Event Review: Stompy/Sunset Productions Party at Cafe Cocomo

On Sunday I ventured out with friend Kitty to check out the Stompy/Sunset Party at Café Cocomo. It was a fun excursion into a very old-skool style house music party, but, due to some mis-timing on my part, I found it difficult to get engaged with the party just as it was gaining legs.

I had heard about the party from a campmate in Comfort and Joy, and had the mistaken impression that he was meeting up with some other campmates there early in the afternoon (the party started at 3PM). I though it would be fun to have a Sunday afternoon party for a change, with the potential for a decent bed-time, so Kitty and I arrived there around 4. At that point the dancefloor was mostly empty, but we enjoyed a pleasant time on Café Cocomo’s patio having drinks and listening to an easy-going set of funky house from DJ Galen. Three drinks in, Kitty decided he wanted to head off home, and I was left on my own, waiting to see if anyone else I knew was going to show up. I enjoyed the set that DJ Solar laid down, especially the last forty minutes or so, which was some of the best minimal psy-house I have heard in a club in ages, but I found it harder to get into the sets of the next two DJs, which, while slick and smooth, were more in the vein of standard progressive and deep house.

My campmate finally showed up around 7.30, by which time the crowd had grown to three or four hundred people, and the energy was really starting to build. I hung out for about another hour, but it was obvious that I had spent my party energy too early in the day and I just wasn’t feeling the music. I spotted an empty cab sitting out in front and grabbed it, heading back home to hang out with the boyfriend before he had to crash for the night (not everyone got Monday off from work, unfortunately).

I would definitely check out a Stompy/Sunset party again; they are part of the classic San Francisco house scene, and from the looks of their crowd and the energy they raised they have kept the connection to their original raver roots. However, it was obviously a crowd that’s pretty different from the sort I normally hang out with, so I would definitely take my own crew with me next time, and I would try to time things better so that I was more in synch with the energy of the party itself.