July 2006

7-Jul-2006 - Utopia United - 11th bday

Saturday was the day I had been waiting for. Utopia's 11th birthday. I still remember Utopias 1st birthday clearly.. the lasers, the big mirror, the fire brigade...

I picked up Tim and Jules and we headed over to homebush showground section. It was in a couple of big warehouse type rooms. We had to wait in a queue for a while because we had Moshtix tickets to pick up. And it was cold!

As soon as we were in, the entrance had already set the mood..

Entrance lighting

It was flashing different colours and patterns. By the way all these photos arent mine, they are borrowed from someones photo collection (I hope they dont mind..).

Once we were in, there was a big warehouse on the left, and an even bigger warehouse on the right. Straight ahead was some spinning ride thingy, and dodgem cars as well as some food and accessories stands.

We went into the room on the left (which we named 'Room 1' for the rest of the night). The setup was awesome! Very atmospheric, took me back to the early days. It was a large warehouse type room filled with smoke, with the DJ area at the front. It was surrounded by metal caging/fencing and there was an array of lasers and lighting coming from the front of the room.

Room 1 DJ (not RX, but some other dude)

The DJ which was playing was RX. He was completely full of energy and obviously how should I say.. chemically enhanced. The set he played was perfect for the mood - a little dark, but not too much, it suited the warehouse type feel very well. RX was very very pumped up. The crowd was totally going off and I havent seen that much excitement in a rave crowd for a while. RX was quite frankly off his face, and he took his top off, threw it into the crowd like he was God, and left his DJ equipment numerous times to go up to the crowd and stand there with arms in the air, eyes wide open, and generally thinking he was controlling the universe... which I dont mind, its good to have a DJ pumping up the crowd no matter how off his chops he is! :-) And the crowd loved it.

Another DJ, Room 1

I have to say that room 1 was my favourite room. Even though it wasnt the main room, it had the best atmosphere in my opinion by far.

Some DJ, somewhere at Utopia

Ben (tims friend) turned up with his group, and I actually outlasted them at this rave which is the exception to the rule.

I went to check out Room 2 next (the main room). It was a lot larger than the first room - it was huge!

The main room?

When entering the room, there were all these glowing box thingies and lights flashing in your face. The main thing you notice is the huge big cone-shaped things on the roof, which were lit up by the lighting.

Main room - big roof cones and lasers

It all looked very cool, and this room was PACKED. I never made it to the front of the room the whole night, there were too many people. Throughout the night they had big acts here, but I only really saw one of them, but dont know her name. Ben and Tim seem to know who's who and they went to see the big acts. To me its all just faceless nameless music that I love :-)

Someone on the main stage

Me and Julian were mainly in room 1, occasionally going to room 2, and every now and then meeting up with Ben and Tim and co. Tim msged me and said "we are in room 3". Previously me and Jules had wandered around the entire place and had not even noticed a third room.

So we went wandering again and finally found it. It was also in a huge warehouse, but only in a tiny cornered off section. It was quite small, and the music was house-ish when we first got there. A few hours later we came back to the 3rd room and they were playing old-skool anthems, happy hard etc.. which was fun to dance to.

But most of the night was spent alternating between room 1 and room 2, and eating burgers and watching rides.

Crowd goes wild room 2

So much lighting!

The worst thing about the main room was that they only had speakers at the front, and the room was HUGE, so it wasnt as good at the back (although there was lasers and other lighting over the whole room). I think they must have had a discount special at the laser/lighting shop!

Crowd is pumped up

Yet another DJ

During the night apparently a lot of people were hospitalised due to strong drugs circulating. Different reports suggest that 8-12 people were taken to hospital. Me and Julian saw one guy get stretchered off the dance floor and into an ambulance. But in other news, an MP says raves are safer than hotel bars, which i definately agree with given the stuff i've seen at bars as opposed to raves. In 12 years of going to raves, I have probably seen 1 or 2 fights (when there are often thousands of people at a rave), and quite a few ambulances. However at bars I have seen many many more fights and many many more ambulances (when there are only a few hundred people at a bar).

Oh did I mention that I met Jesus. Yes a guy who looks like Jesus and had a Jesus tshirt. Hmmm..

Light dancing

Overall the party was awesome, I had a great time - havent seen that kind of vibe for a while. Looking forward to Prophecy in october and the next Utopia rave.

3-Jul-2006 - Soccer soccer soccer

Its been a while since I updated this page. All the excitement of the socceroos world cup adventure is all over.

When they played croatia I went down to Star City Casino again, this time with Ben T and Tim H. Ben brought along Marcus and korean Chris. It was completely packed out, but we managed to get some stools from the poker machines and take them over to a big screen they had set up.

There were hundreds of people cheering on the whole time, and the game was insane with the referee losing the plot completely. Thankfully we drew, allowing the aussies to make it to the next round. It was time to celebrate!

I grabbed my Aussie flag and went with tim into the city. Everywhere you went people were beeping their horns and screaming out of cars. All I had to do was wave the flag at the traffic and there would be honking and cheering out the windows hahaha. It was almost time to go to work, but we had about half an hour to soak up the atmosphere, so we went to town hall.

Town hall was where everyone had gathered and there were hundreds of people on all four corners of the woolworths intersection. Every time the pedestrian lights went green (they all go green in both directions at the same time), hundreds of people charged into the middle of the intersection jumping up and down cheering. It turned into a big party mosh pit.

I ran in with my flag a few times into the middle of it, and got into the action hehe. It was pretty rough in there... elbows, arms, knees, bags, and everything else banging into you. Eventually it all settled down, and it was time to go to work.

The next game was against italy, and it was going to be busy. So me, ben and tim turned up to star city about 45 mins before the game, but to our amazement they had closed the entire gaming floor. There were already too many people inside. All the bars in the area were full, so we had little choice but to get over to circular quay very quick! Ben decided to go home and watch the game, but he dropped me and tim off at the quay.

The crowd was very different. It was school holidays and there were lots of drunk teenagers everywhere. There were so many people at circular quay that it was very hard to see the screen. I could just managed to see about half of the screen most of the game. I think a lot of people there werent even there to watch the game.

During the middle of it, there was a big fight right next to us. I saw a couple of people get punched in the face, and someone went down to the ground. The police came in and some guy tried to fight the police. We couldnt really see what happened after that but an ambulance eventually came and stretchered a guy away.

There were people watching the game on top of a bus shelter type thing. The police didnt like that, and eventually the police rescue squad were called in to remove them haha.

When the socceroos lost in the final couple of seconds everyone felt so ripped off.. but oh well, they have done australia proud and hopefully the sport will take off in this country now... I cant stand and of the footy codes!