From: bbehlen@soda.berkeley.edu (Brian Behlendorf)
Date: Thu, 6 May 1993 15:17:26 -0700
Subject: F M R

Wow, this was the best time I've had at a party since the first FMR at Berkeley Marina.

First off, Geoff was actually the one who thought of and first scoped out the locale; I came down a couple times after that to see what the patrol situation was like at night, and discovered that turning left at the end of Embarcadero resulted in a better place than turning right.

I was SO NERVOUS about this location, what with a) PA cops having a reputation for "being bored" and b) East Palo Alto not too far away. In fact I was so nervous I could barely see straight while driving there. But we got to the lot, parked the car, and Geoff and Stevie and I proceeded to plan out where to park cars in the huge lot. This was about 1am. Within maybe an hour 100 cars had shown up, and over the course of the night a total of 260 cars were there (probably more, this is a count I did at 5am)

Anyways, by 3am the sound system was JUST getting set up, and still no sign of cops. I was flabbergasted, as I had totally expected them to show up by then. The music switched on, and the 400 or so already there turned off their car stereos and started dancing. Instant "critical mass". We were now unstoppable :)

High points through the night:

1) walking out to the edge of the marsh walkway extending from the building there and listening to the music from 1/2 mile away. Why does House music sound so damn good in the outdoors?

2) seeing a big Public Works "reclaimed water" truck pull in - I feared the worst, like uhoh, he needs to do something here and we're here and he's gonna call the fuzz and have us shut down. He turned his truck around and parked in a side parking lot, got out of his car, and joined the party! He said he could hear the music from the recycling plant about 3/4 mile away, and wanted to see what was happening :)

3) talking to a Palo Alto high school student in the morning who said, "I have to leave - I have a calculus final in 10 minutes!"

4) Standing on top of those Stonehengian concrete blocks and looking out over the crowd. EEeen-sane.

5) The cops finally showed up around quarter to nine (!!!!), and actually they would have never known about it had the park rangers not called them. Someone walked up, explained what was going on, said we're a responsible group, we pick up after ourselves, etc., and gave the cop his name and number. The cop said, just be gone by 11 or so... I was completely blown away :)

6) EVERYONE was smiling, dancing on top of vans, speaker stacks, everything spelled P-O-S-I-T-I-V-I-T-Y.

The bad points:

1) Too much alcohol and nitrous. Thanks, Wally!

2) Even though the dance floor and cars were on a packed dirt parking lot and thus not harmful to the environment, unfortunately there were a lot of people walking through the plant life next to the marsh, crushing sensitive plants and such. The site would have been perfect if it weren't for this.

3) SOO much trash! But it got cleaned up, most of it at least (and WHY is it standard to throw cigarrette butts on the ground? Come'on, people! Those are SOOO hard to pick up and throw away :( )

But that's about it for the bad points. Overall, I was deliriously happy. Peace to the huge SFRaves posse in effect there, and everyone :)

Brian