So read the posters which we scattered all over campus earlier this week. The Ghetto Dance Party is one of the biggest traditions on campus, dating back more than ten years. About this time, (either late October or early November,) the Ghetto stairwell transforms into the hip-hoppin'-est place in all of Lakewood.
Starting Friday morning, we gathered up the Ghetto guys and set to work. Trevor, Eli, Tim, and myself went off to Wal-Mart and cleaned them out of rootbeer and Gardettos. By the time we came back to the Ghetto, the guys in bottom-left and bottom-right had already started clearing their stuff out. We hauled all of the rootbeer and snacks into the RA room and then checked in with Chad, Justin, Zach M, Zach T, Tyler, and Damian. Most of their furniture was stacked in their kitchens and their couched and armchairs were out on their porches. All according to plan.
Next, Trevor, Eli, Phil, and I drove over to the Music Center for some treasures we heard would be in one of the practice rooms. Sure enough, in the room at the end of the basement hall, between an ancient standing piano and the wall was stacked sheets of sound-proofing foam. We snagged all we could carry and headed back to the Ghetto.
Now came the tricky part - sound proofing the GDP (Ghetto Dance Party, that is.)
You see, Lakewood City ordinances demand that all loud, fun activities be over by 10:00pm, even on weekends. As such, we usually start the GDP at 8:00 and go until we get shut down, shortly after 10:00. This year, however, there was a jazz band concert the same night ad in order to get the GDP approved by Student Activities, we had to bump it back to 9:30 so the two didn't conflict. This left us oly 30 minutes of grace before the 5-0 chowed up to shut us down. Our solution? Soundproofing.
I covered the front windows in both rooms with sound-proofing foam, fitting two layers into the window sill and then another layer thumbtacked over top. On the outside, we piled couch cushions and pillows up against the glass. The back sliding doors were the hardest. We put the couches against them, then stacked the armchairs on top of the couch, then filled the gaps with cushions and pillows. On the inside, we taped sheets of foam onto the glass. Finally, we closed the bedroom doors and stacked the CCU mattresses against the doors from the inside, then exited through the windows.
On the front of the Ghetto, we put two couches on end at either side of the stairwell entrance, then draped a tarp over it with a slit cut in it so people could pass in and out. We tied mattresses to the bottom of the stairs to block music from going up the stairwell and out the top.
Once the sound system arrived, we thought we were in trouble. The subs were as big as our bath tubs and the mains were the size of clothes hampers. We set up all the lights and speakers in the two rooms, plugged in Trevor's iPod, and let her rip.
It was whisper silent outside in the parking lot.
In fact, you could drown out any sound at all by humming or carrying on a conversation with someone. Brilliant! It had worked!
We finalized the arrangements (by that I mean we put out the food and set up the Thug Jug,) and got the party started. By 10:00, the two rooms were packed with gangstas of all sorts dancing their faces off. The Thug Jug, unlike last year, worked marvelously, and the party-goers enjoyed as much rootbeer as they could possibly desire.
We wrapped things up at about 11:15, playing "Closing Time" by Semisonic and telling everyone thanks for coming. As the thugs shuffled towards the exits, we realized that the cops hadn't received any complaints, otherwise they would have been all over the Ghetto cul-de-sac. We cleaned everything up in a hurry and went to bed.
This morning, I woke up, walked out to the living room, and saw the place trashed with rootbeer bottles, chip bags, sound-proofing foam, mattresses, rope, and crumpled up peices of duct-tape. The morning after a CCU party.
Thanks for reading,
-Daniel K
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