4 ms·

I sure miss the kind of parties where they have to get an emergency court order to cut power the building at 3am. I learned everything I need to know about thr

I sure miss the kind of parties where they have to get an emergency court order to cut power the building at 3am. I learned everything I need to know about throwing parties from Dave Barry. If you throw a party, the worst thing that you can do would be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw another party next year. What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one. If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you.

ssl-3 1y ago
I had a halloween party once. It had everything: Substance abuse, debauchery, a proper PA system shaking the floor, good lighting, costumes, good people we knew, random other people we'd never met before, a keg of beer, epic bean dip... everything but the police, somehow. Anyway, my boss showed up. I don't know if I invited him or if he just decided to be there on his own. He was having a great time with everything, and then he went into the back where some folks were enjoying the not-booze. It was at this point that I lost track of him. His jacket was still there. His motorcycle was still parked on the front sidewalk. But he was nowhere to be found, and his phone went straight to voicemail. It was like he'd simply vanished. "Fuck," I thought to myself. "I've only had this job for a few months." It turns out that he'd walked home, a couple of miles away. He woke up the next morning sitting at the picnic table in his back yard, shirtless, in the rain. After that, I always made sure that I invited him to my other parties -- and he always made sure to decline, and tell me that he was never doing anything like that ever again. I consider this to be a win.
- mberning 1y ago
  Awesome story. Thanks for sharing.
- ibejoeb 1y ago
  Were the parties every the same, or did he bring the wild?
  - ssl-3 1y ago
    I'd like to write about the party where my friend showed up with no clothes at all (neither on him, nor with him) aside from t set of Playboy Bunny ears on top of his head, but I'm out of time for storytelling right now. Perhaps another day.
    - crm9125 1y ago
      "neither on him, nor with him" This is definitely jointly directed by Rogen and Tarantino and I will be watching all 3 hours of it.
      - ssl-3 1y ago
        That's a fine working title, but I really thing it's going to wind up being called "Jacob's Ladder".
- 1659447091 1y ago
  > everything but the police, somehow. I learned you gotta have a “that guy” around and you get police showing up at some point almost 100%. Once upon a time, during my time in sales, some of the permanent sale guys would throw parties at their shared place (near a University campus) that attracted lots of people no one knew and got pretty rowdy. It would be mostly fine, sometimes a pair of cops showed up & left without incident -- until later in the night/morning after this one shady sales guy 20+ years our senior, who could sell sand in the Sahara but failed at life, became “that guy”. Not usually violent (unless his buddys were trying to stop him running into traffic etc), typically property damage related; he would mix a lot of alcohol with a lot if other substances by late in the party basically becoming the guaranteed way to clear people out. Also pretty sure the holding cells were his second address. Anyway, when you went into talking about the boss I thought he might be “that guy” but he declined.
TheAceOfHearts 1y ago
Posts like this really make me feel like I'm living in a completely different reality from some people. I can't tell how much of this is exaggerated for comedic value and how much of it is genuine.
- evilduck 1y ago
  It's written comedically but you mostly live a different life.
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    Generational divide too. I grew up watching stuff like Project X, and then meanwhile it just seems like Gen Z can barely gather together for anything anymore. Let alone a rager.
- AmbroseBierce 1y ago
  I think that making people doubt about it like you just did it's intentionally a bit of the comedic value.
- gosub100 1y ago
  Its from an author who mainly wrote newspaper columns in the 90s. It's his style of tongue-in-cheek humor, and it's aged about 3 decades. I won't say "hasn't aged well", but just "aged".
  - xxr 1y ago
    Great assessment of Dave Barry
  - the_af 1y ago
    It has definitely aged, but I'd say it has aged a lot better than, say, Scott Adams' humor.
- jauntywundrkind 1y ago
  It's one of my greatest fears to see the Gonzo going out from the world. Whether or not it's the truth, this post captures a value-system that used to be strongly coded into the world, a domain of part truth part bullshit, but all yes forward excitement that the in the know smart exciting people were in for in abundance, accepting the tongue in cheek along side the sheer raw ambition to outdo the meager reality about us.
luqtas 1y ago
guess you should be adding some elements of this book [0] when it goes on how to throw parties! [0] Letitia Baldrige's Complete Guide to Executive Manners
hsuduebc2 1y ago
Love the sentiment.
ghssds 1y ago
If it turns out cops won't come, you can always call them yourself to make sure your party is a success.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
- brightball 1y ago
  We threw a few big parties at my apartment in Clemson around 2001. Never had the cops called, but it’s mainly because we let all of our neighbors know in advance and asked them to let us know if there was a problem. I will never forget the nice 70 year old lady who lived in the apartment above us. She said, “If it gets too loud, I’ll just turn my hearing aid off.”
drmpeg 1y ago
When I worked at LSI Logic in the 2000's, there were a lot of young Europeans (mostly Italian) on the staff. They had rented a house in Palo Alto which was affectionately called "The Pleasure Lounge". It was just one of those houses that had the awesome party vibe. The only rule was that if you had to puke, you had to go in the back yard and do it in front of the Mother of Mary statue. The best part was if you made it to 4 am, the Italians would break out the spaghetti, cook a big pot of it and serve it with just olive oil (no tomato sauce). Sitting around the kitchen table wicked hammered eating plain spaghetti is the correct way to end a party.
