Silent Disco @ Third Street Promenade
My friend is dancer, so she always finds the free dance events in LA. She invited me out, so I did something out of the box last weekend. I went to Silent Disco!
I’ve seen the concept on TV before, which is an outdoor dance party but instead of the music playing through speakers, they are playing through individual headsets. So only if you have the headsets can you hear the music. If you have headset it is a full on party. If you do not, you just witness a bunch of people moving to beats and melodies your ears cannot perceive.
I arrive to third street promenade and thankfully two people who are friends with the person who invited me were checking in. We each get the headsets by swapping a photo ID (I’m like for real that seems rather extensive but I obliged). And we discover there are actually three channels, each with different style of music. As the night went on I recognized there was a techno/house channel, a latin/hip hop channel and a soul one.
We get our headsets on and then are stationed to right of the DJ booth. Our DJs for the night are a trio called Silent DJ. And we go! It was very family friendly, as I saw parents with little kids along with adults on date night or adults just out with friends.
Sporadically a DJ would get on the mic to hype their crowd up, saying put your hands in the air if you having a good time. Or get low when the beat drop. And half the crowd would do that while the others moved to different beats.
One tweak I’d make is for us to all be on the same channel. I see the why behind three channels— gives more variety. Like when I was getting tired of techno I switched to the latin hip hop and grooved to that. But I felt like I couldn’t experience it with the people I was with. In a way, it felt like a solitary experience, done corporately. It would be fun to move knowing what the people next to me were listening to.
In some ways, a little awkward. Because people we were in the middle of the promenade, and it Friday night, people were walking through, shopping. And see 150 people moving and dancing with no music to various beats. Haha. Whenever I was less self conscious and though of others I had fun. But I was always aware. But as we were moving I thought-- what a good analogy to a person who lives by faith though. I am hearing a different beat in my ear, and I move and dance to that melody. Others may not hear it, so my movement attracts attention and looks strange. But it could also provoke thirst for them to join as well.
Anywho, sharing a fun, new experience. Onward.
