Some day, Kevin Wick hopes to play video games in his own video game bar. That day, he tells me on the back patio, will be “The day I can sleep more than five hours a night.”

The 24 year-old co-owner of the new AFK Gamer Lounge has lost sleep for months preparing for this weekend’s grand opening, making it difficult to tell whether rumpled and deadpan is his usual persona, or whether I’m speaking to a barely caffeinated husk of his former self. A few skillful straight-faced jokes make me think the former though, as he shuffles me around the new restaurant dressed in jeans, flip-flops and an SJSU Spartan’s sweatshirt. The décor in the 18,000 square foot space (formerly Los Gatos Brewery) is mostly complete, though still necessitating various ladders scattered around the dining room. The design and color scheme approximates what might happen if someone installed a nightclub inside a giant Xbox.

It’s Monday and AFK is closed for the day, but as we pass through the ground floor from the patio, the staff is undergoing a training regimen consisting of not only restaurant service strategies, but also introductions to video games, specifically League of Legends, a premiere eSports title that has already drawn crowds to AFK to watch big matches. Once the 65 PC basement LAN center is complete, which it should by the grand opening, ‘League’ will be drawing the hardcore gamers as well.

Wick brings me down to the basement, fully stocked with slick black PC towers and custom green and black faux-leather chairs. In a Reddit thread six months back, Wick estimated that all the outlay for these renovations and equipment runs into the “multi-hundred-thousands” of dollars. He is resolutely vague on the exact numbers at the request of his investor, who is also resolutely anonymous. I caught myself wondering how some long-haired jeans-and-flip flop guy my own age got someone to stake him a “multi-hundred-thousand” dollars for a business unproven at this scale, but then I remembered where exactly I lived and that most people here spend their time doing things other than surfing, smoking weed and writing for the alt weekly. (Maybe I chose the wrong “career” path? Nah. But I digress.)

A screenshot of League of Legends, a very popular e-Sports title.

AFK had a soft open at the end of March, so I showed up on a recent Friday with a couple of nerd friends in tow, to find a line for the host stand and the bodies two deep at the bar. Our enthusiastic pony-tailed host explained how things worked, with any food or drink purchase coming with two hours of game time on an open console, something hard to find on a Friday night. We got a table towards the back windows of the restaurant, looking on to a patio full of people who showed no signs of leaving during our visit. Surprisingly, the ratio of men to women was pretty good, which for nightlife in San Jose means about 10 to 1. Fantastic.

Our server was a pro, writing nothing down and getting everything exactly right, though it took about 20 minutes for the drinks and another 15 or so for the food. But really, if you go to a yet-to-be-opened restaurant at 7pm on a Friday and expect the best service of your life, you should be shot in the street and charged an automatic 25 percent gratuity on the cost of the bullet. (I’m not at all bitter about my time in the restaurant industry, no way pal).

To drink we ordered various game themed cocktails: the Companion Cube ($12), a gin, raspberry and egg white mixture served in a fancy little coupe glass; the Whispy Woods ($9) featuring bourbon and apple juice (the best of the bunch); and Tortimer’s Mai Tai ($11), made with Don Q and Ron Zacapa rums.

“At first I wanted crazy gamer cocktails,” Wick tells me later, bright neon concoctions reminiscent of gamers’ energy drinks, but David Nepov, president of the United States Bartenders’ Guild and creator of AFK’s bar program, steered him in a more craft cocktail direction. Wick says singlebarrel is his favorite bar in San Jose, so he was happy to go that way, but although most of the cocktails float around the singlebarrel pricepoint, they didn’t measure up to singlebarrel quality. They certainly get points for daring ingredients though: Walnut bitters? Hell yeah.

The food was similarly above the average bar fare, but maybe a bit pricey for the quality: we got the buffalo wings ($12), the mac and cheese ($7), the chicken walnut salad ($14), and some french fries ($3). We joked they should have added gourmet bagel bites to the menu, and apparently that idea was indeed floated during the menu planning stages, though scrapped due to the high heat of the woodfired pizza oven AFK inherited when it moved into the former home of the Los Gatos Brewing Company.

Of course we wanted to jump on a few games during our stay, but the consoles were definitely in high demand, especially those playing Super Smash Bros., one of which sat next to our table. Memorably, we watched intense and repeated matches between players named “Hodor,” “Poop,” “D” and “Nojohns.” The story behind the lack of johns was never discovered, but we did manage to snag a Super Nintendo for a round of Super Mario Kart, which, compared to Mario Kart 64, is really goddamn hard. A staff member walked by, telling us “I’m gonna put Streetfighter in when you guys are done.”

Falcon Punch! Get’s ‘em every time.

