Ilyia Kaushansky

Last weekend(Apr. 17th) I went to Montreal for a Bal en Blanc party. Bal en Blanc is an annual "rave" where everyone wears white. The party is huge, with about 12 thousand people in attendance. This year's DJ headliners included Armin van Buuren, Infected Mushroom, David Guetta and Deep Dish.

Unfortunately, Armin van Burren sucked, his new style is slow and boring. Nevertheless, Bal en Blanc was a huge success, and I really enjoyed the party. I didn't have a watch with me, so imagine my surprise when I found out that it was 11:30AM when we went home(I didn't expect to stay that long).

It was awesome seeing my friends from Toronto and Montreal, for some of whom it was a first big party. They weren't dissapointed !

This was my 3rd Bal en Blanc party, and the 4th year in a row that I party in Montreal for Easter. Let's hope this trend continues !

Wikipedia is great but I think it could be improved even further by having the following 2 features:

Feature One:

Make it very easy for a reader to ask questions about a particular topic, and let readers view and rate the questions.

The motivation for the above feature is simple: many Wikipedia entries are incomplete for two reasons:
1) An editor omits a piece of information which he deems insignificant.
2) Information is not included because it is not known.

Letting users ask and rate questions addresses the first issue because now the readers can explicitly state what kind of information they are interested in.

The second issue is partially addressed as well. While information about a subject may not be known, it may be discovered. But something should motivate the discovery(which is often a difficult, or impossible). And what better motivator of discovery than curiosity ? If many people think that a particular question is important, it just might motivate someone to make an effort and find out an answer to the question.

In conclusion, with reader's questions, Wikipedia becomes much more powerful: It is no longer driven just by editors(people with knowledge, who actually edit Wikipedia entries. For any given entry, there are orders of magnitude fewer editors than there are readers), but also by readers.

Feature Two:

RSS feeds for Wikipedia entries. This is a direct consequence of above feature. When a reader asks a question, he might want to be notified when the entry is updated. Alternatively, even if a reader doesn't ask a question, he might still be interested in tracking "the progress" of a particular entry.

Here is a short review of various clubs in San Francisco that are known to play House and Trance music. Please remember that crowds come and go(one place might be popular this month, but dead the next), and clubs sometimes change their musical formats. Hence, the reviews below may not be accurate a year, or even a few months from now. It will be interesting to revisit this list next year, and see what has changed.

Ruby Skye: Probably the most well known nightclub in San Francisco. It is a fairly big venue. Music is house (both fridays and saturdays), but since Ruby Skye often brings well known DJs, the music might vary depending on who is at the decks. I rarely go there on regular nights because the crowd tends to be too touristy and the vibe isn't all that great. Best nights are special events that sometimes happen on weekdays . These events attract "those who know" crowd and the vibe is crazy.

Mighty: This is my favourite club in San Francisco. They play pretty decent house there on Saturdays, and have occasional special events on Fridays. The crowd tends to be very diverse, and there are practically no tourists. There is nothing particularly great about that place though; the main reason I love it is because I can come there any saturday with people who aren't even very much into House(or even with people who don't go to nightclubs), and we can all have a great time. I could even come there by myself and still have a great time!

Pink: I used to really love that place. It's a european style club/lounge where they play awesome House music. The place is really small, and most of it is for lounging rather than dancing. Pink attracts trendy European crowd. Recently I've had problems getting into Pink though: it seems that you either need to be with someone who knows the doorman or have girls in the group. I can't blaim them for that requirement: for such a place to succeed in the long run, the ratio should be pretty good(Nevertheless the ratio still kinda sucks there. If you are looking to pick up girls you are better off somewhere else).

Mezzanine: Nowadays it's mostly gay nights, however they do have occasional special events are awesome. On these nights it's pretty much the same crowd that goes to Mighty.

1015: A very big venue with 4 or 5 rooms(Not sure about the exact number, I haven't even seen them all, hehe). The place is open till 7AM(sometimes till 9AM) and they usually play Trance and House. Paul van Dyk seems to be a resident DJ there(he plays there every 3-4 months), and they frequently bring other well-known Trance DJs. The crowd is primarily asian, and many people are high. I wouldn't bring a girl to that place, unless she really loves Trance.

Duplex: Pretty much the same as Pink, expect not as popular and there are no problems getting in. Pink is better, however since Duplex is much less crowded it's much better suited for just a "chill" night with friends.

There are two other places that I'd really like to check out sometime in the future: The Endup(the oldest afterhours place in SF, apparently great on saturdays, and sunday mornings-afternoons) and Anu(very small venue, yet they bring fairly big name DJs).

Most of the above venues are open till 4AM.