A trophy thingy was set up in front of the DJ area at the Epic Red Cup Massive NYE Extravaganza. Click here for more pictures from the event.
New Year's Eve was a busy night for the Party Crasher. This sultan of celebration had more than a dozen destinations on his shortlist, including hanging with hot messes and douchebags in Old Town Scottsdale and knocking back a couple with William Fucking Reed's crew at The Rogue.
The main event of Auld Lang Syne, however, was the Epic Red Cup Massive NYE Extravaganza. According to the Party Crasher's sources, it was gonna be quite the boffo bash. Taking place at some secretive location out in the no man's land of P-Town's desert outskirts, a crew of PHX turntablists (including Norman Van Ness, Metatron, and Spyder) were going to fire up a generator, ice down the beers, and put on a rave-like dance party for their friends and fans.
Over on MySpace, the shindig was described thusly: "[We're] are gonna go out to the desert with too much firewood, too much booze, too much sound and too much, well, you know the drill...pretty much burn shit, get fuckered and play loud music on my new drivers and amps until the sun rises or they run us off."
It was definitely something the Party Crasher needed to check out.
After getting the location of the underground all-night affair from an infoline (a phone numer set up to give attendees the 411 on the day of the event), the Party Crasher hooked up with a friend and ended up about an hour's drive northwest of the Valley. The setting was a desert clearing underneath some high-tension power lines where a tent illuminated with black lights and colored bulbs held more mixers, amplifiers, and DJ equipment than your average club.
It's just like summer camp, only cooler.
You can kinda get a taste of what went down with the following (badly shot) video the Party Crasher got with his camera.
It was almost like a Burning Man-style hangout -- only way smaller -- with a sampling of the same kind of funkiness and PLUR (as in, "peace, love, unity, and respect") that you'd find at the annual weirdo festival held around Labor Day out in the Nevada desert.
There was also plenty of fire-spinning going on at the Red Cup extravaganza, as few party patrons packed their poi for the event. It resulted in some rather stunning sights, as demonstrated by the following photos.
Goodness gracious...
...great balls of fire.
But flammable balls connected to chains weren't the only thing getting blazed up, as the Party Crasher admits he smelled plenty of doobage being smoked at the affair. This investigator of the outrageous isn't naming names or anything, but he wondered if anyone was worried about getting busted by the fuzz.
Turns out they weren't.
An attendee by the name of "Lucky" claims that they'd already been visited by what he suspected were a couple undercover cops (likely officers from the Arizona Department of Safety) who came and left without incident. "They were asking if we had any weed or anything," Lucky says. "But we could tell they were cops and told them we didn't have anything."
Good thing, too, 'cause it would've likely brought the swift end to what was quite an awesome fiesta. -- Benjamin Leatherman
A couple of party peeps huddle together for warmth.