- unnouinceput 1y ago
  Spaghetti without tomato sauce? That's like pissing in the morning without farting. Sure, it'll get the main job done but it's not the same pure pleasure.
  - hexbin010 1y ago
    Cacio e Pepe, carbonara, spaghetti aglio e olio, spaghetti al vongole, white ragù There's a whole world out there! Tomato sauces can be acidic, so not great when drunk. Also tomatoes stain (if it were to come back up) !
    - bigstrat2003 1y ago
      Agreed that spaghetti sauce doesn't have to be tomato based. Just olive oil doesn't cut it, though - you need more than that.
      - andreareina 1y ago
        Buttered noodles are good, I have no a priori reason that simple oil wouldn't be also.
        louistsi 1y ago
        Butter emulsifies into a sauce just from the residual heat of the spaghetti (and some mechanical action - stirring, pan flip, etc) Oil needs a bit more help, otherwise it's just grease on noodles. The starchy water the pasta was cooked in can do most of the heavy lifting there, but the addition of garlic helps too.
smallerize 1y ago
"Dave Barry: The Greatest (Party) Generation" https://archive.ph/Uyrys https://archive.ph/Uyrys
vishnugupta 1y ago
Haha this seems to be a great success of a party then! https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/bengaluru-news/police-bust-alleged-rave-party-on-bengaluru-s-outskirts-several-detained-for-drug-tests-report-101761987283944.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/bengaluru-news/police-...
latentsea 1y ago
Are you this guy? https://youtu.be/7WPZyzeK7IE?si=QUXm5Fg48Wuq-wtr https://youtu.be/7WPZyzeK7IE?si=QUXm5Fg48Wuq-wtr
possibleworlds 1y ago
> If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas through your living room window. I threw a party (illegal, on the beach, with great music) so successful the police just provided security at the parking lot entrance 1km away because they didn’t want > 400 wasted people roaming the affluent neighbourhood if shut down. Oh there were also nudists at the beach when we were ferrying in our gear at sunset who stayed for the whole thing and ended up on the dancefloor in their birthday suits at 2am.
- lynx97 1y ago
  Having a lot of partying people at a place, combined with sensible policemen, is the best recipe for not getting busted. Had that at least twice in my life. Once at a house party with a lot of young, just around the driving age, people. Police showed up, and decided to not bust it, because sending people on the road would be more dangerous then letting things just go on. A few years later, I was at an illegal outdoor tekno party, which also got a visit at 8AM by two policemen. They basically just went up to the DJ and sayed: "We will return at 3PM, and you will be gone."
  - pimeys 1y ago
    Yep, but it depends. We once organized a party in a soon to be demolished factory building. And exactly that happened, the police decided to let us be because it would've been trouble to have a few hundred ravers in the middle of the city. The second time we were not that lucky, it was a warehouse, and they came with flashlights and kicked us out.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    Once you really get organized, you pay the police off by hiring off-duty cops to be your security and paying them overly well.
- zigman1 1y ago
  My Finnish gf told me that the police in Finland is so reasonable and human, that often they will stop by just to check in if everyone are safe and well and if anyone needs assistance. She mentioned countless of times she was with her international friends partying, or doing sauna or skinny dipping in the lake, often all the three things in the same night of course, when her friends got nervous when the police stopped by, and she was like "ahh no, don't worry, they just want to check if we are all okay". Police asked if they are all safe, nodded and wished them a nice party.
niteshpant 1y ago
Can confirm about police lol Once we had police knock on our door for playing music too loud at 10 PM on a weekend - f'ck Boston NIMBYs
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
madaxe_again 1y ago
3am? This implies that the party is in a rush to be over by morning. No no, the trick is to just keep the party going. Indefinitely. A good party will have several police callouts over the course of several weeks. You will need to recarpet your home afterwards, but the takings from the roulette and poker tables will cover it. You will make friends, lose friends, and people will thank you for it in 20 years, never mind the next morning. I think my longest party stretched to about five weeks - of course people came and went, and having a core of unemployed/student insomniacs to keep it going through the wee hours of Tuesdays helped (for many saved themselves for Wednesdays, which had a particular focus on gambling) - and in the end it only ended because some wag decided to list the party on google maps, and I only narrowly squirmed my way out of charges over running an illegal casino. Anyway. Parties should not be single night or day affairs, in my view.
eurekin 1y ago
Yeah, there's one neat hack about the police. Turns out a lot of them like a good party too.
- circlefavshape 1y ago
  I was at a rooftop party in Dublin once, and when the cops showed up to shut it down the band started playing "I fought the law" and one of the cops jumped in behind the drumkit and played along
tgv 1y ago
Dave Barry is a great source of accurate information, e.g. on how to buy gifts for Christmas. This column [1] includes vital information about parking at a mall, children, etc. A must read for the upcoming season. [1] https://davebarry.com/misccol/christmas.htm https://davebarry.com/misccol/christmas.htm
BeFlatXIII 1y ago
You're making me nostalgic for college.

