So I got home after my birthday party on Friday to 237 new notifications on Facebook. Wall posts, tagged photos, comments on wall posts, comments on tagged photos on wall posts. I was slightly overwhelmed and definitely ready to untag anything that I wasn’t ready for the world to see when I came upon this photo that “Hawaiian Ryan” Matsumoto had posted. It’s an unobstructed view of Sean “Bobby Bones” Bonilla catching me to thank me as I was darting around the crowd. There was just so much going on and so many people I wanted to talk to and thank for coming that it was pretty much impossible to be in one place for more than 45 seconds or so. How he managed to catch me and get my attention long enough for Ryan to see this and snap the picture is just one of the many things that was so, so, so amazing about Friday night.

There’s a point in life, especially life after 30, when you just don’t feel like making a huge deal about another birthday. A nice quiet dinner with friends or even nothing sounds just fine. Why draw attention to the fact that you are getting so damn old? This was, of course, what I was thinking a couple of months ago while I was in the midst of so many incredible things happening around me in the nightlife. The music, the art, the people–I was seeing something that really affected me and created a very strong feeling that it had to be shared. Not just shared through this column or through my blog, it had to be experienced. Like, in the flesh. I made it my mission to somehow get all of that together in one space. I throw parties for my day job and sort of knew what it takes to make it happen, but there was a huge piece that was missing and that scared the crap out of me: the people. Will they show up? Will they be open to it? Will they get it?

Friday night was a testament to what is possible. We saw more than 500 people walk into the Fresh Café Warehouse and totally completely get it. They watched a band of what looked like 19-year-olds gyrating around and jumping into the crowd of people already going nuts over their very danceable punk-influenced electropop. They saw wearable fashion, a beautiful hand-painted mural, some of Honolulu’s most talked about up-and-coming bands of 2009, and a surprise performance by visiting New York resident Anton Glamb. At the end of the night, the people pouring out of there were not young, not old. They were in heels, in suit jackets, in beanies and flannels, in Fighting Eel dresses, falling over each other taking pictures and laughing. At one point I was across the street and I was staring at the lights everywhere, at the photos being projected on the building adjacent to the warehouse, at the beautiful canvas piece freshly-sprayed by award-winning artist CKaweekS, at the prominent members of our creative community, Josh Lake from Airspace Workshop, fashion designer Matt Bruening, Nadine Kam, Trisha and David Goldberg and Lucky Olelo. Seeing some of Hawaii’s most hype pro-surfers like Jamie O’Brien, seeing the LOST people, and seeing hundreds of people I didn’t even know. They all got it. I just kept looking around at everything and everyone, trying to believe it was real, trying to believe that we are capable of things like this in this town. I’m so happy that we are.