7. Winter Survival Guide

 

The winter can be a harsh and unrelenting time for Ohioans, especially for the ravers. Raving in general is viewed as a Summer sport. Usually we are worried with keeping our body temperatures down, not freezing to death! Parties like the Electric Daisy Carnival come to mind (see a video HERE!) and most guides instruct you to dress cool. But this dynamic changes slightly when you risk frost bite in the walk between your car and the club!

Fortunately for you, I have compiled some hints and tips here, as well as some encouragement to get you out to the club, despite the cold! Winter raving is just as good as summer raving as long as you do it smart… which basically means not getting hypothermia and not trying to break dance on ice. 

Winter time is a time of comfort. And in years past that has meant that people either stay in, or else they go to the places they feel the most at home. As a result, the scene becomes more dense and homier itself! People don’t like to explore too much in the winter, so the scene gets to take a collective breath and heal a bit from the assault of non scene members infiltrating the clubs. The summer is a time of growth where new people are exposed to and possibly join the scene, which is both necessary and exciting, but this is the season where we get to relax a bit and build community. 

The problem remains though, that the temperature outside is below freezing, but the club is so hot the windows are completely fogged up. So what is a dancer to do?

Winter Tip #1  For one, don’t risk your valuables. It’s just dumb to try and not wear a coat to the club, but since you are going to have to set it down somewhere, don’t choose your priciest or most beloved one. Chelsea Baker does it right, rocking a cute coat she got on sale for 20 dollars. There is a risk it will get stolen, so make it cheap alright! 

Winter Tip #2  You can also cut down on risk by keeping your keys on you, rather than in your jacket. For guys this is easy, but for girls this is a little bit trickier.  I like to take just my car key off the ring and tie it in my shoe laces. Make sure you double knot it so it doesn’t come loose, (also, the key comes first, before the knot and before the bow). Leave the rest of your keys in the car. That way, you don’t have to worry about getting your keys stolen either!

Winter Tip #3   As a final option to minimize the chance of you getting a nasty surprise when you look for your things at the end of the night, bring a large bag with you. A great option for girls is a bohemian bag, big enough you can fit your coat into. For guys, a backpack works as well. The point of this is to make your luggage bulkier (and it protects your gear from dirt and spilt drinks). It’s pretty easy to steal a tiny clutch or snag a jacket, but evil doers will think twice about trying to lug stolen property out the door.  

It’s important to stay warm in the winter, so having a coat is important. Now would also be an excellent time to get used to wearing pants out, rather than shorts or skirts. Not everyone has this problem, but I find that I overheat way too easily in jeans. Instead I wear very thin pajama bottoms in fun prints, there is some protection for my legs, but it isn’t confining either. 

Another  big risk in the winter is getting sick, and nobody likes to be ill when they could be out dancing. But do us all a favor okay, don’t go out if you’re sick! We don’t need a pandemic going around our club. Let me emphasize that one more time…

Winter Tip #4 IF YOU’RE SICK, STAY HOME.   

It won’t do you any good, and it certainly won’t do the rest of us good either. Speaking of which, Vitamin C isn’t just for when you’re rolling. Stock up on it and keep dosing. As for when you ARE rolling, remember that you can’t feel temperature very well so keep it in mind not to stay outside for too long. Which leads us to the next tip, courtesy of David Terrill…

Winter Tip #5  The human body isn’t meant to change temperatures rapidly, doing so puts you more at risk to get sick, and no BODY wants that! Do yourself a favor and cool down after dancing inside first, before you head out for a smoke or for some fresh air.

Then there are a few others that I thought of…

Winter Tip #6   I don’t really think I need to mention this, but just for good measure… Girls, please leave your heels at home! Ice and snow and muddy dance floors are not the appropriate terrain for cute wedges or spiky stilettos. 

Winter Tip #7  Keep an extra outfit in your car, that way, if you get wet you won’t have to go home, and if you decide to go to an after party you can bulk up  a bit. 

This is a great season for ravers. It is also a great time to get into the scene if you’re not already. It’s more about the music and the dancing in the winter and a great grounding for newbies to ease into the different dynamics. I myself joined the scene in the winter and it was a very smooth and pleasant transition. Of course, then I learned to rage my face off… but that takes time :p 

What are your Winter Rave Tips? Please, let us know in the Comments section. Also, check out Rave Bright on Face Book HERE and like it, as well as check out my new pages, Featured Events  and Connect!

