I started raving in early 2021. I was 24, chain-smoking through a quarter-life crisis, looking for parties during the pandemic because staying home felt worse than the virus. A friend dragged me to a basement rave in Brooklyn. Almost nobody was wearing a mask. That detail mattered to me then — not because of safety, but because it meant these people had already decided what kind of risk they were willing to take.
I threw up on the dance floor.
Not from drugs. Not from drinking. From chain-smoking cigarettes in a poorly ventilated room while dancing harder than my body was built for. I hit the ground and a group of strangers — ravers I’d never met — rushed over. They poured water over my head. Helped me to the chill room. Wiped vomit off my jacket. Offered to call me an Uber.
I was back on the dance floor 30 minutes later.
That’s the whole origin story. Not the music (I didn’t even know what techno was yet). Not the scene (I had no idea there was one). The people. Strangers who treated a vomiting idiot like he belonged. I’d spent years in professional environments where people wouldn’t hold a door open for you. These people held my hair back.
After that night I started going out three times a week.
The progression was reggaeton to pop to rock to techno. A completely incoherent journey that only makes sense in hindsight. Before COVID I used to go to a spot every Friday — 80s/90s disco on the main floor, death metal and grunge in the basement. The basement was home. Always was. I just didn’t have the vocabulary for it yet.
Techno gave me that vocabulary.
The first time I heard psytrance was at a 6am afterhours in Mexico City — a spot called sev30, maybe 20 people in the room. My mind was blown. Not because the sound was good (it was), but because 20 strangers at 6am in a concrete room felt more honest than any networking event I’d ever attended.
I quit my career in education at 25 to pursue DJing and promoting. That sounds dramatic. It wasn’t. I was already sliding. I’d switched majors multiple times, dropped out, built a tutoring business from a Craigslist ad, and then started feeling the ceiling of that too. The rave thing wasn’t a plan. It was a quarter-life crisis that happened to find its direction.
(A friend died of an overdose around the same time. I’ve never fully processed it. I probably started my music journey right after, though I didn’t connect those dots until much later. Dark music as coping mechanism isn’t a revelation — it’s obvious if you sit with it for five minutes. But sitting with it is the part most people skip.)
I’m a massive introvert. Event organizing was almost forced on me. I was supposed to just handle bookings and flyer design — online only, no in-person interactions required. Then a collaborator had a breakdown three days before a show and I had to learn everything else overnight. The introversion never went away. I just built systems around it.
Every system I’ve ever created for SLIST — the guest list exchange, the commission codes, the SMS blasts, the community architecture — is an introvert’s answer to problems extroverts solve by showing up and talking. The Instagram account opens doors that being social in person never could.
The conversion moment on that Brooklyn dance floor wasn’t just about rave culture being friendly. It was about finding a space where the worst version of yourself (covered in vomit, gasping on the floor) gets met with care instead of judgment. Where the response to your mess isn’t distance — it’s water, a hand, and a "you good?"
That’s what I’ve been trying to build ever since. Not events. Not a brand. A room where the crowd handles your worst and dances harder.
Everything else came from that.