Downtown restaurant spaces this big haven’t had the best run recently, with Los Gatos Brewing Company leaving, plus P.F. Chang’s going out of business and its replacement M Lounge already struggling with accusations of wage theft. But AFK has something else going for it.

Originally, Wick tells me me, the idea for AFK was “A culmination of a lot of things, including living in the dorms, especially having the community of gamers who would take over the common room and just LAN up and hang out. Even though we could do the same exact thing together with the same people from our rooms, we’d all rather go into the main room and play side by side.” If AFK can give gamers a real life manifestation of the community they already have online, then they’re not going anywhere any time soon.

For tickets to the AFK Gamer Lounge’s grand opening party, click here.

Every February for for the past three years, longtime local music promoter Eric Fanali has devoted all his energy to wrangling nerds—herding a large and disparate group of indie rockers, chiptune artists and video game fanatics into the same place for a weekend-long video game and music festival known as Rockage. His job description does not entail micromanaging what they do once they get there, however. Half the fun of Rockage comes from the chaotic and unexpected interactions that inevitably take place.

And besides, in many cases, Fanali says he just doesn’t want to know.

“I don’t want to be liable,” Fanali jokes, as he considers what the weirdo, anti-band duo Gnarboots might have in store for their Rockage 4.0 set. Last year it involved an Elvis impersonator and reams of toilet paper. This year, rumors abound, though no one really knows what’s going to happen—least of all the band, which consists of an iPod and two longtime musicians who intentionally don’t practice.

“We’re shaking you out of your band expectations,” says Aaron Carnes, one half of Gnarboots and Metro contributor. “It’s unusual and jarring in a fun way.”

It would seem that the Gnarboots philosophy lines up pretty neatly with Fanali’s. A spirit of spontaneity informs the planned (and unplanned) collaborations that result from cramming 42 bands full of talented and obsessive (often one and the same) folks into one room full of old-school arcade games and letting it rip.

Fanali recalls a scene from a previous year: local video-game-jazz-jammers Super Soul Bros. were backing rappers Boboso and Mega Ran when they suddenly broke into an impromptu cover of a song from the 1997 Playstation rhythm game, PaRappa the Rapper.

Not all of the groups have direct ties to video game music. Festival headliners, The Thermals, for one, are a Portland-based indie punk band with roots in the South Bay. The band is, however, super into retro arcade games. “Galaga is my favorite, I’ll never stop playing Galaga,” says singer and guitarist Hutch Harris, noting that bassist Kathy Foster likes Centipede and drummer Westin Glass has professed his love for Burger Time—an obscure 1982 arcade game based around assembling massive hamburgers.

And actually, The Thermals’ latest album, Desperate Ground, may have a deeper connection to retro arcade. “Not a plot, but this theme, this story running through Desperate Ground,” Harris says. “The story was this loner, lost in the woods, being hunted. Wes and I were playing so much Galaga when we were working on Desperate Ground, Galaga kind of fit into that theme. Like, someone who had gone rogue from the army was killing all alone. In Galaga, you don’t know who the hell you are.”

The Thermals have roots in the South Bay and love ‘Galaga.’

The other headliners, Bit Brigade and Minibosses, are direct video game music bands. Bit Brigade will be debuting their soundtrack for the original NES Metroid at Rockage.

The Minibosses were one of the first bands to seriously cover video game music, and have been building a cult following since they began playing NES covers in 1999. “They’re so good,” Fanali raves. “They don’t need to prove anything.” The band is planning a collaborative set with Gnarboots, entitled “Gnarbosses.”

Much of the rest of the line-up will be recognizable to local music fans: indie rockers Curious Quail, The Albert Square and Zen Zenith, chiptune acts Crashfaster, The Mineral Kingdom and Petriform, plus some out-of-towners like The Y Axes and Sacramento-based sister punk duo Dog Party.

Bands are pitching in to run parts of the event as well. Zen Zenith will be hosting the table top/board game area, in addition to running a live Dungeons and Dragons game. The Super Soul Bros. are managing one of the stages, on top of their four scheduled sets. “It’s a community where everyone joins in,” Fanali says.

Fanali, who’s been booking shows for the past 18 years in the Bay Area, has self-funded (and lost money on) Rockage each year. This year, a similar festival out of Maryland, MAGfest, is co-sponsoring the festival, hoping to gain a foothold for a West Coast version MAGWest. “I’d like to expand Rockage every year even with MagWEST around,” says Fanali. “But I don’t want it to be a giant 10,000-plus festival. I like to keep it more intimate where you have a chance to meet everybody. I like the opportunity to socially game with these people.”

Rockage 4.0 runs from Friday, Feb. 6 through Sunday, Feb. 8 at various venues around San Jose State University. More info.

