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"Treat your friends as you do your pictures, and place them in their best light."
                                                        - Jennie Jerome Churchill (mother of Winston Churchill)

1999 still remains the most memorable year of my youth, primarily and ultimately because of my brief but overwhelming exposure to the last remaining days of rave culture in its most self-liberating and colorful form. Go here for articles on the commercialization of raves, which began to occur around the time I started partying. Please wait for all the images to load.

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Lasers, lasers, lasers...






...and more lasers galore at "Eclipse," held at the 85th & Baldwin St warehouse
in Oakland. Yes, I caught these beautiful lights on video! No, I didn't roll that night,
even though it was my 20th birthday. What a damn shame! - November 6, 1999


Coming out of "Area 51," a massive party held by the Harmony crew at the 85th & Baldwin St warehouse
in East Oakland. You know it was a real rave when you come out looking like this at 6 or 7 in the morning.
- Photo courtesy of my buddy Ha Nguyen -


This is my buddies and I heading down to Southern California in a ghetto-ass van to experience a rave outside
of the Bay Area for our first time - spring break 1999. I sat in the passenger seat through most of the drive
while the rest of them (including the driver) were high on weed and e. It was the scariest six-hour ride of my life!!


We arrived in L.A. and finally located an affordable place to stay by late morning. Instead of sleeping,
we proceeded to make kandy bracelets, drop more e, and just act like damn fools inside the motel room.
I suppose it's only fair to say that I began to participate in the ecstasy use at this point.


And this is my dumb ass giving the entire world more evidence to blackmail me with. Don't judge me!!!
I was young and stupid back in those dayz (as opposed to now when I'm just old and stupid). If it's any
consolation, the shot of me in the van was staged. I was completely sober during that moment. And the other
photos? Well, I was probably acting a lot more fucked up than I really was just for the camera. I swear!!


And here are two shots of the rave which we dedicated that spring break weekend to. If my memory of that entire trip
is reliable at all, then the party was called "Happy" and was held at the Masterdome in San Bernadino with a capacity of
about 1,000 folks. Oh yeah, it was crap compared to the raves I had been going to in Oakland. The L.A. scene was ahead of
the Bay Area scene by a few years, meaning it had already gone fairly mainstream and had lost most of its underground vibe.

And here are a few more tickets stubs I saved from parties of 1999, including "Love A-Fair," my very first rave!

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