Upcoming Event: Sweet! New Year's Eve at Cellspace

Oh my, the legendary Sweet! crew is coming together to present a New Year's Eve party at Cellspace with some trance DJs - Spesh and Dragon'fly among them - who should make it quite sweet indeed. There are only 420 tickets for this party, so move your ass if you want in on the action! Full announcement below:

“There is never “forever” . . . only, the moment”  -  Marc Almond

This New Year’s Eve YOU are invited to:

       Sweet ?  Only the Moment  . . .

              Cellspace - 2050 Bryant Street
                       SAN FRANCISCO

                                        9 pm to 6 am

Featuring the musical stylings of:

Tyler Reed - Dragn’fly - Scottino - Spesh -Jim Cyr
and, introducing  Brian Hultin

Once upon a time, there were a very special series of ceremonial dance
events held at Cellspace in San Francisco - a singular combination of DJs,
space, lights, visuals, intention and PARTICIPANTS came together and
created many happy, memorable evenings we called,  Sweet! The question is,
can we share THAT kind of moment, again ?

All of the qualities that made Cellspace so special are still there - the lofty
sense of space and safety,  the cozy chill areas, the amazingly well-ventilated INDOOR
smoking area, and, for DANCERS - most importantly - the bouncy, wooden
dancefloor that allows you to dance and dance and dance and . . .
There are beautiful new bathrooms, and, for this occasion there will be both a
coat check and a well-stocked BAR.  We have hired JK Sound to recreate the
4-corner sound system and lured Barry Reuter & Steve Freed into
providing us with a more dazzling level of visuals than ever before !!

What always made previous Sweet! events so singular  were the people !Most (all ?)
resist easy categorization (how very San Francisco)  so, please make this your New Year’s
Eve destination ONLY if you are prepared to be friendly, open, generous, fun, courteous and
welcoming .

Please feel encouraged to dress in such a way as to ENTERTAIN

Thanks to Amy Welker we have modernized our ticketing process - we are now using
Paypal. Tickets, available now,  are $25. until December 21st - after which they will be
$40. If any tickets are available after December 29th - they will be $50 at the door.
Doors will open at 8:30 and close at 10:30 (unless prior arrangements are made).
As always, no one will be turned away due to lack of funds  but you must request
a comp before the tickets are gone - there are only 420 tickets available for this
event.

This event is primarily a benefit for Cellspace - Paypal tix are available at:
Fireball@myway.com  It would be helpful, if when ordering, you give us the names
of who the tickets are for. Please refer all questions, requests, concerns to Jim
- surfpunk@well.com

We are really hoping that this occasion will be a MOST EXCELLENT opportunity for
partying with ALL of your friends, reconnecting with people you haven’t seen in a while, and OF
COURSE meeting and connecting with a lot of amazing people you’ve never met before !!

In short, we sincerely hope, this event will be Sweet !  
 
Namaste !!  Matt & Jim

Event Review: The Most Hyperbolically Stupendous Clothing Swap Ever!

This past weekend the boyfriend and I dragged a huge blue bin full of stuff that had been rejected out of our closets to The Most Hyperbolically Stupendous Clothing Swap Ever! at Cellspace. Our hope had been to score at least a couple cool new items to improve our fashion standing, but, like our friend Chandler, who showed up with a suitcase of designer duds and left with most of them still in it, we sorta concluded that our stuff was way cooler than the the lame threads others had brought to unload.

Two acquaintances of ours, Monica and Jason, are the brains behind swapsf and this excellent idea - invite everybody to bring their old threads to a clothing swap, and then donate whatever is left to charity. Add some DJs, some drinks, some coffee, and you've got the makings of a fine hipster meet-up. The big problem, however, was that the crowd well exceeded the space, and after the swap had been open for only an hour it was like a scene out of some 1950s movie where the savagery of women is illustrated by their fighting over items at a one-day Macy's sale - except in this case, there were a lot more trucker hats. Every table was completely surrounded by culture vultures grabbing whatever caught their eyes as new carrion was dumped on the pile - in one case I saw someone come up with a bag of t-shirts, and within ten seconds they were all gone. Whatever remained on the tables for the casual browser were the items that had already been deemed unfit by the hiperatti, stuff that I could have found at Community Thrift on a bad day. Since we had long ago decided that the things we brought were going out the door one way or the other, it was overall a better experience than having those bitches at Crossroads pick through our stuff, but I was really disappointed that most people seemed to have brought stuff that was, well, just not that cool - and who knew that so many hipsters were size extra large? The boyfriend did score a cool suit jacket and a nice black shirt, but it seemed an awful low swap ratio.

I think this is a great idea, and I hope that the success of the last two events will move the next clothing swap to a bigger space, and perhaps inspire those participating to bring more than what they've decided is too worn out, or too ugly, to remain in their own closets.

Black Rock Roller Disco

I'm firmly of the opinion that the only time you should ever listen to disco is on roller skates. Fortunately, the Black Rock Roller Disco can provide both, and even throw in projections from such roller disco classics as Xanadu and Roller Boogie. At a recent fundraiser the BRRD held at CellSpace for SF Indiefest they ran out of skates by 10PM and there was a line of 20something hipster kids halfway down the block outside at 11. The BRRD will certainly be having more events as the Burning Man fundraiser season gets going, and there may even be a chance to check them out in Golden Gate Park or at the Embarcadero. Bring a bottle of the stuff you would have smuggled into the roller rink and relive the halcyon days of knee socks and feathered hair.
(An interesting Chronicle article on the BRRD from 2003.)