The Best Halloween Party Ever

I had more fun than you did on Halloween. Guaranteed. And I knew I’d be able to say that before I even got to the party. You end up shooting the shit with people on BART from Oakland to SF when it’s Halloween night, the Bay Bridge is shut down to traffic, the train hasn’t moved for 10 minutes, and you find yourself smashed between Kim from The Real Housewives of Atlanta and a Wild Thing from Where the Wild Things Are. You ask where they are off to for the night. They tell you. You say “that’s cool.” Then they ask where you are off to in your awesome nun costume. And you, or I actually, get to say “why Treasure Island, of course.”

“No way. How are you getting to Treasure Island? The bridge is closed.”

“Not to me.”

The looks on the faces of the Kim and the Wild Thing? You guessed it: Priceless. I had to take their pictures. Earlier that day I had been cursing the fact that the bridge wasn’t going to be open because honestly I was surprised at the crappy behavior of Cal-Trans, the agency in charge of the fixing the bridge and all that.

For 4 days they had been saying “Soon it will open but we don’t know when” so like an idiot I assumed the bridge would be open by Saturday night because, well, Cal Trans has been operating for like 100 years. You’d think they’d have learned the “under promise and over deliver rule” by now, right? Well it wasn’t open on Saturday night so after coming to terms with the fact that I had to drive to Oakland from Vallejo, then take BART to the Embarcadero in SF, then a taxi to Treasure Island just to get to the party, well I threw my house key at my neighbor – who’s name I learned was Rudy – begging him to let my dog Alabama out in the morning, and started the long trek to TI.

Here’s the point: The looks on those people’s faces when I told them I was bound for a party on Treasure Island was worth every annoyance I have ever felt at Cal-Trans, the Bay Bridge, BART, or being smashed against Kim from The Real Housewives. When they realized I wasn’t lying we all came to an unspoken agreement: I was about to have the best night ever at a Halloween party on TREASURE ISLAND!!!

The awesome part is that no one reads this blog so I’m totally going to identify the party and the people behind it. 2400 other people attended the shindig so what the hay.The party was called Ghostship: Shipwrecked on Treasure Island and the minds behind the madness were none other than the fabulous Space Cowboys and Sunset Promotions. I could go on forever about how awesome the experience was but I’m actually going to focus on one aspect of it: The Silent Disco. Because it blew my mind.

I had never experienced a silent disco and I didn’t really like the idea of the silent disco. The way it works is everyone entering the silent disco area was handed a pair of over-the-ear headphones through which they could hear the music the dj was playing. The dj was playing live at one end of the space. Without the headphone, you don’t hear the music. Now everyone knows that the dancefloor is all about experiencing awesome musis played live by a dj. Cool people know that it’s also about the sense of community on the dancefloor – the other people on the dancefloor play as large a role as the dj and the music do in the overall experience.

I didn’t get how putting people in their own physical headspace could contribute to or enhance that overall experience. And I’m not sure that at this point, having experienced it, that I get how it works. All I know is that IT DOES.

And the coolest part is when you take your headphones off for a few minutes, say to talk to a buddy for a sec. And all of a sudden you hear all the people on the dancefloor start whooping an hollering at the exact same time. They can’t hear one another, they can only hear the music. Yet they all start yelling at the exact same time! Every one of the 200 people on that dancefloor loved the very same part of the song dj was playing.

That’s when you know that the whole thing is real. You always thought it was. But now you, or actually I, know.

Here’s some pics I did not take at the party. Below is one photo I did take.

And if you are wondering, I was a nun on roller skates for Halloween.