From Big Brother, Bay Boyz... Thoughtpolice.com, an excerpt from their weekly Notes from the Underground,

I continue the weekend marathon Saturday, checking out another fine party - hidden away in a warehouse with the address "second door on the right", and hosted by the glorious people at iBabylon. No one works harder to throw a good gig, and they come through with glowing colors. Even Iain is back and partying hard, after having had his finger surgically re-attached due to a set-up mishap earlier in the evening. Raves may be falling out of fashion, but iBabylon's parties have decided to simply evolve into a gathering of great art, cool people (with amazing costumes, such as StarBoy and Marcia wore), great DJ's, and cheap drinks. Of course, Flash has managed to find himself tending bar, so any given drink is strong enough to inebriate the entire 1st Infantry Division. No mind, I've got a flask, great music, and lots of friends. Some of The City's least known, but best talented artists are displaying their work, and if you're lucky, you can peruse it while getting a massage.

The Bunny Girls stroll in with ears a-fuzzing, and teach people how to really shake their booty. Rumors fly that Big Brother Himself has shown up at the gig, but neither I nor the Minister of Truth saw him - though he does try to keep a low profile. I'm having a ball, and sandwich girl keeps me company while members of the notorious BillBoard Liberation Front lurk near the front door. A bit later, the cops show up, but they're tres cool and do a walk though just to make sure no one's getting killed. Chief Babylonian Jeremy handles it all with aplomb.

The party continues well past 2 AM, which is about the time it goes nuts. As Big Brother Himself has said: "It's not a party unless the Extra-Action Marching Band shows up." And show up they do. Matching outfits grace the 15 or so drummers and their gorgeous flag girls, who gracefully spin their way through the crowd while their on-staff bartender pours tasty rum drinks from his traveling bar. The crowd goes wild as they move into #39, and they keep drumming until the floor is literally slippery with sweat from their mallet bashing and our dancing. After their 7th song, they finally give the crowd a rest and I can sit down and catch my breath. I hold out as my fellow revelers eventually retreat back into the rain. But soon enough dawn breaks to reveal Sunday morning and massage therapist extrordinaire, David Holcomb, and I seem to be some of the last kids in the playpen. Breakfast strikes him as a good idea, and in my condition, his driving me home seems like an even better one.

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"And there followed another angel, saying. Babylon is fallen. Is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wrath of her fornication." Revelation 14:8

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The first gay bar I ever entered was in Tiauana, Mexico. I stumbled upon it when I was 16 while trying to spend the weekend profits from a drug deal in a night of excessive behavior. Still a repressed Catholic society the patrons had to wear fake beards to ensure that their identities were safe from prying eyes. As these were heady times and the world had begun to throw off the need for this sort of silly deception no one took the beards seriously but the were kept on out of a sense of tradition. Everyone in the bar seemed happy and lighthearted and when they took a drink they would raise their beard without unhooking them from behind their ears. It reminded me of a comic pathos salute that still defines camp for me. Surely the priesthood of our modern Babylon might do well to emulate this long discarded custom as a reminder of the dualism of authority and satire. And besides every image I've seem of Babylon has a guy wearing a Devo hat and a beard. It's so retro-couture. -Chris

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Who is this? Why are there no names associated with the site? Kinda spooky. I probably know most of you anyways but let's hear some names amongst all the transcendental promises. -Jim

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Our Babylon is like a spiraling snowball. It is slowly spinning in a circle packing on small amounts of snow. Soon there will be an avalanche and we will happily be spinning out of control ready to go wherever it takes us for we are all nomads. We all float vicariously through life with a passion to live and let live. The end result will be that of a beautiful mayhem when we all congregate in the desert to watch the snow melt from our ball and to see who has joined our nomadic tribe of wanderlust's. Let yourself be a part of the spiral effect. . . see ya under the sun! -Melba