Check out “Pillar of Salt” by The Thermals:

For more than a decade, Steve Hays has been spinning records at bars and clubs from the peninsula up to San Francisco. The Redwood City man now hosts regular nights at The Patio in Palo Alto and Slate in San Francisco, and says his gigs are only getting better. Hays recalls one particularly good night when his show drew 700 people—many of whom came specifically for him—to the Z Space gallery in San Francisco.

That would be a good show for any up-and-coming local EDM producer. But for a karaoke DJ? Well, that’s something else altogether.

Hays, who goes by DJ Purple and calls himself a “dance karaoke” DJ, credits his popularity with his carefully curated playlist and his philosophy that people who come to his show should feel like they are a rock star for the night.

“I want to show people around the world what’s possible with karaoke,” Hays says. And so far, he has been successful. He says that people come to his shows from all over the Bay Area and tell him: “We don’t have anything like this where we come from.”

A DJ Purple dance karaoke set aspires to be a high-energy rock show where anyone can be a star, at least for a song. “People who are already good karaoke singers come and the music and the lights and the show is up to their level of talent,” he tells me.

And the audience isn’t just standing around looking at their phones, waiting for their turn to sing. That’s where the “dance” part comes in. “No slow songs” is the DJ Purple motto. He’s combed through his songbook, cutting out those songs that might be popular, but are sure to bleed a crowded dance floor.

Someone might want to sing some Buffalo Springfield, but right after “Get Low?” Not gonna happen. Hays, who started out in a rock band before making the transition to a karaoke DJ, keeps the energy going with live instruments as well—busting out his signature saxophone for those long instrumental sections when everyone might otherwise be staring at their shoes.

DJ Purple, who has been booking shows in San Jose recently, will be appearing at JJ’s Blues this Saturday.

Hays has bigger ambitions than just conquering San Jose, however. “I would like to somehow see this become more of a phenomenon in society,” he says. “I’d like to see the kind of experience I’m creating becoming accessible to people everywhere. They could go down to their local bar and have this awesome musical experience.”

The hard part, though, is a DJ Purple show might just have to been seen to be understood. “My show appeals more to people who aren’t into karaoke,” Hays says. After the show audience members will come up to him and say, “I really hate karaoke, but I really like what you’re doing.”

DJ Purple brings his dance karaoke set to JJ’s Blues in San Jose on Friday, Dec. 19. More info.

“I fucking hate interviews,” reads one of Charlie Yin’s tweets from a couple weeks back.

It’s an understandable that Yin, better known as Giraffage, would be suffering from interview fatigue. The South Bay-bred producer is fresh off a world tour with Skrillex protege Porter Robinson, he released his Fool’s Gold Records debut, No Reason, today, Nov. 18, and he’s been answering the same questions over and over again, day after day.

Fortunately, Yin was happy enough to discuss his frustration with Metro—explaining that beyond the simple fact that interviews can be monotonous, he feels that the articles which follow the interviews impact the way he and others feel about his art.

I fucking hate interviews

— Giraffage (@giraffage) November 5, 2014

“When I do read interviews it kinda changes my perception of the music a bit,” Yin says. “I don’t like it.” Yin has said that he feels it’s up to the listener to interpret any narrative or meaning behind his work, so he tries to avoid coloring anyone else’s perception of it.

Back when Yin started composing beats, he didn’t have to worry so much about these kinds of things. Giraffage began as a solitary activity, with Yin composing fuzzed-out, sample-based beats and remixes by himself in his UC Berkeley dorm room. He would push out his beats via the web where they could stand on their own, independent of him.

But shortly after graduating in 2012, things took off in a big way. He left his dorm to find a full-time music career awaiting him, complete with attention from the likes of the taste-making blog Pitchfork and FADER.

Now 25, Yin has been moving away from samples and toward original production work—for both legal and artistic reasons. “It’s more true to me,” he says of the music he’s making now. “It definitely helps reinforce a distinct sound.”

That sound can be heard in the two lead singles from No Reason, “Chocolate” and “Tell Me”—a pair of future bass numbers, which feature elements and textures that sound as if they were plucked straight from the glistening fractal waters of the Nintendo 64 game Wave Race, or perhaps Dance Dance Revolution. These shimmering sounds are mixed with laid-back dance grooves, rolling high hats and bent vocal samples.

Now that he’s back from tour and has the backing of Fool’s Gold, Yin says that he is looking forward to chilling out, hunkering down at his new home in San Francisco and producing some new music. “I’m feeling good,” he says, reflecting on his career. “I never thought that my music would have taken me this far.”

