THE REVIEW!
I woke up at about 11am on Saturday morning and took my time getting ready for Life Celebration Festival in Hialeah, Florida. One of the nicest things about living in South Florida now is the fact that most of the parties are no more than an hour or so away instead of a long 3 to 4 hour drive like they used to be when I lived up in Orlando. This party was to start at about 3pm and that would mean if we wanted to get there right on time I’d have to leave my house at 2pm. Ron Register, a buddy of mine, was going to be throwing the main stage for the event so what that meant for me was I needed to make sure all my hookahs were cleaned up and packed to contribute to a hookah lounge with my buddy TC that we do at Ron’s stage almost all the time. This preparation took me even longer to get ready than my girlfriend, which in turn caused us to leave at about 2:30pm.
We followed Mapquest directions away from the turnpike because we didn’t want to spend any money on tolls, but this proved to be a big mistake on our part. What should have taken us 45 minutes or so to get to if we took the turnpike we wound up driving a good hour and fifteen minutes way out into the everglades and back around to Hialeah. The drive was fine until both of us got extremely annoyed during the last 15 minutes of the drive because it looked like we were lost most of the time.
Disgruntled, we arrived at the party at 3:45pm to find the place had been torn apart by thunderstorms earlier in the afternoon. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING was flooded and soaked in thick mud. Despite this, people were still out and participating fully in the event, I was definitely in brighter spirits watching the people enjoying themselves despite the crappy weather.
Heather and I walked into the place for free because we told them we were two of the fire spinning performers and showed them our names on the rave’s flyer. What really was crap about that is our names were on the flyer which we were able to utilize to get in for free…and that was our only benefit from the party. We haven’t heard from UMF Brian, the guy throwing the event, since he first asked us to come out and spin. He never got back to us on anthing: Pay, Benefits, Location to spin at, times…nothing. This alone was quite the frusterating angst we already had for this party and we were hoping all of that would be taken care of at the party when we got there (since it was never taken care of leading up to it despite all the times I tried to contact him).
So we get in there and kind of scope the place out. The place was a huge soccer field with a back field used for what appeared to be either a horse barn or a junkyard I couldn’t really tell and surrounding this expanse were each sound stage from each rave promoter. TRK, HTO, Insane Innovations, ER productions, and even Registering Sounds – Ron’s new promotion company – all had their own stages with sound and DJs throwing down all day. Ron’s stage was the largest and stood directly to the left of the entrance in the largest part of the field. To the right of the entrance was TRK’s area, which was the 2nd biggest, and then the other stages fell in the remaining spaces to the right of TRK’s stage all the way up the side of the dirt road that divided Ron’s stage from everyone else’s. Since it was all grass with the exception of the road going up the middle and the gravel where the back two stages were the place had turned into a swamp from all the rain. The mud was so thick in some areas there were planks forming a bridge to get from the road to the field where the stages were, and sadly some stages their entire dancefloor was thick mud and completely impossible to dance in.
BUT the sky was overcast and therefor e the weather was much cooler so the weather in an odd sense saved the rave because people would not be there what with Miami’s intense heat. I ran back out to my car, loaded up my portable hookah I created myself a week earlier, and proceeded to spend the first few hours of the rave walking around with my girlfriend talking to people and sharing my hookah. It was nice to be able to see not only a ton of my Central Florida friends because of their stages, but also see a bunch of my South Florida friends because of theirs all rolled up into one party. This, plus the cool art area where people were doing paintings, glass blowing, and selling random neat rave items put me in a good mood and made me have a bit more hope for this party despite being completely in the dark on a lot of things (like our participation in the party). I found TC walking around with his small hookah out front of the TRK stage and hung out with him for a bit smoking and sharing the hookahs with him until he led me away from the TRK stage and to the back of Ron’s stage where his hookah lounge is.
Okay, the back of the stage may have worked as a hookah lounge in previous parties but this was ridiculous. To get to the back of the stage you had to weave in an out of a bunch of Ron’s production crew’s cars parked along the side of the stage into this little area that looked more like an area to put your tent up and store items than a place for guests. TC’s table and chairs were drowning in a good 3 inches of muddy rain water as if his hookah lounge were floating in a lake. It was sad. I told him there’d be no way anyone would come back here if it was over here, and him and I pulled the table out of the muddy water and moved it to the left corner of Ron’s stage in the front where everyone from everywhere could get a nice view of the towering hookahs. We set our stuff up and WOW did this new placement work! For the next few hours (with the exception of running over to talk to the TRK guys and hear their badass music they were playing) TC, Heather and I hosted a hookah lounge that had the largest crowd I have ever seen at one of our setups! People being drawn over by the bass from Ron’s sound started getting diverted from dancing in his main stage to the side for a nice relaxing smoke break. TC kept playing a game with the crowd by blowing “Hookah Bubbles” (bubbles filled with hookah smoke) out across the field so people could literally smoke the bubbles and others were begging me to load up my air gun and shoot perfect massive hookah smoke rings out of it at their faces. I honestly can say that was the best part of the rave by far. It felt good to be out there.
