Rating: 5 out of 5 bottles of water
by Jim ‘Juicy Fruit’ Hauck
This weekend was the February installment of Industry, the long running monthly Saturday night dance in San Francisco. The party has been hitting Mighty, a great little club in the South of Market Area bordering Potrero Hill, for quite some time now. And this is one of my favorite spaces to dance. The sound system in this medium sized club is amazing, warm, full, and really packs a punch, and last night with the talents of Luke Johnstone and Abel on the decks it was giving it out in a one-two-blow!
I grabbed my buddy Mike to join me for this night out. We arrived very early at the club for the night out – like fist and second people in the door, and even then when we walked in it was obvious something was going very right for this night. Luke Johnstone was already on the decks, and he was laying down some great soulful house music that pulled us out to the dance floor immediately. This was not going to be a night to be a wallflower and stand around, the dance floor fun and antics were gloves off for the first round. I loved watching as Luke himself was dancing and grooving up at the DJ table with the music he was playing.
The crowd starting arriving pretty early, and usually Industry is a party where it takes until Midnight before the boys really get going and the dance floor begins to move. However, by 11:00 the crowd was starting to swell in numbers, and when Abel arrived at the club and took the helm, he kicked the second round off and through the party into overdrive. This was not a typical Abel warm up and get going moment. He dropped the party into that special Abel magical area of dark, progressive, hard driving sounds, that get your entire body interested. Maybe a little slower on the beats per minute to start, but it was winding up fast and the furiously. A special highlight of the night was being surrounded by a posse of friends as we all jumped and danced and sang at the top of our lungs to “Superstar”.
We occasionally ventured to the back room to catch some of the music from Rico Ocampo, Russ Rich and Byron Bonsall. I was only able to catch Rico who was playing some high energy more anthem driven music early in the night and then Byron Bonsall later in the night with a nice mix of house tracks and a group of faithful followers dancing around the room.
The crowd was in a great mood, the visuals were really done well, the lighting and lasers appropriate, and Mighty seems to be stretching it’s muscle and showing just how great a club that space is. While many of my dance floor buddies were missing from the floor last night, the crowd was engaging, fun and happy. Clearly, for me, this February edition of Industry, delivered on many notes, many levels, showing that it is a great party to attend and earning it a spot in the Juice Box 5 Bottle Hall of Fame.