BETALEVEL


Swap Meet

Piracy – Karaoke – Conviviality

Swap Meet - not my beautiful house

Saturday, June 28
10pm until late
Free

Authentic Simulated Birthday Edition

This weekend is the 70th anniversary of “New Chinatown.” Old Chinatown was demolished in the 30s to make way for Union Station, and a replacement was built in the middle of what was at the time Little Italy. New Chinatown is considered the first outdoor theme mall in America (suck it, Rick Caruso) and over the decades, it’s evolved a strange authenticity. A genuine fake.

This Saturday night in Chinatown’s Central Plaza, there’s going to be lindy hop, rickshaw rides and old timey cocktails. Negroni sipping zoot-suiters yapping on bluetooth while dodging fireworks in an authenticated simulacrum — now that’s pretty postmodern. But for the full Bladerunner experience, you’ll round out the evening with a right turn at the dumpster for a friendly exchange of datasets, a mug or two of giggle juice, and solid barrel-house on the MIDI gobble pipes.
JB Power Go!

It’s Swap Meet, natch.

 
PS: If that weren’t enough culture for one night, it’s also the birthday of Swap Meet co-host Jason Brown. Palooka!



About Swap Meet

Swap Meet - gesture funk

Swap Meet is a monthly gathering where you can come with your favorite music files and trade them with other physical human people. Then, holler along with the dulcet tones of handcrafted MIDI karaoke. It’s like the Internet, but with people and beer.

Here’s the (nearly complete) house karaoke list, so you can prepare yourself. If something you’d like to sing is not on the list, you are welcome — nay, encouraged! — to bring your own hand-crafted .KAR files. They’re MIDI-tastic!

What to Bring

  • bring: drinks, or a kindly donation (optional)
  • bring: your singin’ voice and dancin’ shoes (optional)
  • bring: some storage media and/or a Swap Pack (optional)
  • bring: a defiant sense of joy in the face of our eroding cultural freedoms (required)

Swap Pack? What’s a Swap Pack?

  • 1. Take note of the one or two themes chosen for a given month’s Swap Packs
  • 2. Pick out 128 Mb of music (roughly 25-40 MP3s) which interprets, tangents, or ignores one of said themes
  • 3. Put the music into a folder
  • 4. Put the folder onto portable media (flash drives are handy)
  • 5. Take your portable media to Swap Meet
  • 6. Swap
  • 7. And then we sing!
  • (For more details, see the Swap Pack FAQ.)
  • 8. We haven’t really been picking themes for the last few months. But it’s possible we will start doing that again.

Some questions you might have and some answers we might have

Do I need to have an iPod to come?
No. Many people come with hard drives, flash drives, or other alternate file storage devices/media.

Must I swap files at all?
No. You don’t have to swap to sing.

Wait — must I sing?
No. You don’t have to sing to swap. Indeed, you don’t have to sing or swap and you can still be powerfully entertained by the singing and the whatnot. (But beware the power of MIDI karaoke. Maybe you didn’t intend to sing Steve Miller…)


Swap Meet is presented by Superbunker and The Royal Academy of Nuts + Bolts.
For more information and helpful links, please see the Superbunker Swap Meet project page.

Please note:
According to recent legal decisions, inducing anyone to use physical space for the purpose of sharing music may render the space-time continuum illegal. Use the space-time continuum at your own risk.


Make Swap Meet your friend.