Event: LANtrocity San Fran #5 - LAN Party Event Date: 05/31/03 Written By: KraZ Date Written: 06/04/03

Lantrocity.

It all started like that :

And God created LAN parties and thought it was good.

Well... hum... maybe not *exactly* like that, but the fact is that I can't remember *exactly* why we went to Lantrocity in San Francisco. All I can say is that in the past, Honestplayer had raved about it and somehow, the mighty Warhawk (our venerated and beloved clan leader) got a deal with one of the organizers of the LAN so we could get in for cheap. I was also very exited to try something new! Then it was settled, we would all be going to Lantrocity Saturday June 3rd 2003!

And off we all went, Warhawk, QueMine, Voodoo, Beebo, Honestplayer, Zer, and yours truly, heading north towards the most European of all the American big towns, San Francisco! I carpooled with Beebo and Zer, dropping off my lovely co-piloting girlfriend first, in my station wagon and after a long ride we finally approached one of the most famous bays of the world. Then it seemed like we suddenly all forgot about the LAN and were just looking around like tourists our eyes filled with wonder... Anyhow, after some troubles driving downtown, we finally found the "Blue Sky Studio" were the event would take place. I dunno why, but this name rung in my ears like it was taken straight out of a porn movie or something... well... indeed, a porn movie was being shot in a nearby room, I've been told. The "Blue Sky Studio" is one of those three to four story high buildings that are located on the outskirts of town in the industrial zone. Hence to get to the 3rd floor of the building, we had to use this really awesome elevator that could fit a huge load of stuff. (Remember the elevators in Half Life? Pretty much like that.) These elevators were much appreciated since then we could load up all our rigs and monitors on a big cart and effortlessly bring them to the room where the event would take place.

Around 30 people were attending the event and much battling was already going on when we entered at 2:30PM. (Lantrocity usually starts around 11AM and finishes at 1AM.) The hosts were nice and it seemed like a well organized party. Also, there was some serious hardware running at Lantro. All Cisco goodness and quad Xeon servers! As for the flesh of the event, well, you know... the gaming, we weren't disappointed at all! We first started a couple of RTCW Enemy Territory sessions which, for a freely downloadable standalone mod is of an incredible quality! Of course, KraZ&Zer team did some ravage as more and more people joined our server... Well okay... maybe *just* Zer. Then I think we all discovered an excellent game when Warhawk told us about "Vietcong". I saw him play for a bit with another Lantro attendee and then he encouraged us to install it. So we did, and had an excellent time! One more game that will join the (already long) list of Favorite Mowers Clan Games. After so much action we needed food and rest... especially me since the 8 hours of laning the night before at Typ0's and the 3 hour drive started to get on to me. I proposed to get food downtown since the pizza offered by Lantro did not quite appeal to me. Zer joined me in my endeavor. Warhawk however had special instruction as to what he exactly wanted. He said : "Basically the big rule here is nothing with milk in it!"... hmm... no milk, no milk... I thought long and hard and... illumination! Asian food!

So me and Zer headed downtown in order to get something Asian... or Mexican... or whatever... we hadn't quite decided yet. Anyhow, we soon reached downtown... then something ran across my mind while I was driv... trying not to get killed. "How the f#@%*£ am I supposed to find a parking spot big enough to fit my station wagon in downtown SF on a Saturday night? Mmh? Why do I have a station wagon anyway? Why not a civic like 95% of all students??? Mmmh?" I pondered the question for a bit with Zer anxiously looking around for an unlikely large parking spot to appear. Luckily we found a spot near the restaurant where we got our food.

Back at the LAN, Warhawk, Zer and I enjoyed our food and shortly thereafter QueMine came with Voodoo along with Honestplayer who drove them and Beebo who accompanied them. After that we engaged the night pretty well. I saw Warhawk and Zer having a good time with C&C generals, then of course we had the obligatory leeching session. Some more Vietcong with Zer, and the night ended with some sort of SOF2 tournament where yours truly fared pretty well. And finally, at 1AM the party ended.

After packing up all our gear, the whole clan went downtown to have something to eat before hitting the road. And it was a good time to chit chat and come back to more "normal" human interactions.
All in all the Lantrocity event was pretty awesome. It was something new, the location was really sweet (we could see a large chunk of the illuminated bay through the large windows!!), we had plenty of room, and the organizer seemed pretty serious. The network was excellent, no slowdown whatsoever, very low pings and high speeds. We also played new games which was a welcome change from the usual BF/DC. On the cons side (yes! nothing is perfect!) we had a couple of black outs... someone tripped more than once on a power strip which was annoying, and we didn't have the free drinks and free food like we are all used to at octane. However all this was quite minor. I can't wait to get back there for the next one! Kudos for Lantro!

ADDENDUM - 01/21/2026 By Warhawk

Sometime in 2003 I found out through lanparty dot com that LANtrocity was hosting events in San Francisco. I was never interested in venturing all the way up to any of their Sacramento events, but a San Francisco based event was definitely interesting. Honestplayer had nothing but good things to say about LANtrocity, as he had attended several of their Sacramento area LAN events; not to mention seemingly every other LAN in the state... later we found out his work paid for his gas, which explained how he could afford that. 

I did some investigating and made TMC known to their community by posting on their forums and sharing some of the propaganda art that I had made. Apparently I made a good impression because they were all very nice as I remember. I ended up making a deal with the guy who ran the show and secured a group discount for members of TMC. 

We rallied the Clan together and several of us made the trek including Kraz, Zer, Quemine, Beebo, Voodoo (not yet an actual member) and Honestplayer. The location was some kind of event / loft space in SF called Blue Sky Studios. 

One highlight of the location was the big old timey style cargo elevator that was basically a giant cage on a big pulley. That together with the very industrial looking concrete corridors made the place feel like being in a level from the game Half-Life. 

We proceeded to LAN the rest of the day, and the location proved to provide an excellent view of the city lights at night. This was when many of us were first introduced to the game Vietcong, which would become a popular game among us for LANs to come. This was also another game that Zer got ahold of, and with no prior experience playing it, proceeded to kick everyone's ass at it. I also discovered that he had a very bizarre method of re-mapping his keys, and instead of the standard WASD he had some strange keyboard layout that he scientifically devised as being the most efficient possible. It was definitely too mind boggling for me, but it seemed to work well for him.  

At the end of the night we all went to a buffalo wings place. It was all very exciting, as it was the first time many of us got to really spend much time in SF, and staying out late and hanging with fellow clan members made it all the more fun.

We ended up going to about three LANtrocity SF events, and the buffalo wings place became a tradition after those events. It was good times and I remember them fondly.