Then again, perhaps it makes sense. “I just really like music,” he shrugs. “It’s what I naturally do when I get bored. It’s just the most fun thing to do.”

A few months ago, Con Brio guitarist Benjamin Andrews had a revelation: Con Brio is his favorite band—and not just his favorite among those bands that he’s played in—but his favorite in general. He’s making exactly the music he wants to make.

A lot of the recently buzzed-about R&B has sailed off to weirder, electronic places, but Con Brio’s lineage is clearer. The core rhythm section of keyboardist Micah Dubreuil, bassist Jonathan Kirchner and drummer Andrew Laubacher has been playing together since 2009, and after losing their previous singer last year, they added on Andrews and frontman Ziek McCarter.

A rotating horn section rounds out their more traditional instrumentation, but nailing down their sound isn’t too easy. They check funk acts Sly & the Family Stone and Billy Preston as influences, along with Stevie Wonder and neo-soul artist D’Angelo. Really, these guys just sound tight, completely put together, and Andrews knows it.

“I’ve never had such a complete package,” he says.

An integral part of the package is McCarter—Con Brio’s charismatic, multi-talented frontman. He can croon, he can wail and he’s got moves. He cites entertainers like Prince, Bob Fosse, and James Brown as the inspiration for his stage presence.

“I’ve been dancing since I was 2,” McCarter says. “I was kind of kid that would set up a camera, dance an hour straight and go back and watch it. I’m always asking, ‘How can I tell a story with my moves?’”

To get a sample of McCarter’s ability, go online and watch one of the band’s shows at San Francisco vintage-and-antique store, Viracocha. During a rendition of “Never Be the Same,” a song from their forthcoming EP, McCarter glides across the stage, executes spins, shimmies and at one point nails a perfectly timed drop split, James Brown-style.

McCarter’s impressive footwork compliments the invigorating power of songs like “Give It All” from their forthcoming EP, Kiss the Sun, (due out in January).The song is bursting at the seams with energy—especially when the triumphant horn section builds to McCarter’s high falsetto and Andrew’s wicked guitar solo.

McCarter says the song, co-written with Dubreuil, started out as an ode to a passionate long distance relationship before turning into a conduit for channeling the spirit of his father, who was shot and killed—while unarmed—by a police officer in 2011. “I was my father singing to my mother,” he says. “It transformed into a hybrid of both.”

“It’s ecstatic, man,” Andrews said. “Everybody is sweating half way through the intro and I don’t even know why. It’s not cardio, it’s energy.”

 Con Brio plays the Poor House Bistro in San Jose on Nov. 14.

“Hey, do you want to get locked in a room with nine strangers and solve puzzles for an hour?”

Surprisingly enough, very few of my friends answered “yes” to this question, but such is the fate of those who attend the “Real Escape Game” in San Jose’s Japantown.

I finally convinced someone to go with me, albeit reluctantly. But I’ll take it, because I sure as hell ain’t getting locked in a room with ten strangers to solve puzzles for an hour. The game was afoot.

We showed up to a crowd of exactly whom you’d expect at a real life, locked-door puzzle scenario. That is, nerds. (That is, software engineers.) We fit right in. There were even some lady software engineers! My friend, who is a lady, was relieved by this, because there was a strong chance of her being locked in a room with ten nerdy dudes solving puzzles for an hour. Not ideal. (Although real-life detectives do wear fedoras, if we’re to believe the depictions of private eyes in all those film noir flicks from the ’30s and ’40s.)

Sure enough, the guy facilitating the whole thing appeared wearing a black fedora and carrying three Smuckers Uncrustables. We did not take this as a good sign. He let us into the anonymous office building on N. 1st Street and left us in the lobby, where we milled around for a few minutes.

Then, the elevator doors opened by themselves—mysteriously. And then they did this several more times. It turns out they just open automatically whenever someone comes through the door.  This was considerably less mysterious.

Eventually, we were led up the elevator and into the briefing room. We were briefed. As a team we had an hour to find all the clues hidden in the room, solve the puzzles, and find the key that would let us unlock the door. Only one out of the twenty-two other teams had accomplished this. Luckily, they let you out after an hour whether you solve the puzzles or not.

I’ll avoid spoilers about the puzzles, but I will say that the whole “locked in a room” thing is more “locked in a room with two supervisors and an emergency exit.” So it’s less foreboding than it sounds. Because let’s be real, this whole deal is a good beginning to a horror movie. Which is exactly why nothing could possibly go wrong. Which is exactly why EVERYTHING WILL DEFINITELY GO HORRIBLY WRONG.  Or could it? I’ll admit I psyched myself out a bit. I guess I thought it was gonna go a little more like this:

Once the game began though, we were in the zone. Our team of strangers worked surprisingly well together, ransacking the room for clues and dividing up into puzzle solving committees. Ultimately, we got stuck without a particular tool, but had everything else in place to continue. With five minutes left we found the tool but were too late to finish it all. I swear we could’ve though.

