughts, emotions that I'd been wrestling with all week. They entered into my head and left my body as I worked out my inhibitions to dance, my discomfort with the new space and of the intensity of the city's electricity. They take their music quite seriously in SF, and Krafty Kutz was all business. The business of healing. The release of all that weights us down. And after the release of the funk that lies within, the celebration of the freedom of our souls through dance. Through rhythm. Moving our bodies in sync with the vibration of the earth, of the city, of our brothers and sisters dancing it off besides. We live the next day in peace. Until it builds again.
I have yet to learn that skill as a DJ. I can smooth people out and get them going again, build them up from the ground to the roof. But I have yet to practice the programing it takes to drop deep into a soul, pull from within the things that hold them back and release all that is held up through the sky. I want to do that. I want to heal.
After the Krafty Kutz show, we headed to a small studio space. There we met up with about 8 more people and chilled for the rest of the night. They had turntables set up in the corner, so Robb and I had to show off our tag team skills. Its so incredible how our musical tastes mesh, like PB & J. It was only our 4th time playing together. The night was a catalyst for his DJ presence in SF and I was happy to light the match. He, of course, is holding the cigar.
I didn't sleep well the next day. In fact, I didn't sleep well the night before, either. Something about the sounds of the city streets or the excitement of the weekend. When Be arrived from seeing Jake, I was really tired but ready for my first gig in the SF. Robb and Mugs drove us to Bumbuddha Lounge, a bar in the Tenderloin area where I was to play. We sat down at a table in the restaurant area to grab a bite first. I mentioned to the hostess that we had to eat quickly because I was playing in the bar at 9. She must have told the server because when he brought out our food he said it was on the house since I was playing. That's a nice change from Seattle where some bars have a difficult enough time paying for your services much less your meal. It was nice to be so well-recieved. The restaurant-bar was set adjacent to the cities' legendary Phoenix Hotel where Mugs's friends coincidentally were having a birthday party. Apparently the Hotel is known as a party spot and on Sunday nights in the Summer it hosts pool parties.
I finished up my soup and took up the spot behind the decks in the bar. The mixer was not a mixer that I'd had any previous experience with. Since I've been hosting my own parties for a while, I haven't had the pleasure of learning brand new eqiupment in the fly in quite a while. Its both a frustrating and invigorating experience. It took me about 40 mintues to figure out how to work with it and get used to the sound, because I could only hear one channel at a time instead of both channels. Quite a challenge! But after that first 40 minutes, I had a great time and was even more stoked when I found that my set was a half-hour longer than I thought.
Scott Binder, another Seattle-lite transplanted to SF, had booked me for the gig. He showed up not long after I started, in time to clear the restaurant area into his own private dance floor. While the bar area was the perfect pre-funk, the restaurant was turned into a nicely filled-out dance floor. It was a great place to spend a Saturday evening if you were in the mood for some great tunes and good drinks without the spendy door fee. The DJ after me was a woman from Spain called Nono. Our styles blended spendidly as she pulled more than a few records from her bag that I also keep tucked away in mine. She was extremely nice and a very smooth DJ. She'd just been in Seattle to play at Trinity's Card Room, the same location where Adlib, Vudu and I just finished our first monthly.
Be headed home shortly after 1am and I bid goodbye to Robb and Mugs. I headed with Scott to Supper Club to catch the end of DJ Heather's Chicago fusion of funk. She was there with Seattle-lites Carlos Mendoza & Peter Christianson, aka Lawnchair Generals. It was fantastic to see a crowd still kickin' it long after the liquer sales stopped. Makes more sense to me to let a crowd dance off their liquer until the wee hours of the night instead of having them down their drinks at 2am and kick them out to drive home, cause fights and make noise on the streets. For the kids at Supper Club at 4am, going home was the last thing on their mind. And Heather was happy to help them shake off the Funk.
The club itself was set up very differently. There was a bar and dance floor in the middle of the room, surrounded by stairs that met up on both sides to a second floor. Large king beds, used for dining in the day, surrounded the entire perimeter of the space. The lights were pretty bright, though there was also a red and blue neon light that broke up the white.
We finally left at around 4:30 am. I chatted with Scott about our new Seattle monthly starting Dec 15th @ Heavens. I'm quite sure the vibe I caught last weekend in SF will be fundamental in the city's Rebirth. We, like many others building nights in the coming year, have every intention of reminding this city how important it is to release that which weighs heavy on your soul. The funk that fills your mind must find a way to leave your body. We know just what ails you. And how to let it go.
