La-di-da-di... ACL Parties: Night ONE

Friday evening.

Austin Chronicle party at the American Legion Hall of Honor. Sure, some might say that we’re kinda in the same the market as these guys, and we agree to an extent. But that shouldn’t preclude them from aiding in our mission to get drunk. For free. We got there right as it was starting up, just to ensure that there was a plethora of booze options for us to pick amongst. Frozen margaritas, some forgotten brand of tequila, wine, and the obligatory Heineken/Amstel Light (Heineken Light). HUGE spread of wonderful, catered food. Crab-stuffed mushrooms and the like. DJ Mel was playing music upstairs, but the crowd just wasn’t into it. The heat had them bent on sucking down frozen margaritas and talking in clusters rather than shaking asses. Mel did not seem bothered by this in the least. Talked briefly with the people of Independence Brewery about how delicious their Bootlegger Brown Ale is. Hopefully Austinist will involve them in future parties. Tequila shots, tangy margaritas, and as much beer as we could handle before abandoning them to their Chronicle-ness. Bless them for being them.

Some friends, being Amstel Reps, were sponsoring a night at Foundation. Must be frank here, Foundation is not our speed. It’s well appointed, nicely staffed, good liquor selection, and the bathrooms don’t smell like the belly of a dead Elephant. But the crowd is…pretentious, to say the least. Gym-nazi Dudes hulking down Red Bulls and chicks with fake tits and jobs at Gentlemen’s Clubs. And oh, they rock the velvet rope. What the fuck is up with that? It’s a BAR without a cover charge. Do you WANT to sell booze or what? This is Austin, not Dallas, so let’s all dispense with the pointless pretension of wealth and just get down to brass tacks (those tacks being of the bourbon or vodka variety). Is this for fire code reasons or what? Anybody know? Regardless, we drank bottle after bottle of Amstel Light (hey, don’t knock it, as it’s the only light beer that TASTES like BEER) and got the fuck out of dodge before some “altercation” was to occur between us and some 6’ 4”, orange-tanned slab of meat draped in an un-tucked striped shirt. (by “altercation” we mean: the beating of our heads against the bar corner because we bumped some douche who was taking a line in an unlocked bathroom stall. Try LOCKING it, dick.) Good times, in spite of the “do you know who the FUCK I am? … HUH!!?” crowd.

On to a Party at Gallery Lombardi. We have no idea who was running this thing, or what bands were supposed to be on, but it was cuuurraaaazy (as the Lombardi parties tend to be). After chugging cans of free Natty Light for an hour or so, we noticed that the immense crowd was starting to get a bit wildish. As a set of train engines thundered by on the neighboring tracks (interrupting several pissing hipsters) bottles and cans were ruthlessly broken on the passing metal beasts. Then, a cab tried to push through the crowd (in the cab’s defense, it is a public street, so the hipsters needed to step the fuck back and let society through) and the kids just went ape-shit on him. Rocking the cab and hitting it with cans. Took that fool like, two minutes and shit to get through. We left shortly after that. We like a good ol’ fashioned riot as much as everyone else, but we HATE pepper spray. Hate it. It was a hell of a party, regardless.

Cabbed it to Factory People. They had the rooftop thing going, good DJs, and gallons of booze. We missed the earlier portion of the night, but we heard it was splendid. Ghostland Observatory played and The Boom Chica Boom girls did their thing. We were so obliterated by this time of the night that we really don’t remember a whole lot about what went down. We do remember that someone papered the entire interior of one of the port-o-lets, the bartenders on the upper deck were cool as shit with the heavy pour, some guy on the dance floor kept calling us a Chelsea Boy (if you ever see us, you’ll know how silly that statement is since we are neither gay nor pumped-n-pretty), and we tried to take out two opened bottles of Red Stripe in our back pockets as we exited into the early morning (way stupid, we know, but it was around five in the a.m. We couldn’t have won a third grade spelling bee at that point). Security hailed us a cab and we went home to sleep in the land of Catatonia.

*This photo is from the Austinist party, which was on Saturday night NOT Friday, but, because... why not?

**Best of luck to all those returning to Houston and the surrounding areas. We send our best to Baytown, and hope that they get back on track soon. If there is a god, may it bless the good people of Louisiana at some point in the immediate future, since it has chosen to be such a shit to them during this last month.