The Juice Box

Rating: 4 out of 5 bottles of water.

by Ray Chalom

I felt like Norm from Cheers when I walked into 1015 this past Sunday night to hear the Freemasons. Everywhere I looked my San Francisco family surrounded me. It felt so wonderfully familiar and comforting. To make things even better Russ Rich, a good friend, was at the helm of the front room turntables thumping out as perfect a t-dance set as I’ve ever heard. He kept the crowd moving at a decent clip with fun vocals without making it sound like we were listening to a pop dance station. After an hour in the front room my eye caught sight of the lasers on the main dance floor. I blew Russ a kiss and spent the next three hours in the same spot.

My first reaction entering the main dance floor was shock. I could not believe how large the turn out was. The front room was busy but not packed so I assumed the party was going to be light on attendance. Apparently I missed the 600 people or so that walked right by me in the front room. As I walked into the room I spotted friends from the top of the stairs and made my way to a somewhat overly packed dance floor where they were dancing. I didn’t move from that spot for 3 hours. The Freemasons were spot on. They took the crowd on a wonderful early evening journey with a mix of music both old and new but all familiar. It was happy music that wasn’t thumping too loud to prohibit small talk but it wasn’t too low where you heard chatter. The music just made you smile.

The party wasn’t all picture perfect though. Whoever was controlling the fog and strobe light did the party a dis-service. The fog was so thick most of the night you couldn’t see past your nose. Turning on the strobes at the same time actually caused people to stop dancing, ground themselves and make snide comments about the ill-effect. I’ve written about my dislike of strobe lights in the past but I think everyone who attended was in agreement with my assessment.

Overall a wonderful combination of music, location, crowd & lasers.

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Tags: freemasons, Ray Chalom, Russ Rich