Sue's Revues: I Got Carded at a Rave: A Cautionary Tale on Growing Old Gracefully

I had kind of an amazing weekend so I thought I would share it with you all.

I went to a rave.

This is the first rave I've been to in many, many years. I attended a couple (back in the day when the venue had to be secret) when I was a belly dancer. I remember one in particular that we performed at. I was dancing on top of a platform behind the DJ and at one point I looked down to see a couple having sex behind the stage. At least they were behind the stage, right? As I was looking at all the young people this weekend it occurred to me that one of them might be the offspring of that coupling. It could happen.

The rave I was at this weekend was called Beyond Wonderland. There were similarities and differences from the raves of my youth. Similar: Everyone is on their drug of choice and tripping HARD. Difference: This rave had a full bar (glorious). And lots of vending. I don't remember either of those back in my day. Also, I don't remember them having names, but that could be because it was 1000 years ago and I'm old.

I went because my dear friend (and frequent Blogguest) Lisa really wanted to go for her birthday. Never one to deny a friend a birthday wish or turn down an adventure, I packed some old belly dance costuming and my weight in glitter and flew down to San Bernardino. I will admit, in hindsight, that I was a bit unprepared for what I found.

When all was said and done, Lisa and I ended up naming our adventure Beyond Shackleton. We felt as if we'd ventured into unchartered (for us) territory and came back the richer for it. I researched Ernest Shackleton and found this quote that I believe is pretty apt: "For scientific leadership, give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems to be no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton." True dat.

Here is some insight into our own personal frozen ship.

Aren't old people cute?

I arrived Friday night, costumed up and headed to the event to meet Lisa. At the entrance there were signs about presenting tickets and ID. Seriously? But I didn't want to be the asshole who has to rummage in her bag because I thought they wouldn't check. These people have jobs to do and I didn't want to get in their way. So I get up to the front and take one look at the infant who's taking my ticket. I lift my ticket and ID with a big grin and she looks at me, grins back and says "I'm gonna check your ID!" so I responded "And I'm gonna give you a hug!" (I also got carded at the bar. The excuse was that my license could be expired. Quick thinking, Puppy!) While this "look at the old person at the rave" is charming the first time, it lost its luster almost immediately. And trust me, we got a lot of it. Girls touching our faces - I'm sure it's amazing to feel wrinkles - and boys hugging us. They were just so happy to see people our age out and about (and they were tripping their asses off). One youngster said "Oh! I love seeing old ravers." We knew she meant it from the heart, but honestly. Lisa and I started joking about how they must be thinking "I wonder who took them out of the convalescent home and brought them here? Where did they store their walkers? So sweet!!"

Um, what are you wearing?

While I saw the requisite animal costumes and shiny Betabrand stuff, what really surprised me was what a majority of the young girls were wearing. Or were NOT wearing. I have never seen so many bare ass cheeks in my life since I was at that hamam in Istanbul. They were all essentially wearing thong underwear with some strips of fabric wrapped around their legs (I'm not sure if these were attached to anything, actually). I admit to saying some very Mom-like things about this along the lines of "Those aren't clothes!!" And while everyone wasn't dressing to enhance their actual body type, I applaud the self confidence of all the girls who were running around in bras, thong panties and glitter. Honestly, Lisa and I looked like nuns in comparison because we were wearing *actual* clothes.

"Actual clothes" include hats!

Adventures in transportation

I took Lyft primarily from my arrival in San Bernardino to my departure. Unlike San Francisco, the Lyft drivers seemed much less interested in picking up late night partiers. Additionally, Uber had some sort of monopoly on the event; there was an Uber pick up area that no other cars could enter. I call foul on that. On Saturday night, Lisa and I left the venue around 12:30am. The venue had closed off most of the nearby streets so we decided to walk away from the melee and call our Lyft. We stopped on the steps of a suspect looking community center to connect. And I couldn't. My app wouldn't work. Neither would Uber - I kept getting a "weak signal" notification but really NOTHING was happening - and a cab would have been at least 45 minutes. The whole neighborhood was deserted and creepy as fuck, so we decided to walk back to the venue and get a ride at the Uber monopoly. As we walked we saw a Lyft driver just sitting in his car. We ran up to him (well, I hobbled actually. My feet were killing me) and he said he could take us. As soon as we got in his car (my app still wasn't working so I couldn't book him) he got a call and had to take it or it looks bad on his Lyft rating. So, after a LOT of back and forth to find the herd of children he was picking up, we ended up being escorted 30 minutes out of our way to their destination and then back to our hotel. We were safe, but halfway there we were SO ready to be home, comforting each other by muttering "jammies and pie, jammies and pie!" (we had wisely purchased the pie earlier). When it was actually our turn, our driver turned into an absolute chatterbox. As we were nearing our exit he said "okay, I'll take Tennessee St." then marveled at how "all the streets have state names!". He marveled so hard about it he passed our exit. For. Fucks. Sake.

Thwarted by technology

After dancing for hours over the course of two days, my feet were trashed (I went for form over function, which was my fatal flaw) and we were both exhausted so all we wanted to do was eat that damn pie and watch some TV. After the debacle with the Lyft app, we got back to the hotel and the TV showed a screen saying "Weak signal". This was Lisa's final straw. She started yelling at the TV, asking if we were suddenly in a war or a major technological meltdown. It was EPIC. Thankfully, the TV did eventually work and we were able to get our fill of Law and Order: SVU.

So, being the intrepid explorers we are, we journeyed into parts unknown, metaphorically froze our asses off in a sea of infants and came out the other end realizing that one can be cool and have a great time no matter what number is attached to your age. In other words, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."

My takeaways:

#1 - When one walks 30,000 steps (15-ish miles) in a 24 hour period, one should not be surprised that pie at 2am doesn't blow your diet.

#2 - Electronic music isn't my favorite, it's a bit repetitive for my taste but considering probably 99.9% of the people there were tripping on something, it's the perfect music for this kind of event. The venue was decorated beautifully (again, perfect for tripping) and both nights were lovely and temperate. I had a great time.

#3 - Corn nuts smell like ass. On an airplane, they smell like ass at 45,000 ft.

xoxo...hashtagSueslife