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 blessed promotions sphinx, niles illinois thursday, april 17, 2003 pics by andrew and montana, click to enlarge      it
was a thursday night and i couldn't convince anyone to make the drive with
me to niles at 12:30 in the morning, so i awoke from my 2 hour nap and
grogglily hit the streets at around 12:15 and rode west. the streets
were empty and dark and i was almost convinced that i'd be one of only 10 or
so people at this place. almost convinced until i turned left from
dempster into the lighted oasis of sphinx cafe's parking lot. the lot
was full, to my surprise and i had to take one of the last 4 parking spaces
waaay in the corner! cory was standing at the door. it was nice to see the promoter himself standing at the door greeting people and not some club employee, for a change. cory directed me towards terry's reserved table at the front of the cafe and the first thing i noticed was the laptop. i thought we were going to have a webcast of the dance for a split second, but no. he was relaxing, watching belly. terry was a great host and took me around the club. he showed me the first room you see which has booths and round tables, all with white tablecloths and the bar with a hookah that you can see in the pics. 'you think he has weed in there?' i asked andrew about the man smoking from the huge contraption at the bar (you can see him in the pics). 'no, i don't think so because he's been smoking for the past hour since i've been here' andrew told me. there was a dividing black curtain that set a nice stage for the second room as you walk further into the club. this second room was a nice big wooden parquet tiled dancefloor ringed with booths and egyptian themed decorations and headed with the selector's table.   swacky was at the controls and hailed chicagoreggae.com as i entered with camera in hand. that's always nice to hear my name and website called as i enter a dance. yeah, i love it, i must admit and swacky does it every time so BIG UP SWACKY THE SAME WAY!!! ok, back to the review: i was really not looking forward to taking pics though because i just wanted to relax and enjoy some vibes for a change, but to my surprise people made it easy for me at first, coming up to me asking me to take pics of them for the website. what a crowd! soon i had some nice pics of men and some artistic shots, but then i was ready to relax and dance. luckily, andrew came to my rescue and as you can see if you click on the pics, he took some very nice shots. thanks andrew.     so,
well, in case any of you actually want to know what the dance
was like because that's what you came here to see, right?; i would say it
was really nice. swacky did a great job of starting out with
some early oldies and bubblers tunes and the crowd reached it's hypest peak
around 2-2:30. after the hiphop segment started, people started to
clear out, but there were still some vibes left in the place.
the venue is set up perfectly for a dance because when you get tired (no one
REALLY get's THAT tired though, right?) there are plenty of tables to sit at
and you can even go into the outer room to get more of a conversational vibe
if the dancing has tired you out (or if you're like me and you want to take
a break during the hiphop time). furthermore, i have to say that blessed promotions is a very, very professional group who knows how to promote and knows how to do it right. they had a guest book that people were constantly reminded to sign as well as giveaways for people with email addresses and a great banner that you can see in the pics under the sound's table.     the
only thing i could say that needed improvement was the soundsystem itself.
the speakers were kind of weak but the promoters themselves were honest
enough to announce this and apologize for this on the mic towards 230 or so.
at first, i thought it was just me not recognizing the new tunes that swacky
played like the 'egyptian' for example, but after asking several people, we
all came to the same consensus that the speakers indeed sucked and the music
sounded muffled. that's ok though because blessed promotions says it
will be better next time, so we can deal with that, ok? ok.
 anyway,
i think that by the time summer rolls around, it will be even harder to find
a parking space at this venue BEFORE midnight, so you will have to make sure
to get there early. this place is hot and is only going to get hotter.
remember, montana told you here first!thanks to terry and cory of blessed promotions for the hospitality towards chicagoreggae.com and the entertainment for the people. thanks to andrew for the photographs and thanks to swacky for the big-ups and the tunes and the one ras who made the middle of the dancefloor very active and kept the middle vibes hype single handedly, respect goes out to the crowd as well.
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