The sun started to set and I kept wandering over to the TRK stage in the mood to dance one too many times so Heather and I decided to meet up with Alex and Josh (two TRK fire spinners) and see when they were told to spin fire. They told us the same thing that happened to us: that they were asked to do it, were placed on the flyer, and never made contact with again despite their attempts to contact UMF Brian. So we basically were on our own and didn’t even know if we were still supposed to perform at the rave. They decided they were going to spin in front of the TRK stage to represent their promoters and Heather and I decided it was a good idea and we could spin in front of Ron’s stage. I smoked way too much hookah so I was a bit light headed and needed to take a half hour before I could spin the fire so I told them I’d meet up with them in a bit and Heather and I walked around a little to check out how the other smaller stages were doing. They were all going real strong with the sound, but all but one of the 4 stages had hardly any dancers in it because it was just too muddy. The one that did have a bunch of dancers was up in the gravel and in the very back in that junkyard/horse ranch area so the rain didn’t have too much of an effect on them.
A half hour passed and towards the end of that half hour I saw 3 fire spinners performing in front of some local spanish drumming bongo band in the gravel on the side of the road that cut through the middle of the rave. They were super far away from their respected crews, and it puzzled me but I didn’t really think much of it…that is, until Heather and I started fueling up our fire equipment by Ron’s stage and one of the police told us we weren’t allowed to spin fire here. When we asked why, he said and I quote “We are too close to the Everglades and don’t want to catch the grass on fire, go spin in the designated area we have for you.” The grass…on fire…he didn’t want the waterlogged so soaked we lost our shoes in the mud and water grass to catch on fire…what the fuck?
We walked back to where the others were spinning and they had just finished so we were completely open to spin a few with these two other fire spinners from Orlando. One of em was so pissed off that we were being treated like garbage not only the whole time leading up to the rave but now at the rave itself that he refused to spin, but there was a crowd around the caution tape and Heather and I still wanted to spin anyway because we’d be lying if we were on the flyer and didn’t spin right? We fueled up with this other girl and the three of us took turns spinning. I spun my fire staff and my fire sticks while Heather spun her fire fans and her fire hoop. The girl only knew how to do fire poi so she added a nice touch in between our spinning with some pretty talented poi spinning. Our area? In the gravel (which hurt because we had no shoes thanks to the mud) on the side of the middle road in the very back far away from all stages surrounded by caution tape and having the huge drummer group INSIDE the circle of caution tape with us making the spinning room super tiny. It sucked, but I was happy with the set I threw.
We went back and watched TC do his Vjing for Ron’s tent. Man can that kid do some visuals! Everything was going perfect with the music and looked freakin awesome as hell! He even included some previous fire spinning videos of Heather, my friend Jason, and I and warped them around to look all freaking nuts! Good job on that set TC!
The rest of the night Heather and I just kind of walked around. Sometimes with the portable hookah, othertimes just sitting around in my friend Attillio’s RV hanging out with him until midnight when the party shut down. I helped Ron and his production crew tear down the tent a bit and then Heather and I went home to eat, take a shower, and go to bed.
There really wasn’t anything to this party. The vibe was incredibly dull. And when I say dull, I mean EXTREMELY boring. All that was playing at Ron’s tent was a bunch of Miami house music which has a very dull beat, no real breakdowns, and nothing really exciting at all. That music seemed to drone on and on and on, and the whole rave followed with it…just a long droning rave. The only real fun I had was in the hookah lounge TC and I threw, Heather and I fire spinning (which the situation sucked but I like spinning so…), and talking to a few people in the TRK crew while they played the only LIVELY music out there. If there was any other place with lively music, it’s entire area was buried in mud and you couldn’t dance in there if you tried (and trust me, I was getting so frusterated with the dull vibe of the party I really truly tried to dance in the 4in thick mud). This rave was completely boring.
I have 3 theories on why this party was so boring:
#1- The intense rainstorm caused a lot of partygoers to not come, making the population small and in a huge area like this it consquently drops the vibe.
#2 - There were cops EVERYWHERE. It didn’t matter where you turned, there was a police officer staring you down like you were some criminal. I believe this scared a lot of people into not just letting loose and having fun. Although I did have fun waving my hookahs around in the cops faces trying to get them to make an ass of themselves when they asked me if it was illegal.
And the biggest one, #3 – THE PROMOTER WAS TERRIBLE! It seemed more like he just sunk the ship before it even left the harbor. I had only spoken to my fellow fire performers and they all said the same situation that happened to me. This guy asked them to spin, they agreed. A week or so later they saw their names on the rave flyer. When they sent messages and called the guy asking about any further details so we could be prepared when we arrived at the party (even a freakin time to spin would have been nice) he never responded. His friend that booked some of them would not respond either. This story was well explained to me by every fire performer and a few of the HTO guys as well, that UMF Brian did not speak to them at all after asking them to do something at his show. When I got home after the party I looked at the flyer, and literally 60% of the people or things listed on the flyer did not show up, which leads me to believe he never contacted them back either so they just didn’t show up. He put no heart and soul into his event and expected it to just grow like mold on a sandwich so I’m really surprised there was this much of an event (however dull it was) after all.
I’ve been to Hialeah before. I’ve been to an event just across the street from where this party was held. I know this is a rather nice place to throw an event…yet this party was uncoordinated, unorganized, overwhelmed with security, and the music was completely lifeless. This party, from start to finish, was completely lifeless.

THE PICTURES!