Those who enjoy puzzle games of any kind—Rubik’s Cubes to crosswords—should definitely check this out. It doesn’t require anything beyond basic logic, word-play and general knowledge. Bring a couple of your nerdy puzzle friends and experience the satisfaction of destroying a strange apartment full of IKEA furniture. Just like Sherlock Holmes!

For more info and to buy tickets click here.

It’s that time of year again. As summer slips into autumn, the farmers prepare for the harvest, and the people prepare for the long hard winter ahead… It’s also time for Beyond Wonderland. A traveling electronic music circus—a playground for late teens and early 20-somethings to figure out just how little they can wear or just how borderline offensive a slogan they can slap across the front of a tank top. They come to get blitzed and feverishly dance—or flail, really—to throbbing electronic bass, twinkling melodies and grinding fax-machine-death-knells shaped into one of the tones commonly recognized as one of the 12 notes in the traditional Western musical scale.

Beyond Wonderland is a spectacle to be sure. Just check out these photos. Multiple impressively decorated stages—one featuring a giant, animatronic caterpillar, smoking a hookah and blinking his droopy mechanical eyelids over bright, LED eyeballs, surveying the proverbial valley of ashes that was the Shoreline Amphitheatre’s parking lot. There were lights and lasers galore, spiraling out into the night in seizure-inducing fits. The crowd was equally flashy. From candyravers to frat dudes, house dancers to oldtimers, the only barrier to entry was an $200. But that’s the festival scene, and with two days of DJs there’s room enough for the current glut of excessive and maximalist drivel and the good shit too. So, I paid the ticket and took the ride.

I also took notes… or tried to.

Beyond Wonderland was two very, very full days, and brave is the person who forged through the entire 19 hours. I sure wasn’t that brave, but I still took in more than my fill of music, all while occasionally scrawling something in my notebook (in increasingly illegible handwriting). Here’s what I culled from my notes:

Day 1

-If you’re going to hide in the bushes on Shoreline Boulevard to do drugs, don’t wear furry neon boots. We can see you.

– Parking and driving at Shoreline is a nightmare. Parking a few blocks away around the office parks is well worth the walk. Try to commandeer an abandoned Google bike for bonus points.

-Someone’s already getting transported by the EMTs. Hoo boy.

-Besides, the promised “TSA-style patdown” turns out to be a half-hearted rubbing by people at the gate.

-Initial impressions of Beyond Wonderland fashion aesthetic for ladies: what’s the minimal amount of clothing I can wear?

-Initial impressions of Beyond Wonderland fashion aesthetic for dudes: what’s the stupidest shit I can put on this tank top?

-Tank top examples:
“I’ll give you a hug if you give me phone number”
“Money / Weed / Pussy”
“Sit on my face #SoIKnowItsReal”
“I <3 (insert name of favorite drug)”

-Imagined meeting of two dudes with “I <3 Weed” shirts:
“Hey! Dude! Do you like weed as well?!”
“I do! I do also like weed!”
(They high five. So dope.)

-The main stage was impressive during the day, with it’s giant hookah smoking caterpillar. It only got more impressive at night. Lasers improve most things.

-First DJ of the day was Sound Remedy, which was alright until he dropped a remix of that fucking “Why you gotta be so rude?” song. I have a multifaceted hatred (like, a gem of hatred) for that song, for many, many reasons that are beside the point here. Fuck that song, my normally balanced and sharp reviewer’s consideration is irrevocably biased. I’m not qualifed to comment.

-Paul Oakenfold segued from Borgeous with some big room and then played some great trance, except that most of the crowd forgot how to dance without a drop.

-Over at PartyFavor though the crowd was going nuts. Trend at the festival for sure: the more trap in the set, the better. Some completely successful Bay Area pandering with Thizzle Dance. A+

-Overheard in the bathroom line: “You are already so drunk! I just wanted to have a good time!” “Great, I’m peaking and standing in the bathroom line.” “Dude, are you going to throw up again?” Struggle city.

-From my female friend: “I’ve had to stop making eye contact with guys, because then they immediately come toward me.”

-Later from the same friend: “I’ve only gotten my ass grabbed one time today!” It is sad she is excited about this. It is really not that hard to not sexually harass women. So, good job brostep dudes?

-Classic Keystone Cops moment as three security guards skid into a meeting in the middle of the crowd, gesture importantly at someone’s ID, then run off willy nilly.