ssl-3 1y ago

I had a halloween party once. It had everything: Substance abuse, debauchery, a proper PA system shaking the floor, good lighting, costumes, good people we knew, random other people we'd never met before, a keg of beer, epic bean dip... everything but the police, somehow. Anyway, my boss showed up. I don't know if I invited him or if he just decided to be there on his own. He was having a great time with everything, and then he went into the back where some folks were enjoying the not-booze. It was at this point that I lost track of him. His jacket was still there. His motorcycle was still parked on the front sidewalk. But he was nowhere to be found, and his phone went straight to voicemail. It was like he'd simply vanished. "Fuck," I thought to myself. "I've only had this job for a few months." It turns out that he'd walked home, a couple of miles away. He woke up the next morning sitting at the picnic table in his back yard, shirtless, in the rain. After that, I always made sure that I invited him to my other parties -- and he always made sure to decline, and tell me that he was never doing anything like that ever again. I consider this to be a win.

mberning 1y ago
Awesome story. Thanks for sharing.
ibejoeb 1y ago
Were the parties every the same, or did he bring the wild?
- ssl-3 1y ago
  I'd like to write about the party where my friend showed up with no clothes at all (neither on him, nor with him) aside from t set of Playboy Bunny ears on top of his head, but I'm out of time for storytelling right now. Perhaps another day.
  - crm9125 1y ago
    "neither on him, nor with him" This is definitely jointly directed by Rogen and Tarantino and I will be watching all 3 hours of it.
    - ssl-3 1y ago
      That's a fine working title, but I really thing it's going to wind up being called "Jacob's Ladder".
1659447091 1y ago
> everything but the police, somehow. I learned you gotta have a “that guy” around and you get police showing up at some point almost 100%. Once upon a time, during my time in sales, some of the permanent sale guys would throw parties at their shared place (near a University campus) that attracted lots of people no one knew and got pretty rowdy. It would be mostly fine, sometimes a pair of cops showed up & left without incident -- until later in the night/morning after this one shady sales guy 20+ years our senior, who could sell sand in the Sahara but failed at life, became “that guy”. Not usually violent (unless his buddys were trying to stop him running into traffic etc), typically property damage related; he would mix a lot of alcohol with a lot if other substances by late in the party basically becoming the guaranteed way to clear people out. Also pretty sure the holding cells were his second address. Anyway, when you went into talking about the boss I thought he might be “that guy” but he declined.

