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THE REVIEW!
So it’s 6:30 on a Friday night and I’m waiting for Blitz Kid to get back from picking up Chad and Westley and taking them to my house to get ready for the rave called “Masquerave 2” tonight. I didn’t know much information about the party, only that it was a rave where you were supposed to wear a mask to get in and that Rabbit & Mad Hatter-two DJs that usually spin either Hardstyle or Hard Trance-were going to be there. I figure that was good enough for me, because I’m shooting for my 100th rave and this rave would make my count up to #98 if I went. That and the fact that faster dance music than I get to normally hear will be for at least Rabbit & Mad Hatter’s sets. I set out to grab some food because my costume was already ready to go: I had made one of my glow in the dark shirts I like to do which this time was a striped tie with a star on the bottom, I had a silver mask I was going to wear under my hat so the hat held it on, then Jessie and I found a huge stockpile of small glowsticks for a really cheap price so she was going to make a skirt out of hers and I was going to coat my arms and legs in the bracelets with a different color each. This was going to be fun.
They finally arrived at the house around 7:45pm, which was really bad because I found out while waiting that the party started at 9pm and ended only at 4am (which is VERY unusual for a Florida rave to be so short), and they had to put makeup on so that their skin didn’t show when the mask was on, which took even longer and Westley and I were getting frustrated about leaving. The rave was in Boca Raton, Florida. Boca Raton is about 2 ½ to 3 hours away…
We all climb in the car around 9:15pm and I am now anxious to get there as fast as possible. Thankfully, Blitz Kid sped down the road as fast as he could so we’d get there hopefully with plenty of time. We stopped twice: Once for some energy drinks to keep our spirits high and all just kind of chat it up in the car and another time for Blitz Kid to throw up the very energy drink he just bought (hooray car sickness!).
Jessie, Patrick, and Marc were all already in Boca Raton from the previous day, so they were trying to direct us to the crossroads as best as they could, but once we finally arrived at the shopping area they were talking about at 11:30pm, we couldn’t get in touch with them to find out where the rave itself was. We drove around the shopping complex a few times until we noticed some ravers entering a hotel area and parked nearby.
It was actually rather funny to see. This really nice bank-like hotel with a huge marble and glass lobby area was invaded by ravers with bright colors, huge pants, and wicked masks. We followed the kids in front of us right past the receptionist, who greeted us with “Welcome to Masquerave!” there was a doorway behind her desk and from out of there came bright white beams of light and the sounds of people cheering. We found it!
We spent a few more impatiently wasted minutes making sure everyone was ready to go in, and I wanted to get into the rave so badly I decided to scrab my bracelet idea for now and just do ten green on one arm and ten blue on the other.
The place looked like a nightclub, which made sense because the flyer said it was an old nightclub called PULSE. There were stripper poles on either side of a large stage and a winding staircase that looked like it leads to a VIP lounge. Off to the side was a ton of bar areas which were re-kindled for this particular party to make some money, and the main floor was sunk in directly in front of the stage. Hardstyle, yes, HARDSTYLE dance music was rocking the floor and people were wildly bouncing in unison. The many blues and greens of the rave lights revealed the blank staring faces of tons of masked ravers as they danced and cheered at the DJ in the front: Who happened to be The Mad Hatter at the time…perfect timing! I immediately started to bounce. The place had some crazy energetic vibe, and with each bounce deeper into the dance floor I made another dancing partner. We ran into Patrick, Jessie, and Marc real quickly, which led us to two more people of our raver group: Jeremy and Sandy. With the group reunited, we gave each other hugs and split haha. I immediately started dancing and giving out lightshows to those nearby watching me dance with drool on their face (drugged up kids like watching me rave haha) and the only person that stuck by me was Westley who danced just as hard and fast as I was throughout the night.
For the first couple of hours all I did was dance, give lightshows, and talk to the random ravers around me, but then from there I started running around the place looking for my friends and dancing with them a bunch. Sandy, Jeremy, Blitz Kid, Chad, and Jessie all kept hanging out near the far right pole and just dancing all over each other and on it. Before going into the rave Chad mentioned he did some pole dancing back in the day…and he wasn’t kidding! He got up on the pole and was full-blown stripper status dancing and causing everyone to scream for him. He was actually really good at dancing on it! It was by far one of the best videos I took that night. Patrick even got up on the pole once and lifted himself horizontal by his arms which takes a lot of arm muscle and is really badass. I got bored with dancing and watching my friends on the pole (not to mention a bunch of prostitots started to replace my friends dancing up there) so during Rabbit (which was a really great Hardstyle set by the way) I started running around and goofing off with some of the raver kids who were playing with the confetti being shot from the ceiling after every really good breakdown from the 3 hardstyle DJs I had heard so far that night. Me and these two guys glitter-bombed this one girl and I didn’t even think twice about handing her my hat when she asked for it. She filled it with confetti and put it back on my head! Duuuumb Tommy I know, but yeah, now I had tons of confetti under my hat and in my hair, so I danced over to Westley and told him to take a picture whenever I said to. He had no idea why I wanted a picture of myself with my own camera, but he took the picture anyway as I started lifting my hat and let the confetti completely soak me in shiny paper bits which didn’t come off well into the next day (and 3 showers). I then played a kind of paper airplane game with like 5 people who were using these 3 foot wide black angel wings as a glider and were throwing it to each other over the entire crowd of dancers. All these games were of course during the course of dancing and giving lightshows. I was having such a good time and I felt like I had just arrived….
