Steve Aoki Bday Bash!

DIM MAK always throws a great party on Tuesdays @Cinespace. And when their CEO and Celebrity DJ Steve Aoki has his birthday party there too, it is bound to be mayhem! Luckily for myself I'm friends with the  DIM MAK door staff and breezed in after pounding some fists. Now normally there is an open Vodka bar from 10-11, however because of the massive amount of people who showed up early so they wouldn't be waiting in line all night, the open bar was over by like 10:35! Total buzz kill but whatever, the night was young.

The special DJ sets were finally announced!

Yup. So first up was The Fire and Reason. The singer was a little Brazilian sauce pot! She had everyone mesmerized, and it wasn't cause of her amazing voice...haha. But they didn't sound half bad either. Cool indie/electro pop sound with some Brazilian cultural influences thrown in, like when they sang a song in Portuguese.

Richard Vission

So about this time Iliana met up with me and snuck in a delicious chardonay disguised in a Smart Water bottle, haha gotta love it. She was already pretty tipsy and decided to let me enjoy her bottle. Thanks babe ;)

We fought to get to the front of the stage only to realize that they had blocked off the VIP area that we normally kick it in because it was reserved for Steve's friends only. Well to be honest I'm not a close friend of his or anything so whatever. We dealt with the crowd for a while that was slowly working themselves into a drunken frenzy. Then Adam Freeland laid down a pretty solid set but I couldn't really get into it.

By the time Steve Aoki took the stage the place was a sweaty mass of people all crowding to get as close as possible to the long haired, shirtless, crowd surfing, screaming DJ. It was madness and I had to hang back because well, I'm too old for getting kicked in the face and bumped nonstop. I like a little space in my party. So these pics aren't that close but you will definitely get the vibe of the night. Aoki is famous for a reason, he fucking kills it!! I've seen him countless times at LAX and Cinespace among other LA clubs and he never disappoints, really. Even his shitty sets are far better than most DJ's out there.

Steve Aoki aka Kid Millionaire, the man of the hour.

So as you can see it was an amazing night of electronic music in LA. If you were lucky enough to be a part of it let me know what you thought of the DJ's and crowd. Thanks!

Til next time,

Marshall

North American Open Swing Dance Championships

On Decemeber 3rd-5th in the great city of San Francisco I attended the North American Open or Balboa Battle or SF Bal Fest...they really need to find a name and stick with it. I had arranged with Burnie, the event organizer, to volunteer and be the videographer for the event. So a free weekend pass and some good times were soon ahead. I drove up Friday afternoon w/ Karen, Augie, and his wife Delphine. Thanks for the lift guys! And it was a good thing I did go up early with them because I ended up having to teach a beginning Shag class later that evening. It actually was a great experience and a fun class. I have to thank Karen for teaching with me, she was great! Friday night there was an awesome Django inspired band called Goucho. I had never heard of them, but they kept the dance floor packed and the feet moving for a good hour or so. Saturday Night they brought back Stompy Jones to the stage and Sunday the California Honeydrops played a great set of early blues, jump swing, and rock 'n roll.I shot all the contests and helped with the class recaps for the DVD. I was able to stay with some friendly locals in their awesome new townhouse with 2 others. Thanks Jeff and Rachel for a fab pad for the weekend! There were contests all weekend long in everything from Balboa, Charleston, Shag, Blues, Lindy Hop and of course being that it was held in SF, a same sex partner contest. For the full list of winners and tickets to next years event please check out http://www.swingchampionships.com/

My personal highlights of the event were being able to watch the class recaps and gain some knowledge on many new moves and techniques that I hadn't thought about before. It helps when most of the instructors are also your close friends :) Also just being able to fellowship with of many of my favorite people and catch up on their lives was a blast. Philip took Karen, Marissa and myself on a really cool afterdark tour of the city and we got some amazing views of the cityscape and some sweet shots of our own. All and all it was a great weekend in the friendly city. Thanks again to Burnie Gibson for an always interesting event. Here's some pics from the trip.

                                                                                 Goucho

Typical SF Neighborhood

Beautiful Cityscape

Huddled up to stay warm and peep the views

Bay Bridge

Our guide Phil

Awesome Shadow Fighters inspired by Karen.

Exploratorium (built for the Worlds Fair in the 20's)

See ya next year SF!