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As I sit writing in my dark studio, candlelight and a dim monitor, listening to a new CD playing, I'm thinking about Cultechism. The party was held near downtown Oakland in a residential neighborhood in an old cookie bakery, this funky old red brick building that has been re-purposed as an artists collective of ritual mindset. Going up the stairs to the main floor, a naked man stood in a space in the wall like some kind of freakish statue in an alcove, his entire body painted white, grimacing with screwed up eyes and face as he undulated and clawed into space. At the top of the stairs an elfin ghost girl, in white body paint from the waist up, crawled about on the floor, a house spirit by the name of Desmond that revealed to me later that she can never leave. The first space on the main floor, a kind of passage way to the rest of the rooms, was at first the site of classical music recitals. Later, they cut loose in there with funky rap, it,s own dancing scene.

Off of the main area, several large jesters dressed in festive costumes and black light glo paint exhorted the crowd, the only illumination a large black light lying on a table in the middle of the room. They begin a public exorcism of the crap that resides in us all, telling everyone to release whatever is holding you back. I joined in immediately as the wailing choir that groaned and murmured in exclamations, and when they passed around the bag to release your stuff into I was the first in line, eagerly and noisily hurling into it. When the smattering of drum action began I let loose with some powerful and prolonged bluesy yowls, giving voice to the freedom and power of expression, as though releasing all your crapola gives you back your voice, your right to be heard and seen, to make a difference in your own unique, at times noisy, way. For the longest time I sang and danced, relocating by the drummers, helping to get the room going with my voice and dance. When I finally left to explore the rest of the party I checked out the room where you confess your sins and misery and dreams and wishes.

I saw the smiling, robe bedecked woman behind the gauze that hung all about her, and joined her in my own gauze chamber, kneeling at a prayer pew with small tarot cards. "What do you wish to confess?, she asked. "That I have been lazy and ignorant, I said. It was hard for me at first to sustain eye contact with her, I was subject to nervous laughs and quickly averted glances, shy to reveal my sins to a stranger, no matter that she was sympathetic. As she probed into what my sin involved, she pulled it out of me that I'd been an immature soul for so long, not daring to claim my nature, embarrassed by my differentness, having no models that could give me the mentoring and inner strength I needed to discover and claim myself. As it turned out, that would take years and years, finding myself haphazardly through the arts and others- As we talked I relaxed more and more till I squatted down, using the front of the pew as a stretching bar and just looked at her when she asked me what I was afraid of- The question was actually kind of hard to answer- it had been more of an embarrassment of who I was, and not knowing what that meant- not knowing that it would take finding myself through writing, bringing myself to life through dance, finding others and heart through touching and direct energy sharing. Her name is Vanessa and she was so lovely- she said she sensed I was hard on myself and encouraged me to congratulate myself on my discovery and the breakthrough growth that was taking place now.

The other highlight of the evening was dancing with Mary. I,d had limited success finding dance partners with Contact Improv experience and I was winding down, having worked up quite a sweat in the funky house rap room, having found all kinds of new moves there. I was in the main dance room where earlier an excellent Acid Jazz band had set the room off. I was experimenting with the rope that hung from the center of the room, swinging about, when a gorgeous woman behind a mask, with long boots and a carnival style outfit began dancing with me. What a treat- she also craved the touching, throwing, sticky, contact that animates the good dancers, and soon we had partnered in a swirling, hug up close, spin with a throw out, catch and leap about routine- it felt like burlesque in some ways, a new style for me- she had such a giving, soft touch even as we got wild, the only ones dancing. Hopefully another convert for Barefoot Boogie- she seemed to know and practice Contact Improv without knowing she was doing it-

Climbing some steep wood stairs, there was another bedroom and a strange platform that had a round bed like area that hung down a bit from the floor so you could lie there and look at everyone down below on the main dance floor. It was well stocked with comfy cushions and had these great handrails you could use for leverage as you lay there. I wasn't all that energetic, having given it up, the night before at Dance Jam, so I hung out in this bed for a long time, using the bars to help me into yoga stretches with my feet in the air, dreaming forward, thinking of going to Sweden this summer-Randy