Andrew, Paul Thompson, Ben LaHayes, Justin formerly of Slashdot, Dave the meta-wildetuna from Andover.net and some really drunk people I don't personally know and I went to _Allright!_ last Saturday night. Our merry crowd was recruited from Ottawa Linux Symposium goers; this was my first Ottawa rave.
Paul, Andrew, Dave and I went to Shoppers' Drug Mart (described by Paul as "your one-stop rave supply shop") to pick up candy and pacifiers. We napped, then went downstairs to the Westin lobby to wait for the other rave-goers. Proceeding to our location, we realized that the location printed on tickets *wasn't* the location of the rave, but the location where the tickets were printed. D'oh! We took cabs to the rave, which turned out to be in the country, something like 8-zillion miles from downtown Ottawa. Good thing we decided against trying to walk it. ;-)
This rave had good things and bad things. The security is best described as "raving with Big Brother"; they had really fascist-seeming security, that would shine flashlights on you if you strayed from designated partying areas (I was playing Abe's Oddyssey before coming to OLS, so I kept thinking that the security at the rave was like the master race in Abe's).
The music was mostly so-so. We got warned by the cops halfway thru the night and had to turn down the volume. The star DJ (I forget what his name is. Paul, do you remember?) OTOH was awesome, he was totally into spinning, hopping all over the place, running outside to yell at the crowd to come in and dance.
It was pretty awesome to rave outside and see the moon rising and the dawn rising later on. Everyone was super-friendly and snuggly, which was the best thing about this rave. We brought a bunch of candy to give away, and this turned out to be a really good idea: everyone was soooo happy to get candy, and we got lots of hugs. Some really cool person had brought strawberries and cherries to share with everyone.
We lost the unidentified drunk people at some point during the evening, and Justin deserted us as well, taking with him his funky hat.
At about 5 or 6 the rest of us were all raved out and decided to go home. The bus took _forever_ to arrive, leaving us freezing in the cold morning. OTOH, riding a yellow schoolbus coming down from a rave is fun in a perverted return-to-childhood sort of way.
Dave and I had a hot tub back at the hotel; hot tubbing has to be,
without any doubt, the best way to recuperate from raving. Ah,
life is good. :-)
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