TheAceOfHearts 1y ago

Posts like this really make me feel like I'm living in a completely different reality from some people. I can't tell how much of this is exaggerated for comedic value and how much of it is genuine.

evilduck 1y ago
It's written comedically but you mostly live a different life.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  Generational divide too. I grew up watching stuff like Project X, and then meanwhile it just seems like Gen Z can barely gather together for anything anymore. Let alone a rager.
AmbroseBierce 1y ago
I think that making people doubt about it like you just did it's intentionally a bit of the comedic value.
gosub100 1y ago
Its from an author who mainly wrote newspaper columns in the 90s. It's his style of tongue-in-cheek humor, and it's aged about 3 decades. I won't say "hasn't aged well", but just "aged".
- xxr 1y ago
  Great assessment of Dave Barry
- the_af 1y ago
  It has definitely aged, but I'd say it has aged a lot better than, say, Scott Adams' humor.
jauntywundrkind 1y ago
It's one of my greatest fears to see the Gonzo going out from the world. Whether or not it's the truth, this post captures a value-system that used to be strongly coded into the world, a domain of part truth part bullshit, but all yes forward excitement that the in the know smart exciting people were in for in abundance, accepting the tongue in cheek along side the sheer raw ambition to outdo the meager reality about us.

luqtas 1y ago

guess you should be adding some elements of this book [0] when it goes on how to throw parties! [0] Letitia Baldrige's Complete Guide to Executive Manners

hsuduebc2 1y ago

Love the sentiment.

ghssds 1y ago

If it turns out cops won't come, you can always call them yourself to make sure your party is a success.

cindyllm 1y ago
[dead]
brightball 1y ago
We threw a few big parties at my apartment in Clemson around 2001. Never had the cops called, but it’s mainly because we let all of our neighbors know in advance and asked them to let us know if there was a problem. I will never forget the nice 70 year old lady who lived in the apartment above us. She said, “If it gets too loud, I’ll just turn my hearing aid off.”

drmpeg 1y ago

When I worked at LSI Logic in the 2000's, there were a lot of young Europeans (mostly Italian) on the staff. They had rented a house in Palo Alto which was affectionately called "The Pleasure Lounge". It was just one of those houses that had the awesome party vibe. The only rule was that if you had to puke, you had to go in the back yard and do it in front of the Mother of Mary statue. The best part was if you made it to 4 am, the Italians would break out the spaghetti, cook a big pot of it and serve it with just olive oil (no tomato sauce). Sitting around the kitchen table wicked hammered eating plain spaghetti is the correct way to end a party.

unnouinceput 1y ago
Spaghetti without tomato sauce? That's like pissing in the morning without farting. Sure, it'll get the main job done but it's not the same pure pleasure.
- hexbin010 1y ago
  Cacio e Pepe, carbonara, spaghetti aglio e olio, spaghetti al vongole, white ragù There's a whole world out there! Tomato sauces can be acidic, so not great when drunk. Also tomatoes stain (if it were to come back up) !
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    Agreed that spaghetti sauce doesn't have to be tomato based. Just olive oil doesn't cut it, though - you need more than that.
    - andreareina 1y ago
      Buttered noodles are good, I have no a priori reason that simple oil wouldn't be also.
      - louistsi 1y ago
        Butter emulsifies into a sauce just from the residual heat of the spaghetti (and some mechanical action - stirring, pan flip, etc) Oil needs a bit more help, otherwise it's just grease on noodles. The starchy water the pasta was cooked in can do most of the heavy lifting there, but the addition of garlic helps too.

