Tuesday 5 August 2014

Big Fuckin' Bender

In the summer of 92' my buddy Jay who lived in the farmhouse where "Woodstock 91" was held, decided he wanted to throw another epic party. Woodstock 91' was by far the biggest bash anyone had ever seen in Brampton, but Jay wanted to go even bigger this time. Our planning committee was gathered together once again to brainstorm what could potentially be the event of our lifetimes. 

We frequently used the word "bender" in substitute for the word "party" so we collectively came up with the name "BIG FUCKIN' BENDER" for our planned party. Unlike Woodstock 91' that was spawned on the fly a few days before the event, we had started planning this one about a month in advance. I was on flyer detail once again, and i delivered a great piece of art depicting the party with all my friends drawn in cartoon caricatures. The flyer was chock full of details and a map to the old farmhouse on McVean Drive. We did our usual guerrilla marketing techniques and distributed hundreds, possibly thousands of flyers all around town. Parking lots, malls, strip joints, you name it. 

The month passed by and it was finally time for the BFB, needless to say we were all very excited. A bunch of us packed into Jerry's pickup truck with our alcohol and party favours, and we were on our way. When we arrived, we were quite shocked to see a massive police roadblock stationed in front of Jay's house. When we pulled up the cops simply stated "There is no party. Drive away now or we will confiscate all of your alcohol and fine you" Without saying a word or  skipping a beat we drove off.


We were all dumbfounded, we didn't see this coming, but we weren't going to let the pigs ruin our fun. We drove a block north, then headed one block east until we were fairly parallel with the property. We parked the truck at the side of a country road, collected all of our goods, and started tracking through acres of trees and cornfields until we finally reached the house. A few of our friends had done the same thing, or they were fortunate enough to have arrived earlier than the police did. There only ended up being about 12-20 of us that actually made it to the property. We had been bested by Peel Regions finest, who remained stationed in front of the house scaring off hundreds of party goers for the next few hours to come.

Jay had rented a massive sound system, so we cranked the tunes as loud as possible, while we drank and smoked and partied on. Some LSD managed to find it's way into a few of the guys systems, and things started to get a bit wild. Despite the pigs shutting down the party, the small group of us carried on like it was no big deal, but deep down we were all quite disappointed that the kaybosh had been put on the bender.

The farmhouse was on private property, so every time we got slightly bored we would take a stroll down to the property line and taunt the police. We were name calling, dancing in front of them, and generally being a nuisance towards them. Since they ruined our fun we figured we might as well make their night hell for them too. At some point, one of my friends ended up on the roof of the house in an acid fueled rage. He proceeded to start ripping shingles off the roof of the house and was throwing them at the police like frisbees while screaming obscenities at full volume. The beauty to all of this was the fact the police could do nothing about or words or actions.

The small group of us whooped it up all night. I had the unfortunate ness of learning one of my friends was using needles. I was quite distressed by this as I had always been against the use of hard drugs, but I tried not to think about it too much and focused on enjoying the night, which was slowly turning to morning. As the sun started to rise we gathered our things and started the trek back to Jerry's truck.

It was foggy, it was raining, and the sun hadn't came up yet. We were all clearly very intoxicated as we could not find our way back to the truck. My friend Noel ended up stepping in a hole of some sort and broke his ankle. Now two friends had to support him and help him walk through the wet wastelands. A lot of the guys were still tripping out, and it felt like we were in a war zone like Viet Nam or something, carrying our injured soldier along to safety. At one point James took off one of his shoes, and we broke out into an impromptu game of football using a sneaker for pigskin. It was an absolute riot and we were all having a blast.

We eventually made it to the truck which felt like hours later, but in the quest our group had became divided. There was a debate about which direction was the proper one to take, which resulted in us splitting into two factions and going our separate ways. Thankfully our group was the one to make it to the vehicle. As we started rolling out, we drove about half a mile down the road when suddenly something demanded our attention. The second group of "survivors" jumped out of the woods and onto the road right in front of us to flag us down. Jerry screeched on the brakes and the boys jumped in the back of the truck, which thankfully had a cab on it to protect us from the elements.

We ended up going to McDonalds for breakfast before heading home to bed, and needless to say we were a sight for sore eyes. We were all coming down from the night so we were still pretty wired, and the lot of us were covered in mud from head to toe and were soaked to the bone from the rain. We ate, carried on, had some laughs, reminisced the night, then headed to our respectful dwelling places to sleep it off.

Although the police ruined the whole event, we still didn't let that stop us from having a good time. In retrospect it was of our own doing since we had spammed the city with masses of flyers a month prior to the event. The police had everything they needed to shut it down, and one can't really blame them for doing their jobs. Needless to say the "BIG FUCKIN' BENDER" wasn't so big at all, and it paled in comparison to Woodstock 91', but we made the best of it and filled ourselves with fond memories and bonds of friendship...

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