The final DJ went on at 3am. By 3:15am, I was sick of him. He kept trainwrecking because he was a new DJ and it was actually frustrating that my 4th and final DJ of the night didn’t blow me away like the others I saw that night. I ran into Chris the Pirate during that first half hour of the final DJ and he told me he had a ton of his hookahs going in the back area where the bars were, so I headed over there and jumped into a table with a bunch of strangers and started introducing myself. I stayed there for the rest of the night, smoking hookah and chatting with these new ravers I just met. Patrick and Matt joined in my table too, as well as Chris the Pirate came for a bit and even this one guy I only met once before named DJ esreveR. Talking with these people had us obtain information about where the afterparty was, but Patrick and I instead thought about maybe setting up his hookah (because he brought it with him) on the beach and watching the sun rise. Sounded like a better plan to me! The new people we met ran off to invite their friends to our own little mini beach afterparty, and by 4:30am we were on the road with 4 cars trailing behind us as if we had our own little raver convoy.
We made it to the beach quickly (after some confusion as to what roads we were supposed to take) and buried the two vases of the two hookahs we had in the sand, then surrounded them by blankets and started smoking as more people came. Jeremy and Sandy went off skinny dipping with two other ravers even though they were supposed to spin fire for us so we all basically lounged around and talked to one another while watching the sun come up with the hookah. It was real relaxing. This wasn’t the first time watching the sun rise on the beach after a rave for me, but it was the first time smoking hookah on the beach, and let me tell you that was definitely a great idea.
We finally got Sandy out of the water and she did some extremely sexy topless fire fan dancing while Jeremy prepared his staffs. When she finished, Jeremy did some double staffing, then some single staff fire spinning, then let Blitz Kid try using one of the shorter staffs to attempt fire staffing himself. He actually didn’t do bad at all! He only did two moves over and over again, but for his first time ever doing ANY fire tricks it looked really impressive. It was pretty funny to see joggers doing their early morning beach runs staring at this huge group of people hanging out on the beach with two Hookahs going watching people spin fire haha must have looked really weird. I loved being out there though, because Sandy and Jeremy were two people I had only recently started to get to know and this time around I hung out with them for majority of the night which was really awesome because the both of them are fantastic people. Jeremy even started teaching me how to do fire staffing, so when I get better at it I’m going to team up with him and we are going to have a really impressive fire dancing routine!
Chad had to leave so we could make it to Orlando before his class he had to do, so myself, Chad, and Blitz Kid headed back to Orlando (we left Westley because he said he would ride with Jessie and Marc) around 8am. During this ride, Chad told us someone finally gave him a raver name: Phoenix, which was based on whatever story he had told the raver about himself and the guy decided to name him that. This was Chad’s 2nd rave ever, and the kid thankfully got his nickname from some raver instead of the person who got him into the rave scene-Blitz Kid. I was proud of him as if the kid was my own raver recruit. Chad fell asleep rather fast after that, and Blitz Kid and I just hung out as we headed back up to Orlando on a regular speed-limit style pace. After dropping Chad off at his house and finally reaching mine at around 11:30am, we decided to stay up for the rest of the day doing random things in town until we would have to go see BT at Club Firestone around 10 that night. Why? Because we were so pumped up from such a good time.
The Masquerave 2 experience was certainly a fun one, regardless of how short my experience with the party was. It had a very old-school kandi kid vibe with a high-energy dance genre throughout the entire night. I kind of felt like I was in a California party by the way the rave looked, and it took a much stronger sense of feeling close with every person in the room for me to realize I was still in Florida, because only Florida’s scene has given me such a feeling of togetherness that is stronger than anything I’ve ever felt before. The Florida ravers make you their family. Its wonderful. I loved being out there as a big 25-person family on the beach sitting in the sand watching the sunrise with everyone, because it gave me yet another chance to bond stronger to the people around me. This rave was just like every other great rave in Florida, and I must say the only thing this party could have done to make this review a much more interesting one would be to simply make the party longer so even MORE memories could be created. I love Florida parties, and I’m really glad my scene is finally expanding on their music tastes instead of just one genre all the time. The Florida rave scene has fully recovered and soon will be back into it’s former glory of the best rave scene in the country like it was when I was a child, showing the government that whatever lame attempt you have at destroying a person’s heart and soul (RAVE ACT, OPERATION HEAT RAVE, etc.) YOU.WILL.FAIL for we are truly the utopian society you wish you had and are forever determined to keep this society alive. I must say, I’m proud to be one of it’s citizens.
THE PICTURES!
Marc and Jessie
Blitz Kid, Jeremy (snuck in the middle) Me
Westley
Jessie, Marc, and Patrick (yes Marc and Patrick are twins)
Jeremy.
Me, Blitz Kid, Chad
Glitterbomb!
Chris the Pirate
