Decentralized Dance Party

Mosca rocks ya, no insane ducats, on Sat/28

In this week's Super Ego column I bitched that club cover charges were getting too high -- and pumped some affordable, worthwhile upcoming parties. Here are even more for this weekend, including one called, yes, Cheap. You know it!

>>CHEAP
This new Thursday weekly party at the Stud promises "cheap booze, cheap fags, cheap tunes, cheap everything." Free cover, $3 well drinks, $2 PBR -- and a couple weeks ago a SWAT team landed across the street, no shit. So cheap entertainment, too! I'm totally saving some cash and turing gay for this.

Thu/26, 9 p.m., free. The Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. www.studsf.com, Facebook invite

>>I <3 COCHINA TONGA'S

This outrageously fun monthly party turns the Castro's LookOut Bar into a kooky Mexican cabana bar, replete with drag performances, dance numbers, giant sombreros and inflatable flamingos. Hostess Ambrosia Salad and probably SF's two cutest gay DJs, Taco Tuesday and Stanley Frank, play everything from salsa to Trina for a loosey-goosey crowd. Well drinks are $2 untill 11 p.m., mijas!

Thu/26, 9 p.m., free. LookOut, 3600 16th St., SF. Facebook invite

>>STACEY PULLEN

We at SFBG have a total soft-spot for the immersive, tribal-like second generation Detroit techno DJ -- he's got as much subtlety as muscle on the decks, but still leads you to ecstatic places. he'll be at the weekly BASE party at Vessel, which is a whole lot of fun for techno freaks and friends. And it's free before 11 p.m. with guestlist signup here. (Sign up before 8 p.m., though!)

Thu/26, 10 p.m., free before 11 p.m. with site RSVP, $10 after. Vessel, 85 Campton Pl., SF. www.vesselsf.com, Facebook invite

>>DECENTRALIZED DANCE PARTY
Helping to inaugurate a strange new era of crowdsourced party funding -- i.e. in order for the party to happen, there was a Kickstarter campaign (!) -- the DDP takes a really fun, familiar idea and slicks it up: bring an old boombox (with batteries!) and an FM transmitter will broadcast tunes from every speaker. It's decentralized! It's spontaneous! The theme is "Strictly Business" so wear formal business attire.

Fri/27, 8 p.m.-midnight. Join the Facebook page for info about the location, somewhere in the Mission.

>>DARK ROOM

Dark music, gay goth fans, industrial dancing, free whiskey shots before 11! Need we say more -- other than our favorite little hole-in-the-wall queer goth monthly will depeche your mode with complimentary silk-screened tees for the first 50 people through the door, in honor of its ghoulish first anniversary.

Sat/28, 10 p.m., $5, The Hot Spot, 1414 Market, SF. Facebook invite.

>>GO BANG!
Time for another installment of this sweaty-lovely monthly disco-soul free-for-all, this time featuring LA sleazy edit hound Cole Medina, self-described "drunk funker" Tal M. Klein, and one of my longtime crushes, Rich King of NYC's decade-old SNAXX club, which is indeed snaxxtastic.

Sat/28, 9 p.m.-3 a.m., free before 10 p.m., $5 after. Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin, SF. www.decosf.com, Facebook invite

>>MOSCA
Got to give it up for the always innovative Icee Hot party, popularizing the bouncy-deep UK bass sound in San Francisco and giving our nightlife a few other juicy headtrips, tunes-wise. For Icee's second birthday, Mosca, a prominent rep of the London's Night Slugs scene (read this neat interview with Paloma Ortiz), will join fellow rave-y Brit Altered Natives on decks, along with chill-toasty regulars Rollie Fingers, Shawn Reynaldo, and Ghosts on Tape.

Sat/28, 10 p.m.-3 a.m., $5 before 10:30 p.m., $10 after. Odd Job Loft at Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com, Facebook invite

All photos by Bowerbird Photography

When Sam Love and I finally arrived at Union Square on Fri/27 night, we were surprised by the mass of boomboxes perched on peoples' shoulders, like a thousand John Cusacks in Say Anything, heading down Powell Street. Somehow, we found our friends (Ickles and Eckles) when the party descended at the Powell Street BART station. The music blared and tourists careened their heads over the banisters of the station to see what the heck was going on. It was a Decentralized Dance Party (DDP), where strangers get dressed up, gather with their old boomboxes, and wait for the organizers to hijack a radio frequency, where they send out the jams on long antennas, for some major noise and wild Friday night dancing.

The theme was "Strictly Business," so at times it was hard to tell the downtown suits from the party people, which just added more crazy to the mix. Of course, it got pretty hot on the concrete dance floor and layers were quickly stripped. Eventually, we found ourselves walking down Market, a hoard of twinkle-toed goofballs, getting down to everything from Journey to LMFAO. Almost to the Ferry Building, we stopped in a business park at 1 Bush Plaza and were told -- gleefully? -- that we had amassed 400 noise violations. The cops gave us one more song. Little did they know, DDP would pick a nearly 15 minute-long song – extending the party just long enough to finish off those “water” bottles and find someone's shoulder to dance on.