-Destructo abandoned for direly necessary food truck run.

-Did we see Carnage? Paper diamond was cool I think. At this point, Total Sensory Overload begins to set in. There is no place without overwhelming bass. Later, everyone will agree that the sun was setting for at least 4 hours.

-Stray thought: “I’ve probably stepped in vomit at least 5 times today and not noticed it.”

-That moment when you realize you’ve been blindly following complete strangers.

-White-haired, pot-bellied old man spotted wearing John Lennon sunglasses complete with marijuana leaf lenses and a shirt stating “Molly Is My Best Friend.” He should definitely be consulted for new Kevin James vehicle “Undecover Dad 2: Undercover Dad Goes to a Rave.”

-12th Planet was killing it, throwing in some hard-style, trap, dubstep, but the other guy with him on stage would not shut up. Most DJs should not hold microphones, as they then seem to have an irresistible desire to spout a steady stream of inane shit. “OH NOW I PUT MY HANDS THANK YOU.”

-Oh god now he’s screaming into the mic…just kidding it’s a Skrillex remix.

-GTA plays the same big room everyone else is playing. At some point I probably could have walked across the entire festival and never stopped listening to “Booyah.” I never want to hear that song again.

-Krewella just played “Booyah.” Kill me. It’s cool that they sing live though. Great energy.

-Above & Beyond brought some welcome trance relief. People know how to dance now. They never said a word into the mic while I was there. Fantastic.

-Pendulum closed out day 1 with a great set playing to a smaller crowd on a side stage. I can’t feel my feet, but I can feel my brain. This is not how it should be.

Day 2: (Exhaustion and fear tempered by a large breakfast and eight cups of coffee)

-Major genre dispute at the Alvaro set: Is “jungle house” just big room house with a double time drop? Many strong opinions are offered, few of them can be heard.

-By day two the skill of group consensus via hand signals only has been mastered. This is key.

-Overheard: “Am I just high or is Alvaro crushing it right now?” “He’s crushing it.” At this time yesterday everyone was standing around looking at each other during Paul Oakenfold’s set. Now the crowd is nuts.

-Props to Alvaro for not playing “Booyah.”

-Notes get illegible here.

-People in the front of the bathroom line usually know better as to which Porta Potties are actually occupied. Usually.

-We chill out at with Moonboots’s deep house set for a while and find the congregation of the most naked people at the festival.

-I do a Serious Journalistic Survey on the way to and from the bathroom as to why today is so much better than yesterday, in five words or less.
“It’s the drugs.”
“It’s the environment. Everyone is more comfortable.”
“More people.”
“The crowd is hyped?”
“Five words?”
“Yesterday was better.”
“More trance DJs today.”

-The question was leading and shitty, but for real, Sunday was way better. Everyone danced harder, the sets weren’t repetitive, overall vibes were positive.

-The cops arrest one guy by the back fence and hold up his baggy of coke. What’s it like to be the one guy arrested for drugs at a festival where most people have drugs? (Ed. note: Actually, more than 60 people were arrested at the festival, according to The Merc. This was just the one arrest our intrepid reporter witnessed.)

-Kaskade closes out the festival in style with all sorts of fireworks and a high energy set. No one can resist “Atmosphere.”

In the end, we’re a bunch of people who can afford a $200 ticket and $11 Coors Lights having some good, commercially sanctioned fun. Which, for many, is where dance music is at right now. I don’t think I’m qualified (or coherent enough, right now) to comment on the whole scene beyond that, but in the future, I don’t think I need to pay that much for a dude to tell me to “Put your fucking hands in the air!” I mean, there’s an Animal Collective DJ set coming up at 1015 Folsom and tickets are $17.50. Booyah!

To check out our photo gallery of Beyond Wonderland, click here.

Last night a leather daddy tossed a beanie baby named Cancun to me while strutting 10 feet in the air across the SAP Center. That’s usually a weird thing, but I know that many other people at the Lady Gaga show last night (and others across the country) had their very own leather daddy throw them their very own beanie baby from their very own spot under the lucite catwalk. So that makes it mundane? Less fun? Ironic? Extra fun?

“Do you think she cries at every show?” I asked my friend on the ride home.

“Oh yeah for sure, I think she can cry on command,” she answered immediately.

During her encore performance of “Gypsy,” alone at her piano, Gaga started sobbing and had to start over. What does one make of that?

If it’s real, it’s admirable. If it’s not, isn’t it still admirable? It makes for a good show after all, and whether fans suspend their disbelief or not, Gaga and her connection to them obviously means a lot.

In a legit touching moment, Gaga brought two fans up to sit beside her at the piano while she performed an acoustic rendition of “Born This Way.”