6. Leboom!!!

LeBoom is often described in a nutshell as the largest monthly dance party in Columbus, and that, I have to say is an understatement. Every third Saturday of the month Skullys is always crammed full, but it’s never been as packed as it was this Saturday. It is thrown by local production company My Best Friends Party MBFP , if you haven’t heard of them its about time they make it into your mental dictionary. If you want to go to a great party, check out what these guys are up to. Other than throwing LeBoom, they also throw Thump, my favorite weekly party at Circus. They are even expanding all across the map next year with what they call The X Tour. 

MBFP doesn’t just throw the parties, they play them! I’ve been dancing to Attak and Carmas spinning since my very first day in the scene.  And as local photographer Bryan Barnes says, “They are a pleasure to work with.” Bryan is the official photographer for Leboom and shows no signs of wanting to quit, actually he says that “Leboom is my passion”. And it shows because each album he puts out has a unique feel to it, which isn’t surprising considering that he likes to “keep is fresh with new techniques”. He plans on including some photos that are in a style of black and white that he has been reading about in a book that was written in 1985. “The thing is older than me, older than digital photography even”, but he still plans on utilizing the techniques on the next Leboom album. You can see some of his photos right here in Rave Bright! You can also check out his face book page Lite Brite Image.

Another key player in capturing Leboom for the masses is Videographer Mike Harmon from Mike Harmon Ent. As he says, discovering EDM and the rave scene was a key part of his life, and he has been expressing that by being involved with all the Lebooms. “What we all push for is helping the local scene”. Mike releases video promos of all the Lebooms. Since I he hasn’t had a chance to edit the new one yet, I have included last months video. This guy is a king of editing, check how he edits drum beats to actual drums! Incredible!

The greatest thing about Leboom is how many people it brings in. I was talking to Tom Kolassa and he was joking around how Roevy has turned into Broevy with all the guys they bring in (his words not mine!), but in reality, although I could pick out the Bro’s in the crowd, they were remarkably well behaved. I think perhaps we have been influencing them a little bit. EDM, saving the world one bro at a time! Tom actually just got a twitter account running for MBFP with is @MBFP614. 

This Leboom was crazy though! I got in at 9 to listen to local Dj and live painter Heady Ruxpin play and even at the very beginning there was a group of people on the dance floor. And plenty were dancing. By just 10:30 the party was in full swing and as busy and crammed pack as it has ever been! Sure, you could still walk through to the patio without having a minor panic attack, but that was fixed later on in the night! I guess people realized how fantastic the party is and decided they didn’t want to miss any of it! I know I will be getting to the show early from now on!

There are a variety of reasons to go to Leboom, the largest being the incredible music, the dancing and the fantastic environment. But he reason I love Leboom is the people! You never know who you’re going to get to talk to. I met some incredible people last Saturday. Leboom brings in a crowd from all over, including way way out of state! I met a girl named Jenna out of Cali at Leboom, an incredible person and raver! She will be heading back home in about a month but until that time, Columbus has to show her how fantastic our scene is! 

I also met a guy named TJ and his friend Domo. I could tell right away that these guys were empathic, they truly knew how to feed off the energy of the crowd. So, I tried feeding my energy to them. TJ really got into it, he closed his eyes and I sent waves of energy at him, describing the sensations I was feeling at that moment. Although I broke off talking several times, it wasn’t until I pulled back on the energy that he immediately opened his eyes. I got him rolling for a few moments, even though he was SOOOOBERRR!!! Would that have worked on everyone? Absolutely not. But that’s what’s cool about the variety of people at Leboom. Certainly I couldn’t have had that experience without meeting these guys. 

Leboom is a huge party and a lot of fun! It is through the efforts of MBFP for booking the amazing Dj’s they do that is responsible for the constant amazing crowd. Next month is its one year anniversary and I refuse to miss it! Plus, I heard Crizzly is playing and I’m already pumped! With as big as Leboom is getting it should possibly think about expanding. Mike Harmon thinks that by next spring we could push the Newport into throwing a Leboom. Maybe not every month, I’m feeling kind of selfish at keeping them at least relatively small scale, but a few times a year a huge Leboom would be amazing!!! 

What do you think about moving Leboom to a bigger venue???
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5. A shift in the wind

When I first started my blog, and even when I first started thinking about writing it, I had one post that I wanted to do in mind… A long rant about how much I hate the break dancers that come into our scene. Think about it, they are cocky, arrogant, and they take up space. They were using OUR club as THEIR playground and not showing it any respect. 

