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STNICCC 2000
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Cast your minds back to late 1990. What was happening in your
life back then ?
Life could have been very good to you - if you were at the
original STNICCC party. Organised by Rich Karsmakers and others,
STNICCC is probably regarded as the first legendary Atari party.
Unfortunately, life wasn't so good to all of us, as I can only
too well remember. 1990 in general was a nightmare year for me,
and not just for not being at the original STNICCC either !
Now, fast forward back to the present time. Although it is now
March of 2001 (at the time of writing this) I am already looking
back on STNICCC 2000 - and the experiences there certainly cheer
up the occasional bad times.
Chris Holland and I organised to meet up at my place outside
Cambridge. Asteroid (John Hayward) was also there as well, as I
had picked him up from Cambridge a little while before. We packed
the car fairly promptly and got on the road towards Harwich ferry
port. It was interesting how the only hold-up in traffic we saw
was on Cambridge's infamous A14, where a lorry had jacknifed and
had ended up facing the wrong way round on the other carriageway.
Fortunately we were on the opposite side of the carriageway, so
were able to speed past it relatively quickly. The journey in
general passed off fairly quickly, with Harwich port looming up
in the darkness. We got checked in and, after parking the car in
the parking area, went to the indoor seating area to chill out
for a while.
A couple of hours or so later we were asked to return back to our
cars in order to drive over to the holding bay. The ferry had
ended up running a little late, this wasn't a major problem
though. After a short delay with some hilarious driving around
the weird transit system that exists at Harwich, we got onto
the ferry (parking upstairs this time). Familiar territory
greeted us as we arrived on the main pedestrian floor of the
ferry itself, the famous McDonalds and pizza take-away
restaurants, along with the famous video wall, showing MTV-style
music videos throughout the duration of the crossing. We also
visited the duty-free store and made some choices on what to get
for the return journey.
Not a great deal happened during the crossing, save for John
providing the comedy (and the smells :) ). It passed over in a
relatively short time frame, soon we were disembarking with the
other cars over to the now familiar customs buildings looming up
at the Hook. Customs was straightforward, with a brief check of
passports - and we were off into Holland. A storm started
overhead, with one or two surprising lightning forks flashing in
the sky on the initial journey. We found the main E30 road
without too many difficulties and, after about three quarters of
an hour travelling on this road, we saw signs guiding us into
Utrecht. After initially parking up at a petrol station (with a
bit of comedy driving along the cycleways on the way) we met up
with Rich K and he took us to the flat he shared with his wife,
Karin.
It was rather late then, in the early hours of the morning in
fact, so we retired to bed. Later that day, after a few hours
sleep and general chilling out, we followed Rich K over to the
STNICCC 2000 partyplace, at his workplace in Sassenheim, about 10
km or so north of Schiphol airport. We drove past one or two
places - the names of which I recognised. One of these was a
small place called Bruekelen - the birthplace of the Netherlands'
most famous movie and TV actor, Rutger Hauer. Getting to the
partyplace was straightforward but we were quite early. Stowing
all the stuff in the main room of the partyplace, we went off
with the now empty car, parking it at Schiphol airport and taking
the train to Amsterdam for the afternoon.
Amsterdam was certainly an eye-opener of a city, with plenty to
look at (and that's not just the famous Red Light District
either !) We ate at the local McDonalds restaurant there - after
coming out, we were - well, one could call it being 'drawn' over
to it - finding ourselves toddling over to a sex shop on the
other side of the road. A big store it was at that - with loads
of stuff on offer - titles such as Club Seventeen, Teenage Sex
number umpteen ..... (Mr Pink, if you're reading this right now,
I dare you to include this little bit in the quiz for the hidden
articles eh :) ).
Finding that we were getting rather warm in this particular store
(you can probably guess the reason why :) ) we went out and had a
wander around Amsterdam, passing through a very small part of the
Red Light District on the way. Well, we saw the African and some
Asian girls at least, most knocking on their windows, some even
opening their doors and asking us to go in to see them. We
decided at this time not to take them up on this, but this may
well change after the Error In Line party ! (We didn't get much
in the way of time for this in the end, even after EIL2)
The time was coming towards 6.00pm, when STNICCC 2000 itself was
due to start, so we made our way back to Amsterdam's Centraal
Station, getting the train back to Schiphol. The car was still
there in one piece and we drove fairly quickly back northwards,
past Schiphol (seeing the planes running over the motorway
bridges again).
When we got to the partyplace, STNICCC was pretty much up and
running. Held in Rich K's workplace, which was a big Internet
firm, they had a fantastically fast T1 line installed to the 'net
itself. After getting set up with our Falcons and my PC in one of
the quieter rooms (where Rich K, Tinker and various members of
FUN popped up from time to time to do some surfing.
The T1 line was bloody fast, allowing us to download such stuff
as MP3's (dodgy eh) and, of course, some of us spent some time
browsing through the odd adult site, as the pictures themselves
came up very quickly. We also amused ourselves at one stage with
the site at www.farts.com, which caused Rich K to have a fit of
the giggles at times, along with MC Laser and the others in the
room at the time. Check it out sometime eh ...
STNICCC progressed very well, with a lot of the old names from
the old ST scene making an appearance, except TLB and TCB, who
couldn't make it for various reasons. One member of TLB and Delta
Force, Mike Schuessler (original editor of Maggie) was there, we
got the chance to catch up with him over the total lost time of
the last 9 years or so. Mike himself seemed to be pretty chirpy,
and it was good to catch up with him. He took some time out on
the Saturday night to visit Amsterdam with some of the other
guys, methinks that what went on there probably isn't fit for
description here, but I'm sure that the place with the name of
"Red", "Light" and "District" reared it's head around somewhere.
I personally unfortunately managed to miss the competitions due
to having just woken up as they finished. However, the releases
from what I have seen seemed to be good.
Generally, STNICCC was a very good party, a lot of fun was had by
all who attended. From the UK, there was myself and CiH,
Asteroid, Carbon (a first party for him - but he still didn't eat
the food there). Alex Holland also turned up - those of you who
haven't heard of him before he runs the Thalion webshrine.
All in all, it was a fantastic weekend, an ideal time and a nice
change to spend time in the famous city of Amsterdam.
Particularly before Christmas, it was good to see the decorations
of a different city (ie, different to Cambridge :) ).
Felice.
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