Both fans, dressed Gaga chic with bejewled vest and crop top, hands over their mouths, lost their shit while singing every word, and then got to go down the trapdoor beside Mother Monster.

Oh yeah, there were trapdoors—all over the stage in fact, which extended far across the crowd via interconnecting transparent catwalks, about as high off the ground as an average guy wearing heels and a peacock headdress.

Gaga would go down the trapdoors to thunderous cheering, letting her five-piece band vamp for a couple minutes, then reemerge as a black leather octopus or in a bejewled bikini, still to thunderous cheering.

At one point, different trapdoors opened, unfurling what were supposedly the native flora of Venus, for her song of the same title. For a planet supposedly devoted to the feminine, it’s native flora is very, very phallic.

But this is all the usual Gaga stuff: the signifiers of sex, kink and transgression without the actual substance.

She changed her costume on stage just as all the recent breathless headlines reported, promising that “If we haven’t made you uncomfortable yet, we will now.” But when I had already spent 30 minutes before the show dodging skinny dudes in nothing but boxer-briefs and heels and the smattering of pasty-only ladies, plus an hour-and-a-half of staring at Gaga’s butt, it didn’t make me uncomfortable so much as bored.

By the end of the show though, I couldn’t walk away un-entertained. Really, someone would have to try pretty hard to not enjoy the spectacle.

She absolutely killed it on the older hits like “Bad Romance” and “Alejandro,” though this might have been because the dozen new Artpop songs in the setlist still don’t measure up to her previous work, even with a huge soundsystem and 12 scantily clad back-up dancers.

The set looked great, with her band housed in what looked like an unpainted set from the original Star Wars, which was periodically covered in video projection matched to the huge screen behind it.

Gaga played the hits and brought the show. If a Little Monster paid the hundred-something bucks to get onto the floor, it’s no doubt they had a good time. At one point Gaga sang happy birthday to one lucky fan with her best Marilyn Monroe impression, and later she read a note tossed on stage, in which a fan thanked her for writing “Born This Way” and making him feel loved.

So I can sit here all day and think about whether Gaga is cynical or authentic, whether her attempt at transgression is empty posturing for monetary gain, or whether she already thought of all this and this is the point of the whole enterprise, she’s a genius, blah blah blah whatever. I think her fans already know what she means.

“It’s not wholesome!” a middle-aged mom shouted as she shut the trunk of her SUV. Was she talking about the stoners at HempCon or the costumed masses at FurCon? I didn’t get a chance to ask, as she hopped in the driver seat and sped off the scene of San Jose’s annual set-up for a joke.

Or maybe it’s more of an anti-joke.

Q: What happens when bunch of animal-suited fanatics, stoners and high-school volleyball girls walk into the McEnery Convention Center?

A: Everyone’s super chill about it and gets along pretty well.

At the time, Concerned Mom was loading whatever parents concerned with wholesomeness load into their trunks, I’d been asking a couple other volleyball parents what they thought of having a medical marijuana trade show and furry festival so close to their impressionable youth.

“Is that what they’re doing in there?” one asked, referring to the South Hall currently being hotboxed by HempCon. “They’re keeping it separate. We’re used to the cat convention [FurCon] by now. The girls think it’s funny.”

PHOTOS: FurCon photo gallery

The odd confluence has been going on for a couple years now. Bruce Newman wrote about it for the Mercury News in 2012, when the concerned parent contingent seemed to be significantly larger.

Key quotes from the article: “It’s just a bunch of degenerates who use medical marijuana as an excuse to do whatever they want to do,” says one parent. The same parent, regarding furries: “’Some of the other parents told me they had checked into it and found things that made it out to be basically a porn fetish convention.” He then “conceded his knowledge of furries is based on an episode of television’s ‘CSI.’”

So either the volleyball folks have gotten used to it, or “Freaky Stuff Scaring Middle Class White Folks” makes for a more exciting article than “Everyone Is Doing All Right.” Conflict makes for an easy hook. Emotions are high! People are fighting! Look! Look! So as a reporter, one might dig around a bit to find it. I asked each contingent what they thought of the others, and responses for the most part ranged from ignorance to unconcern.

The stoners, holed up in their big blue tent, hardly knew what was going on in the outside world. HempCon offered more than enough to occupy the average toker. The line for medical marijuana evaluations made a lengthy snake throughout the hall all day. In exchange for $60 and a chat with a doctor, one could enter the back half of the hall where South Bay dispensaries were selling weed and handing out free samples of all sorts of edibles: “Taste the food, not the medicine!”