Giving Thanks for DIPLO

Wednesday night before Thanksgiving is a notorious party night in Hollywood. The MAD DECENT man himself Diplo was spinning at MyHouse and I had to go. I met up with some buddies from YTC and got crazy! Needless to say Diplo was awesome! Towards the end of the night, decided to get a little closer to the action and walked upstairs to the DJ Booth. All the usual suspects were already there, hoping to discover how Diplo is so fucking cool. He spun some of his greatest hits including some tracks from his new project Major Lazer, which if you don't know about, where the hell have you been! Check out the Dip pics and flix.





To see all the pics go peep my picasaweb

After we got our Diplo on, the night was not over by a looong shot. Word on the streets was there was going to be an epic afterparty at a new afterhours spot called "Freak City". The DJ's that were rumored to be there were pretty amazing so I jaunted down from MyHouse to check it out. My buddy Chris aka DJ Kick Mix was in the house and we got a little ravey in the dark room thanx to some borrowed glow sticks :) It was jumping off all around. DJ Hero was being played in the room upstairs next to the small boutique shop, right across from the photoshoot going on downstairs, it's a pretty dope pad. I'm definitely stoked to have an afterhours spot in Hollywood again! We decided to leave around 4am and grub over at Kitchen 24. Chris and his lady dropped me off back at my pad and I went to bed ready for a great Thanksgiving weekend.

some glow fun

Now some crowd shots...

Recession Renegades in the house!

Franki Chan

Kick Mix has a posse

DON'T THINK I FORGOT ABOUT THE VIDS!

CONTROL Friday w/ Rusko

Friday night was supposed to be a fun night with some friends coming into town to experience the craziness that is CONTROL @ The Avalon. It started with a pre-party at my pad with some SD homies





We were having a great time! The drinks were flowing and it was awesome to chat and chill with some new friends as well. We all cruised out around 1130pm to walk over to the Avalon for the BIG SHOW: Rusko! Little did we know that it would be pandemonium outside the venue! This is what we arrived to,



It was INSANE! I don't think I've ever seen this kind of situation at The Avalon on a Friday ever! I totally started going into connections mode, texting, calling, doing whatever I had to do to get my ass inside! I honestly can say this was the hardest I've had to work to get into a venue in a loooong time. The general consensus for the line outside was summed up by this dude:

Unfortunately this meant that some people had to be left behind. I tried to sneak my underage girl friends into the venue but it didn't work. They were forced to pay 40 bux CASH or not go. I ended up having to pay 20 bux myself even though I was on a few different guest lists, apparently they were almost at capacity and were making EVERYONE shell out some dough. I felt horrible for leaving my friends to fend for themselves but sometimes that's just the way it goes. Let me make it clear that I did all I could to help the situation but even my connections wouldn't make it any easier for them. SORRY GUYS!


Walking in through the Legit Lounge around 12am I heard the cashier saying that Rusko had just got on stage! HOLY SHIT I made perfect timing! I walked as fast as the people in front of me would allow to get into the main ballroom. There was already a damn clusterfuck milling around and getting amp'd for the show. As soon as I stepped foot inside the place BLOWS UP! Rusko delivered all of his dubstep hits, one after the other! It went a little something like this:

YOUTUBE

RUSKO Crowd





BLOWN AWAY! Rusko was everything I had hoped for and more. I saw him last year @ The Roxy and it was great, but this night he was on fire! Everything he spun was hitting sooo hard I felt my eyes vibrating. I thought the crowd was going to smash down the barricade. I made my way to the front right side of the stage and I see my jackass friends dancing on stage...haha, I mean that in the most endearing way ;)


RUSKO played for roughly 2 hours! No shit. After his set the place was still buzzing, you could tell something EPIC just went down in Hollywood. Timo Mass who was up next could not follow such an amazing set. The crowd dispersed into other areas, clearing the once packed dance floor. Whoever thought that Rusko couldn't headline this show was nuts. I was actually glad that Rusko went on earlier so we could bounce out around 230am instead of having to stick around til 4am when the show ended. BTW the Avalon is one of the few places in Hollywood that actually stays open past 2am.
I hurried back so I could give my friends back their belongings that they left in my apartment. I was still way too amp'd to sleep so I hit Twitter and noticed the rampant #Rusko tweets that were popping up. If LA didn't know about Dubstep before tonight, they most definitely know about it now! Rusko, originally from the UK now lives in LA so Los Angeles is sure to be killin it in the Dubstep scene. People, don't sleep! Go and check out a RUSKO show near you ASAP!!!!!!