It just so happened that I was out the Saturday before All Hallows Eve, getting a drink with my friend, Noah. We were posted up at a local bar and grill, enjoying the shenanigans of our friend and bartender, Julian, who was preparing himself for Halloween activities. He was explaining to us the science of the makeshift Halloween costume as he had had a friend deliver him a couple of simple items to throw together a "soccer player" costume for a party that night. I put "soccer player" in quotations here, because, like I said, it was makeshift, but the makeshift-ness made it even more hilarious. With stapled short-shorts, a jersey, and sweatband, the costume would be finished off with a pair of running shoes. Unfortunately, Julian did not have such shoes available. His black, dressy, work shoes weren't quite something a "soccer player" might wear, so Julian became engaged in a conversation with a regular customer at the bar, an elderly man who had kindly offered Julian his shoes for the night. Julian was to follow the gentleman out into the parking lot to the man's car, where the man would give Julian the running shoes. Kind of awkward and a little sketchy, but the shoes were collected. It seemed hilarious that Julian was literally taking the shoes off the man's feet, but that's the spirit of Halloween right...? Charity and...oh wait...wrong holiday.
Noah and I were leaving the bar in search of our own Halloween activities, when I received a text message from a friend: "We're going to Penasco. Brace yourself..."
I was down, though I had no idea what Penasco was, where it was, or why I might need to brace myself, but in the more accurate spirit of Halloween, I was ready for whatever.
When I called my friend to inquire further about the night, he said there was an electro dance party happening at a place called Penasco Theater. Electro dance party?? Yeah, I was really down.
But, Noah...oh, Noah. Noah is my favorite old person and he went home. Haha. Again, I love you Noah, but you are old and electro dance parties are not the for those who don't find their hearts beating to bass. Fair enough.
So, I rolled to my friend's house and found him preparing himself for...well...a rave. I had heard electro dance party and I was ready for adventure, but I did not have my rage-wear...which of course is a fanny pack*, glitter of some sort, a crazy costume for sureeee....Halloween or not. No matter, we readied ourselves, as it was about 11 at night, to go chasing down this party. Then, it came to my attention that we had about an hour drive into middle-of-nowhere New Mexico in order to find this Penasco place.
Well, adventure, here we come. We piled into the car, half a closet of potential articles of clothing included, speeding north of Santa Fe with hand written directions and hearts set on dancing.
Now, growing up we never ventured into the valley. We never went searching for other people's parties, because, for the most part, we were afraid of what kind of people we might find. I'm serious. We were so close minded as high school students - but we were the product of the environment; we were told rumors by parents of dangers off of Los Alamos mesa and amongst our peers we propagated these stories which maintained our xenophobic mindsets based on stereotype masquerades, thus, we kept to ourselves. Since that time, most of northern New Mexico has remained as no man's land in my mind and I sure as shit would never have dreamed of searching for some electro dance party situated ambiguously in between Espanola and Taos. Yeah, no man's land.
(This is the good thing about partners in crime...they encourage you into unfamiliar territory - out of comfort zones and towards...well, you just don't know always, do you?)
We careened around mountain corners and pushed further into the depths of the state. I tried to log all of the road signs in my memory as we passed, so that I could remember where on earth I was. It was beautiful - the moon, almost full, lit up the night and revealed the landscape to me and I felt happy just to be driving. I had no expectations as to what we would find, so the drive itself became adventure enough for me. Then, we got to a fork in the road and it seemed like we were at the end of the directions. Where was the party? Shouldn't we hear music? Where are cars, people, movement of any kind? Let me paint a picture - it seemed like we were in an abandoned town. We were on a single road, one end lead back the direction we had come from, and on the other end of the "town", the pavement ran out and we were on what appeared to be a forest road. We drove back and forth on the road and went through the directions over and over again. Then, just because we were running out of options and common sense, we decided to just see where the forest road ended up...so we began romping on down the road...for fun...
Things began to get treacherous, so our new plan became: head back into the town/village/situation and the next car we see - follow it! Points for plans?
We circled back to the could be ghost town and I eyed the broken windows of abandoned buildings lining the road. Everything seemed a little eery. I was thinking that we were without hope of finding this party, when finally, we saw a car! It turned. We turned. It drove on. We followed. Mimicking its course away from the town we realized that we had been a couple of steps ahead of ourselves. This was the path! Heck yes, heck yes! And with no time to lose, the clock was glowing with the time - 1:30, speed racing commenced and I felt a new found anticipation. Electro party - here we come!
Just before 2 in the morning we pulled into another town development. We were finally in the place we were looking for - Penasco. Scanning the surroundings for a theater, suddenly, right in front of us was an old looking building that had the ingredients for a party: 1. space 2. music 3. people. We parked, we organized ourselves, we grabbed our belongings and launched from the car towards the warmth of the building and a party that we hoped was still in effect. As we approached I was looking for indicators of what awaited us. A woman dressed in what appeared to be an elaborate 17th century dress made out of paper and plastic items crossed the threshold before us. "What are we walking into?" I puzzled. I couldn't help thinking that I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into. No idea at all.
Entering the building, feeling completely out of my element, I experienced sensory overload. It was a fiasco! Holy cow! I was having my mind blown as I grappled with what was happening around me - glowing lights pulsed around us and people in all sorts of interesting costumes grouped together in the entrance. Leotards, wigs, go-go dancers, body jewels - elaborate costumes swirled through, tea was brewing and a fireplace warmed the sitting area, but a dance party raged on merely 30 feet away. Elevated on the stage, DJs were spinning and would be until daylight, so we really had only one option: dive right in.
Dive we did. Positioned at the front of the crowd, dancing became our mission. Finger lights were turned on and we attempted to compensate for our lack of elaborate costumes with just an elaborate presence. Imagine tracks like Booka Shade - Night Falls with some bass-y stuff too, it was our element and we were at the mercy of the night.
It was chaos and we were feeling over the top. As if caught in a time warp, we danced until we were exhausted and, well, it was almost 6 a.m., so it was time to keep on keeping on. We returned to the car to begin the trek back to Santa Fe, trying to remember our way through the back roads that criss-cross the desert. It didn't help that the whole world seemed fuzzy and surreal; even the moon was odd on this side of things, glowing bright yellow and clinging to the sky as the night slipped away. Barely outrunning the glow on the horizon, we seemed to float over the rolling hills, that climb steadily towards the mountains, before dropping into Santa Fe valley. We coasted and I gazed out of the window at the sunrise spreading across the world, curled up under my poofy winter jacket, still feeling the vibrations of the party, bass in my heart, and a wave of contentedness after an epic adventure and an epic night.
*I wrote a blog post about the majesty of the fanny pack.
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