Most of the long weekend was just spent hanging out with old friends/roommates and drinking and eating. I stayed at my friend Ben Waldman’s beautiful house on Lake Washington… thanks Ben (I’m pretty sure he doesn’t read this blog… but oh well lol)

This past weekend was Kale’s birthday and the boys from Seattle came down to San Diego to visit and party. We did the usual night out of dinner and drinks and then a little dancing at Rich’s. Kale ended up getting bottle service at Rich’s, which is really a lot of fun. It goes for about $150 and gets 4 people in the door free, a bottle of Vodka and unlimited mixers, plus a private booth. It’s nice to be able to go dance for a bit and then regroup back at the booth where you always have a place to sit and chat and drink more. I recommend it to anyone with a decent size group going out. After 4 or 5 people the bottle service pretty much pays for itself with drinks and cover etc.

Here’s a quick shot I took with my iPhone of the dance floor in Rich’s… not very exciting but oh well. The lights are cool.

This weekend also marked the opening of the latest nightclub in Hillcrest called Universal. I actually ended up stopping in all three nights for a different event each night. Friday was a little private opening party. Saturday was the grand opening and then Sunday night was the industry party and we had a couple of booths with bottle service. The club is nice and the design and construction are well done, but we are all a little skeptical on how popular it will actually be. It’s a mixed crowd, straight and gay, which is cool but we’ll see how long that lasts. Already last night I heard people saying, “some drunk chick just spilled her drink on me… let’s head out and go to Rich’s” lol A lot of gay guys have a short fuse when it comes to really drunk girls. I felt like the club might be a little too LA or Las Vegas. I think people live in San Diego for a reason and that type of uppity dressed up crowd is a tough sell. Boys like their jeans and flip flops. Visually, I think the club adds a lot to that area of University Avenue. We’ll see if they can actually fill the place. I’ve always said the 2 rules of a successful club are 1- good drinks and 2- a good crowd. People want to be where everyone else is. If nobody is going there to look pretty and get a strong drink, the crowd will migrate someplace else.

Anyway, here’s a few pics from my iPhone.

The last picture is just a shot of a sunset I caught last week driving home through Solana Beach, just a couple miles south of my office on Highway 101. Summer is here!

Universal:

Bowling:

2008 Rufskin Fashion Show, Rich’s San Diego.

The other pictures are from Rich’s nightclub on Saturday night. There was another costume contest that I also hosted. I dressed as a zombie along with about 5 other friends.

I’m missing pictures from the Wednesday night of actual Halloween. I didn’t carry my camera around that night… mostly because I didn’t want to remember the costume I was in haha. But if I can roundup any pictures from friends then I’ll post them for fun.

Click the image below to view the photo slideshow.

There are more clips after the jump link below.

This one starts off without any lights on but I think the strobes are cool and then the synthesizer lights come on at the highpoint of the song.

This one isn’t very exciting… it’s a clip of Colin bartending with the dance floor and lights in the background. There is one cool part where the lights hit it with the music.

This first video clip is my favorite. Rich’s has these huge light tubes that act as a sort of synthesizer and are sound activated so they respond to the music beat. There is one part of the video where Nick hits the lights perfect at the high point of the song.

The rest of the videos are on my Google video page.

View all the video clips after the jump link below.

Click here to view the videos on Google.

That’s my BB gun

Here another pic I shot in the mirror.

The one is a little foggy because the flash bounced off the nightclub fog that gets put on the dance floor.

Here’s a shot I took of my boots… a little blurry but you get the basic idea.

I posted a few more pictures of the stage setup after the jump link below.

Here’s a picture of my roommate Dylan in the office getting ready.

It takes our crew almost the entire day to put the set together before the show on a Saturday night. It’s very theatrical and much different then anything else you usually find out in a nightclub. During our last setup, my roommate Dylan put his camera on a tripod and set it to snap a photo every 2 minutes during the whole day (similar to the pool time-lapse series from my earlier post). He then stitched the images together to create this video clip below. It’s really cool to see how the stage comes together right up until the club opens. You can get an idea of what goes into creating the set.

If you wanna check out our full lineup of events and/or subscribe to our email list, you can go to our promotions website at www.spincyclerinse.com. The Spin Cycle Rinse is the original name of our Foam parties and we also use it as the name of our promotion comany for our other parties.

Click the images below to view the slideshow for the fashion show and behind the scenes pre-show.

Images are copyright protected. If reposting for personal use, please provide photo credit to me – Joe McDonald at jpatrickm.com – Thanks!