A Psychedelic Warehouse Party

Written and Photographed by Rick Perez, @goodtimerickstudios

Los Angeles, USA

I recently moved to Los Angeles and to be honest, I don’t know anything about anything. I’m still trying to discover the cool parties, DIY venues, and the overall underground scene of this city. The thing about an underground scene, however, is that it is underground for a reason; you gotta dig for it, wait until something comes up, and keep digging for more. When I found out about a warehouse party with a bunch of psych rock bands in East L.A., I was all over it.

I parked my car on a main drag in Boyle Heights and walked to where my GPS said the location was. The area was pitch black and I couldn’t see any numbers of the buildings, but I could hear the music coming from somewhere, so I let the music guide me.

It guided me to an open gate in between two buildings. I stepped through the gate and was immediately blinded by a bright light that switched between green and blue. As I followed the light through an alley, the music started getting louder and the light brighter and I came upon another gate and finally entered my first L.A. warehouse party.

Before me was an outdoor area with an elevated DJ booth on one side and on the other side were different food, clothing, and jewelry vendors. The DJ, Spookylounge, was bumping some nu-disco jams as a few people were milling about. There weren’t a lot of people, but the night was young and had so much potential.

Walking through the outdoor area, I entered the warehouse. The gigantic room was long and narrow and had an extremely heigh ceiling. The only light came from the other side of the room, where the dark-wave goddess, Doll Klaw, was drenched in red.

Doll Klaw

After Doll Klaw, I went to grab a drink at the makeshift bar located inside the warehouse.

“Do you have tequila?” I asked.

“We have jungle juice,” the bartender said, pointing at a giant Igloo jug, “It will get you real fucked up.”

I chuckled and said, “DOWN!”

Grabbing my drink, I headed toward a line that lead to the bathroom. I waited for a little bit and then a woman called out, “There’s another bathroom outside, for men only.” Not wanting to wait, I followed her directions to go outside, past the vendors to the blue curtains. When I opened the curtains, I saw two large buckets on the floor.

“Alright,” I said to myself, “This is happening.” I unzipped my zipper and happily peed into a bucket in a makeshift outhouse at a warehouse party in East Los Angeles.

After my glorious pee break, I went back inside of the warehouse and check out the vibey as hell band, Los Fauna.

Los Fauna

What I was loving about this party thus far were the really beautiful visuals. I was watching this guy create the visuals on a laptop and I told him that I thought he was doing a great job. His name was Francisco Perez (best last name ever) and he has made a career of generating visuals for a while. He’s been on tours and worked at large venues and is a co-founder of an audio and visuals company called Obvious Productions.

He was telling me how it’s hard to work at a DIY venue like this because of its limitations. “At venues like these, nothing works,” he explains, “This plug doesn’t work or that light is broken. I have to get creative.” An upside to working at an event like this, however, is that he has artistic freedom. “I’ll work with their budget but I have full control of what I produce. It’s great.”

Back outside, more and more people started to show up. Another DJ, Behr, killed it with the tunes and I went pee in the bucket again. When I came back out I took pictures of the crowd and saw this guy in smoke and had a really cool reflection off his glasses and took a photo of him.

I went up to him and showed him the photo. A friend he was with, Victor, introduced himself to me as a fellow photographer and he became my best friend for the night. We kept linking up throughout the party, showing each other the photos we had taken. He’s also part of a band called X Ray Eyes.

After talking for a bit, I went back inside to check out Lost Cat, who fucking killed.

Lost Cat

As the party started to get more crowded, I decided to stay inside and save a spot for the next band, Hidden Depths. Hidden Depths were some of the organizers of the party and they had the best crowd. Their friends were fucked up but in a very fun way and danced a shit load. I loved every moment of it.

Hidden Depths

I went back to the outhouse really quick and noticed that both of the pee buckets were almost full.

“Oh shit,” I thought, “It’s gonna overflow.” To be honest, it wasn’t my problem, so I rushed back inside to catch Valley Rats.

Valley Rats was the only band on the bill that I had known of before and were actually the reason why I had discovered this party. I shot them at Red Fest a few months prior and I really like them. Their sound mixed with the visuals of Francisco Perez was a fucking experience that I didn’t want to leave.

Valley Rats

Closing out the night was Wax Children. This was the band I was in contact with before the show and I met one of the members, Lu Rodarte, in person earlier that night. He told me that the band is back to playing shows and releasing new music after a few years on hiatus. My best friend for the night, Victor, had told me Wax Children was great live and let me tell you, he was right. It was a real treat.

Wax Children

Before leaving, I peed one last time. Both buckets were empty and the floor was wet. To this day, I am not sure if the buckets were emptied by someone (poor soul) or if they were knocked over by accident. I’ll probably never know.

This party was my first real glimpse into the Los Angeles underground scene; from what I can see, it is imaginative, diverse, and full of talented people. I’m excited to see what other parties this city has to offer, meet the artists who are putting them together, and find new buckets to pee in.