PHOTOS: HemCon photo gallery

Most of HempCon’s rhetoric still focuses around the useful fiction that everyone is here for the medicinal value of weed. While some definitely are, talking about weed as medicine sounds a lot better than saying that sometimes one just wants to get blazed and eat a family-sized bag of Doritos sans other family members.

Other highlights of HempCon that this reporter witnessed included a six-foot bamboo bong (“King Bong”) poached from a century-old bamboo patch by the Rose Bowl, an “herbonomically correct” weed trimming station complete with iPhone holder and “kief cling texture” and a booth holding a wide variety of polished rocks and crystals.

“Do stoners like crystals?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, they’re shiny, but they don’t emit their own light so it doesn’t hurt their eyes.” Makes sense.

As far as the furries go, they’re much less weird than they might first appear. Anyone who’s ever been to a sci-fi or comic book festival knows exactly the type: maybe a little more skittish than most, but friendly enough and passionate about very specific things. In this case, dressing up in full body fursuits and pretending to be various creatures.

According to Shawna Snopeck, a con-goer wearing a fuzzy white eared hat, the attractions of the furry fandom lies in it being “a way to express yourself other than who you are.” She traveled from New Jersey to go to the event with her “mate,” Adam Wolf.

When asked about the volleyball girls and the stoners, they hadn’t heard about any conflicts or bad vibes. I told them about Concerned Mom in the parking lot, and Philip, another guy listening in, told me, “This is wholesome for me!”

Later, Philip would get in an argument with another guy about the relative anthropomorphism of the rabbits in Watership Down and whether they used doors or not.

“There’s no doors in Watership Down.”

“Yes there are. Maybe you haven’t read it in a while.”

“Well I’ve read it many times and I don’t think there are any doors.”

“Yeah there is…well they went through a gate in the garden…”

On my way out, furries Kevin and Kat told me how heartbreaking it was to leave FurCon. In a fandom found mostly online, cons are a place to meet Internet friends in real life, at least for a weekend.

In the lobby of the convention center, I chatted with a couple more volleyball people. As we watched their daughters practice while fur-suited folks walked by, one mom told me, “The more the merrier.”

Outside on the street, a guy in big purple fuzzy feet and ears was talking to a member of a dispensary street team. “So, if I live in Oregon, can I get my medical evaluation in California?”

Despite federal raids and local land-use fights plaguing marijuana dispensaries, the industry will soon go from medicinal to outright legal, says Freddy Sayegh, an activist and criminal defense attorney. California will join the ranks of Colorado and Washington, he says, and it’s only a matter of time before the federal government reclassifies the drug from a Schedule I controlled substance, deemed to have no medical benefit, to a Schedule II, which recognizes clinical properties and allows researchers to legally study the plant.

“That’s a future we should all prepare for,” says Sayegh, the keynote speaker at HempCon in San Jose this week. “Things will change drastically. This will move from a non-profit to a for-profit market, a competitive market opened up to recreational uses. I believe 2014 is the year to talk about what future distribution models will look like and look back at what we can learn from other states that have legalized it already.”

Sayegh will join a host of other speakers and about 10,000 attendees at the fifth annual HempCon, which kicks off a four-city tour Friday at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.

The convention runs through Sunday, and it is both festival and educational event, showcasing the latest in smoking accessories and hydroponics.

On the educational side, there are workshops and lectures on topics ranging from starting a delivery business to making THC-based lotions and elixirs. On Friday, cannabis consultant Ralf Rainer will talk about patient dispensary management, Cannabis Career Institute’s Robert Calkin will discuss legal compliance in California and hemp historian Gary Maciel will explore the weird past of the psychoactive plant. Weekend workshops include Sayegh’s keynote speech and more lectures from the Cannabis Career Institute on advanced cultivation, dispensary management, growing opportunities and investing in the marijuana industry.

Sayegh encourages attendees to learn about the laws surrounding THC wax, the super-concentrated butane hash oil, which is legal to possess with a cannabis card but illegal to manufacture.

“There have been a lot of new cases and arrests from people trying to make wax out of butane,” he says. “There’s so much vagueness in the law around concentrates in terms of what’s lawful to possess. But I’m fighting some big cases where people are facing up to six years in state prison for manufacturing butane-based concentrated cannabis. A lot of people don’t know the risk.”

Among the 90-plus vendors registered for the event, physicians from San Jose 420 Evaluations will conduct cannabis consultations on site. Attendees can find options for local treatment, learn about new ways to ingest the plant and ask for legal advice from several attorneys on hand.

Of course, HempCon is as much a haven for medicinal users as it is a celebration of marijuana culture, with clothing, souvenirs, scantily clad booth babes and live performances. Entertainment will range from a standup comedy lineup and THC oil cooking demo to a variety show and musical acts starring Addey Lance and Sour Diesel.