The tattooed, skate-happy Black Locust Society opened the doors to their SWARM Warehouse Saturday night, inviting friends and newcomers alike to get on their level -- which is about three feet above the coping on their in-house skate ramp. The event featured album-cover-inspired artwork and live tattooing in one room and sweaty and courageous music and skating in the other. And lots of people were getting lucky. All night long, the Wheel of Millionaires rewarded spinners with the right touch with great prizes such as mp3 players and skate decks, as well as super-great prizes like switchblade combs and Swedish Fish for the rest of us.
The turnout was large enough to create sizable lines at the "Hooch" stand and the single bathroom, but the happy crowd never outgrew the underground nature of the party. The place itself may as well be underground. A certain degree of luck and courage is necessary to even find the remote spot. Those who did, though, were rewarded, whether they scored big on "the Wheel" or not. The spirit of the party was reassuringly fun rather than attention-seeking, and that in itself is a jewel more precious than anything anyone could have won from spinning the wheel (Yes, I was one of the Swedish Fish winners).
