It's been over a month since my last free party, so after just the faintest whisper of a co-ex party at breakfast the day before, my mind is set, and already I can't wait.
We set off for the party at about 23:30 with two full cars, and we find the party quickly and easily, it's a smallish warehouse the other side of Reading, and it's only a ten minute drive from home.
We park up, and immediately it's obvious there's a party going on, you can here the music loud, and see the bright lights shining out the windows, we leave donations on the door, let the friendly doorman tag our hands and off we go!
Inside is a warm sight for eyes! (and cold feet), the whole warehouse area has been transformed with wonderful UV backdrops all round the walls, loads of UV mobiles and bunting hanging from the ceiling, and the centre piece being Co-ex's dragon. A huge UV dragon's head and wings make up the DJ booth, very impressive effort, only seen this out once before and it looks great. All that along with the usual great lights ( tracers, UVs et al ) made the place seem very warm and pretty. All along the walls on the floor are car tires, laid out in piles of two or three to act as seating, there is more than enough to go around the whole party, a nice touch, somewhere comfy to chill, for all.
It doesn't just look really warm though, because although it is snowing outside, it is absolutely toasty inside as they have some sort of heating system pumping warm air through the whole building! That along with an almost completely un-vandalised set of toilets made this a very nice venue for a warehouse party.
The turnout was pretty small, only about 100-200 people max I would have said, but that didn't mean the atmosphere suffered in the least, what a really friendly crowd, We bumped into loads of old faces from the Co-ex and J10 bunch, made some great new friends along the way and everybody had more than enough room to dance.
The music was, as far as I can remember, hard house, techno, then acid techno. Really nice sound coming from the ample stack of speakers, and a great job done on the levels - loud and very clear.
Being in town, you would almost expect at least a "friendly visit" from the old bill, but unfortunately it seemed that they all had better things on!, not a sign of any police all night, in fact no trouble of any sort what-so-ever, although that's the norm for free parties, gallons of PLUR all round :o)
Can't wait for the next one now, Full respect to both crews - keep up the hard work.
Rob
