The ‘no-electricity’ party

13Jun09

So last night I accompanied my housemate to a Disconnected, where they claim to disconnect the venue from the mains and have a power cut party in the dark. Bring your own torches we were told. No flash, no gash as your typical toilet attendant may proffer (thankfully they didn’t.) This was to be the final fundraiser before the boys and girls behind this project head to Uganda to run a bike-powered cinema for two weeks. Greener than Les Dennis watching Britain’s Got Talent. A environmentally-sound evening. Complete with my bicycle lights as torches…

Inkeeping with the smug no-emissions attitude, we got on the bikes ourselves and headed down to Shoreditch, only to be told that they weren’t ready for us yet, despite us arriving some time after the party was due to start. No matter, we went to the off-license and bought some beer to drink in the park in a fully licensed outlet that is happy for you to bring your own booze. On heading back some 45 minutes later, we found that we were still the first non-organisers there. And there was no music. And they still had some items plugged into the mains. At least they had a tandem. My flatmate and I had a go, being the cool hip guys that we are, only to find that it wasn’t yet connected to the dynamo. Oh. Another beer then.

Eventually others begain to stream into the abandoned warehouse and the mains were unplugged. A mystically powered projector showed a film of bicycles being, well, cycled and a man played a set of drums made out of bicycle parts. Have you spotted the trend yet? The dynamos were connected to the bikes and we all had a go. Having been cycling around London all day, I was less than up for this game, but hey, peer pressure is a wonderful thing.

Finding a balloon, we had a little game of keepy-ups and experimented with my cameraphone, the torches and the luminous balloon. This kept us entertained for some time while the music cut out (nobody could be bothered to cycle once the novelty had worn off) and produced some interesting results:

The final straw of the evening came when the organisers started shouting at us to get back against the wall, as if about to conduct a bank job on a bunch of penniless ravers. They had a show for us they said. We’d prefer some music, we responded, but alas, the show must go on. After they finally squished us against the back wall, out came an Asian girl dressed in what appeared to be a school uniform. I’m not sure the word ‘dance’ is really appropriate here, but I think that was what we were meant to be witnessing. After a couple of minutes I gave up, grabbed my bike and headed on home.

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Tags: disconnected, no electricity party, party in the dark, pitchblack rave, shoreditch club night, shoreditch disconnected, torch party