 At least, they used to. I’ve been keeping an eye on them since day one, and although I made friends with the liquid pop dancers of the group quickly, it was Deo Martinez, the break dancer of Chemical X that I loathed. A show off if I ever saw one, his method of dancing was doing as many tricks as possible, regardless of the beat. And regardless of the size of the crowd, even when the club was packed full he insisted on doing floor tricks. I got kicked by him that way once, which, come to think of it… may have sparked the hatred for him, more or less. 

So you can imagine my surprise when I saw him flow-glowing last Wednesday at Circus. Never in a million trillion years did I ever believe he would ever pick up a pair of glow sticks and then dance with them for the entire night. And he wasn’t the only one, Chemical X members Colin Cousins and Andre Currie both armed themselves with brightly colored chemical reaction sticks that night, which is actually an ironically nice tribute to the name of the troupe.  And they were also not alone. When I first walked in at 11pm the first thing I saw was 3 or 4 new girls glow sticking and flow-glowing in the back corner. 

I had the pleasure to talk to the most skilled of the new raver-chicks, a short brunette with a killer body named Layla. Despite having such a small body, the greatest thing about Layla’s dance was her strength; all the power she controlled. Last Wednesday was only the second time Layla had ever been to Circus, but needless to say she is now going to be a regular.

Suddenly, last Wednesday, I wasn’t the only flow dancer, I wasn’t a novelty. And in an EDM club, that’s the way it should be! I walked into Circus and finally, it felt like home. The break dancer that I used to despise for walking into my club and ignoring or probably not even noticing all the amazing things that make it great, was dancing with glow and socializing and having a great time without feeling like he had to show off.

 My friend David Terrill said the other day, “You do it to be with the music, you do it for you”. Finally, I sensed that Deo understood the value of that, and as it turns out he's a pretty cool guy  :) Not to mention that there were at least four more girls with glow, three crew members and two more male poi dancers all intermixed with the rest of the crowd. The energy was super high and everyone was just keeping it cool. I felt a dramatic change that night, a true shift that I hope is permanent that tells me that we are accomplishing what we set out to do in the scene, that it is getting bigger and better and in the right way.

Editors Note: I have added a new feature "Rave Tips" located at the top of the page, check it out!

Have you felt the change in the scene yet? What do you think about the break-dancers? 

4. Make me a masochist

As much fun as the Rave Scene is, it has a gritty underbelly. Not in crime (like in some other scenes) but in the music and the environment itself. It feeds on us, it relies on us to provide it with the energy it craves, and yet it abuses us. It is the most violently rewarding thing I have ever witnessed. We go to the clubs and allow it to wrap us up so tightly we can’t see straight, and right when we love it the most it drops us hard and gives us a thrashing that leaves us weary. It has made most of us masochists for the music, slaves for the sound.

Even when I first joined the scene I subconsciously knew this.  I naively wrote about the violence lovingly. I wrote about how it takes control of you, it possesses you, but it leaves you strong enough to control yourself amongst other humans. It teaches you the strength to be independent from those people that would like to control you, but all in exchange for some amount of your helplessness towards it. Going through one of my composition books I found a passage that reads like this…

“The sound beats the crowd across their collective face, arms raised in expectation fall, as one [to the drop], dubstep is about power. I am within the influence of the sound. The bass grinds on my body, so I allow it to maneuver my hips into long flowing figure eights. Its hold is rough, forcing me back and forth. The weight of the beat bears down on me, my legs collapse from the pressure, but the sound buoys me up. I merely twist low to the ground and back up. Control. The bass and the beat controls me, the grind and the glitch constantly pull me towards them like twins fighting. The drum occasionally steals me from them all…” 

It goes on. 

As much as I love the way it controls and empowers us, I don’t know that is needs to be quite so mean sometimes. I’m into it for the expression, and even though someone raging out is contributing, there should be more room in the scene for the hoopers to move around in. And I’m not talking just about physical room.  I would love to attend a party that is made out of pure fun and lights and bright colors. A place that awakens the imagination. 

I am seduced by the darkness of dubstep, but I want to fall in love with the joy in electro and moombah. There is so much more the scene has to offer and I don’t want to miss out on any of it, sexy AND silly.  

What do you think? Are we getting a little to gritty or is the scene just right? Would you like to go to a happy go lucky rave?

Take a second and answer my poll!