smallerize 1y ago

"Dave Barry: The Greatest (Party) Generation" https://archive.ph/Uyrys https://archive.ph/Uyrys

vishnugupta 1y ago

Haha this seems to be a great success of a party then! https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/bengaluru-news/police-bust-alleged-rave-party-on-bengaluru-s-outskirts-several-detained-for-drug-tests-report-101761987283944.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/bengaluru-news/police-...

latentsea 1y ago

Are you this guy? https://youtu.be/7WPZyzeK7IE?si=QUXm5Fg48Wuq-wtr https://youtu.be/7WPZyzeK7IE?si=QUXm5Fg48Wuq-wtr

possibleworlds 1y ago

> If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas through your living room window. I threw a party (illegal, on the beach, with great music) so successful the police just provided security at the parking lot entrance 1km away because they didn’t want > 400 wasted people roaming the affluent neighbourhood if shut down. Oh there were also nudists at the beach when we were ferrying in our gear at sunset who stayed for the whole thing and ended up on the dancefloor in their birthday suits at 2am.

lynx97 1y ago
Having a lot of partying people at a place, combined with sensible policemen, is the best recipe for not getting busted. Had that at least twice in my life. Once at a house party with a lot of young, just around the driving age, people. Police showed up, and decided to not bust it, because sending people on the road would be more dangerous then letting things just go on. A few years later, I was at an illegal outdoor tekno party, which also got a visit at 8AM by two policemen. They basically just went up to the DJ and sayed: "We will return at 3PM, and you will be gone."
- pimeys 1y ago
  Yep, but it depends. We once organized a party in a soon to be demolished factory building. And exactly that happened, the police decided to let us be because it would've been trouble to have a few hundred ravers in the middle of the city. The second time we were not that lucky, it was a warehouse, and they came with flashlights and kicked us out.
- fragmede 1y ago
  Once you really get organized, you pay the police off by hiring off-duty cops to be your security and paying them overly well.
zigman1 1y ago
My Finnish gf told me that the police in Finland is so reasonable and human, that often they will stop by just to check in if everyone are safe and well and if anyone needs assistance. She mentioned countless of times she was with her international friends partying, or doing sauna or skinny dipping in the lake, often all the three things in the same night of course, when her friends got nervous when the police stopped by, and she was like "ahh no, don't worry, they just want to check if we are all okay". Police asked if they are all safe, nodded and wished them a nice party.

niteshpant 1y ago

Can confirm about police lol Once we had police knock on our door for playing music too loud at 10 PM on a weekend - f'ck Boston NIMBYs

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

madaxe_again 1y ago

3am? This implies that the party is in a rush to be over by morning. No no, the trick is to just keep the party going. Indefinitely. A good party will have several police callouts over the course of several weeks. You will need to recarpet your home afterwards, but the takings from the roulette and poker tables will cover it. You will make friends, lose friends, and people will thank you for it in 20 years, never mind the next morning. I think my longest party stretched to about five weeks - of course people came and went, and having a core of unemployed/student insomniacs to keep it going through the wee hours of Tuesdays helped (for many saved themselves for Wednesdays, which had a particular focus on gambling) - and in the end it only ended because some wag decided to list the party on google maps, and I only narrowly squirmed my way out of charges over running an illegal casino. Anyway. Parties should not be single night or day affairs, in my view.

eurekin 1y ago

Yeah, there's one neat hack about the police. Turns out a lot of them like a good party too.

circlefavshape 1y ago
I was at a rooftop party in Dublin once, and when the cops showed up to shut it down the band started playing "I fought the law" and one of the cops jumped in behind the drumkit and played along

tgv 1y ago

Dave Barry is a great source of accurate information, e.g. on how to buy gifts for Christmas. This column [1] includes vital information about parking at a mall, children, etc. A must read for the upcoming season. [1] https://davebarry.com/misccol/christmas.htm https://davebarry.com/misccol/christmas.htm

BeFlatXIII 1y ago

You're making me nostalgic for college.