just a little bit better than dope.
So I was contacted by Red Bull Tuesday evening to see if I was interested in maybe DJing the Red Bull vehicle for the Giants Victory parade on Wednesday morning. What a silly question.. of course i’m interested! We got it all locked in around 1130pm, for me to arrive at the site by 1030am, and DJ from 11a-1p. Word.
Woke up around 9am and could already hear ppl walking by yelling “Go Giants!” You’d think the parade already started.. Got out the house around 10am to grab a quick bite, then off to Polk and Turk St. it was already madness on the streets. Thousands of people were heading to their destination of choice for the parade. Market, the MAIN street running thru SF was blocked off, so traffic was an absolute zoo. Even on my bike I was 15mins late to the site (pretty sure ZERO people went to school or work this day).
When I arrived I was a little disenchanted at the location of the Truck. Just 2 blocks away was a sea of people eager for the parade, yet here on Polk and Turk were practically tumbleweeds. hmmmm…
I met the two Red Bull reps who informed me that there was a minor (major) problem. The truck was parked on a small incline, so much that they were unable to safely open the truck. The 4 huge speakers and flat screen TVs are all attached to the thinnest rods you’ve ever seen. If they bent under the weight, there’d be no way to shut the doors on the truck, which is all bad on a $250,000 vehicle. We sat there brainstorming options for about an hour and came up with nothing. At this point I was just annoyed that I was missing the parade for nothing. I decided to hit the parade and at least try and get some good photos.
SOME McGYVER SH*T
Dylan (RB) hit me back around 12:15 saying they figured it out and to come back.. Turns out they had the idea of putting wood blocks underneath the monster tires to level it out. Not sure who but someone found a bunch of wood and nailed some pretty gangster contraptions in no time. So we were backin buiness. Minus the fact that foot traffic was just a few random stragglers. We hoped for the best.
People were coming in a steady stream from the parade and all looked well, except one minor problem.. we had NO Red Bull to give out. FAIL! Because of the road blocks and ridiculous traffic, the car that had all the Red Bull was on the other side of town and couldn’t get through. So for the first hour I was the lucky one delivering the bad news b/c I was the only one in the truck. ughhhhhh.
RED BULL MINI’S TO THE RESCUE!
Luckily there were 7 Red Bull mini’s scattered about town so we got a couple of them to swoop over and get us whatever they had left. And then… it was a party. People were hanging out, dancing, and drinking Red Bull.. success! Well that was an understatement around 1:30. Within a half hour enough people had gathered to block off the street from cars getting through. Oh yeah and let me also mention that Red Bull had NO PERMIT w/ the city to do this party. We simply had a parking space given to us by Noble, a bar on the corner that has an account with Red Bull. We were just expecting to play some tunes and give out some product and maybe have some people on the sidewalk. Now it was full on block party status.
Most fortunately, the cops ended up blocking off the roads for us so no cars could get through, and the party kept going for a solid 3 hours. There were people for days and everyone was raging. None of us could even believe what was happening. So ridiculous. I was playing everything from Journey to Mac Dre, and people were singing to every song, spraying champagne and beer everywhere (So illegal on so many levels). Amazing.
SOOO HOW DO WE END THIS?
The Red Bull rep was exhausted, as he’d literally drove the truck up from San Diego the night before, and only slept a couple hours. So he was ready to go after the first 2hrs, so by this point he was like “we gotta get outta here man”… and good timing b/c thats when the police stepped in and tried to shut it down as well. So it was mutual 
We could have face serious fines for all sorts of things, but they said if we got the truck out of there NOW, they wouldn’t give a ticket. They even offered to help back the truck out of the madness!
For only being in San Francisco for 6 months, its was an amazing feeling to help put on and rock the biggest street party in the city, for one of the biggest days in San Francisco history. So when people as me why I moved here, you can add this to the laundry list of reasons.
GO GIGANTES!
