Flag Day Party 2005

With the help of many I threw a party! It went down on August 5th and probably fifty people showed up. According to those in-the-know, it went extremely well.

Music

Matt and myself invited five bands to perform; of those, only Silencio showed and played. This turned out to be fine; after four songs the police came and told us to stop.

For Silencio, and perhaps just for fun, Matt rented speakers from Daddy's Junky Music and borrowed a microphone from his neighbor. The microphone cable turned out to be bad and technical problems spoiled it slightly for Matt and myself, but the audience didn't notice or care and just concentrated on enjoying the awesome music. After Silencio stopped I played CDs through the beautiful speakers:

1. Lycaon Pictus - Deviation Amplifier
2. Dr. Frog - Erector Set
3. Darediablo - Feeding Frenzy
4. Anal Cunt - I Like It When You Die
5. Lola Rennt
6. Godfathers of Hardcore volume 3

Music went well overall and special thanks for that goes to Marcelo, Dave, and Marvio of Silencio and to Matt. Thank you!

Beer

After much debate and discussion it was decided that since we'll be serving liquor in addition to the beer we'll only need one keg. This turned out to be correct; most people left the party before the keg was finished around 1AM. We used Matt's chiller again to keep the beer cold; as always it worked perfectly.

Nate was in charge of picking up, paying for, and dropping off the keg, and the kegmaster position was given to him after much argument among people who didn't want the job. Nate held the job quite well for three hours when his judgement started to fail and the job was handed to Matt.

The keg went quite well and thanks to Nate and Matt we made back some of the money we lost by throwing this party. Thank you!

Liquor

Many people don't love beer—shocking but true. To combat this problem we had available one bottle each of the following:

• vodka,
• whiskey,
• rum;

• cranberry juice,
• orange juice, and
• tomato juice.

In addition we had Coca Cola, Sunkist, Mountain Dew, and Sprite.

Much discussion was had with Mosier about these, but ultimately Sarah pulled through and told me exactly what to buy. She was wrong but still helpful.

All hard liquor was gone by midnight. The vodka went immediately; next time we need twice as much, if not more. The whiskey went next, followed by the rum. The cranberry juice went quickly too; next time we need twice as much. A half gallon of orange juice was gone by the end of the night, and the tomato juice was unopened (this is where Sarah was most wrong). I still have lots of soda left.

To help with this momentus undertaking, Anne constructed a bar for me. It fell apart when Matt leaned on it and was used to keep the fire lit.

Many thanks to Mosier, Sarah, and to Dicky for carting my ass around. Thank you!

Food

For food our mothers helped out: my mom provided chips and dip, while Fred's mom provided a watermelon (which my mom cut). Thank you!

People

People everywhere! As usual it started off with just the party-throwers looking at each other, wondering if people will show up. Then, bam!, everyone and their friend shows up. My best guess is that fifty or sixty people passed through the yard by the end of the night.

Highlights of the evening related to this include the group of people looking for 30 Elm St., which is where their friend Matt Ch-something lives, they think. We found out later that this Matt character told people that he was throwing the party, and in addition he gave out the wrong address. Genius!

Somewhat related is another highlight for me: walking up to the strangers standing around in my yard and introducing myself. Inevitably someone will walk up to us and point out that I'm the one throwing the party (I'm too modest to do it myself). The surprised look on their face never gets old while they piece together why I was asking if they were having a good time.

Advertising was done on The Facebook, Upcoming, and word of mouth. During the party I passed around a notebook and pen for people to sign up for the party announcement mailing list; twenty-six people signed up. I don't know if anyone from Upcoming showed up and I think only one or two people from The Facebook showed up, but word of mouth brought in tons of people. In the future we plan to concentrate on word of mouth and experiment with the mailing list as a far-reaching word of mouth.

A big thanks to all who showed up: thank you!

Police

Fred and I had discussed when we guessed the police would show up: my bet was on twice, once at 9:15PM and once again at 11PM. We were both wrong: they showed up once at 10:08PM. Apparently the entire west side of Wakefield called in complaining about the noise. The cops also said that people were in the street and they'd arrest anyone they found in the street; this was fine by me since if they're in the street then they're not at my party.

They politely requested the music be stopped as Dicky was walking over, so I asked Dicky to go ask the band to stop. Marcelo stopped, but Marvio and Dave kept on enjoying themselves on their respective instruments. Inspector Cass wasn't having any of that so he marched over himself and told them to stop. They reluctantly did.

After the police left we started up with CDs. The band packed up after a bit and left in an hour or two, but nobody at the party left (so far as we could tell). Great!

Thanks

Throwing parties can't be done alone, so thank you again, in no particular order, to Fred, Dicky, Nate, Matt, Anne, Mosier, Sarah, Silencio, and everyone who came. Thank you!

Tags

party, flagdayparty, flagday