DMNW On The Road: Getting Together in Vancouver for Trance Heaven

[divider]What Our Own Scene Could Learn[/divider]

We felt the love at Get Together

Vancouver may be a quick 2.5 hour drive north of Seattle, but it’s a completely different world up there. Everything runs smoothly, from the lightning fast security to keeping an all-ages crowd safe in an industry where that’s proving to be a tall order. Of course a 4am closing time for a well-run after-party certainly didn’t hurt Blueprint’s ability to have the second half of the night somehow top the main event. There’s ton we took home wishing our own scene in Seattle would apply.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our trips up north to Vancouver, it’s that Seattle needs a consistent after-party venue that can stay open until at least 3-4am. WaMu’s closing time is getting earlier and earlier, leaving many with nowhere to go once things shut down at 1am. The ability to keep the night going for another three hours gives us as fans the full experience, as well as the opportunity to see big DJs in small clubs. Although we also have a hard time imagining a Seattle after-party that wouldn’t doom us to an hour of waiting in line in the cold. Whatever the secret to Blueprint’s success is, it’d serve us well to bottle that and ship it down south to Washington and Oregon.

That’s not to say our own scene is a rave wasteland. But what we’re experiencing now with WaMu’s heightened restrictions has put the Seattle scene at something of a crossroads. Vancouver has the benefit of multiple large-capacity venues for hosting just about any and everything they want. But perhaps in the spirit of that, it’s time someone in our fair city invested money in buying out one of the many vacant warehouses in SoDo for a 900-1000 capacity club. For now though, all we can say is one thing: Get Together was an experience we’ll not soon forget.

For more from Blueprint Events, we highly recommend checking out Seasons Festival this April. Click here for more info!