My first visit to The Fiesta.....Part One

Well, here I am with Fiesta on my mind again. I went through over 600 posts on the Friends of Fiesta Facebook page and it was quite amusing. Seeing some of the comments different folks have made about their times at Fiesta brought many smiles to my face when reading. Plus all the great music people have posted really brought back some memories. I thought it would be cool to remember the first time I went to The Fiesta, and capture those memories here in the blog. Hopefully, others will comment with amusing stories from their first time at Fiesta also. Well, here goes.....

I remember it was in May of 1989. I had been out of high school for a year and was living in Pensacola, FL. I had tried Ecstasy a couple of times over the past year. It was always just a half or a single tab and if I recall, I was just hanging out at someones house or at a regular, beer pub, type bar when I rolled for the first couple of times. A friend (Jimmy) from back home in Mobile, who was a year younger, was graduating from school in a couple of weeks. He and another friend (Jason) came over to visit his dad in Pensacola one Friday night and we all got together to hang out. I was able to score some HUGE wafers for us with the big chocolate chips in them. I mean, these were the size of Alka Seltzers they were so big...and that's what they looked like too...no little double-dome pills...no little Mike Tysons..big, huge wafers. Well, we rolled pretty hard and hit a few of the bars in Pensacola. We then got a wild hair to go check out a "Rollin Bar" in Fort Walton Beach we had heard about named Victor's. I remember it was late when we pulled into FWB...maybe 3am. Bars in Florida have to stop serving alcohol at like 2:30 so many of them are closed up by 3am. Anyways, I remember we pulled into one of the first open gas stations we came to. I got out, walked in and asked the lady behind the counter how to get to Victor's. A guy walking up to the counter with a 12 pack in hand looked at me and said: "Victor's is closed by now, but if you're rolling as hard as you look, you should come on out to the beach behind the Ramada Inn". I was naturally, a little taken back by his comments. Was it THAT obvious that I was rollin? I look back at some pictures of those days and sure enough, I was one that didn't hide the fact that I was "rolling balls" very well: Face all sweaty and greasy looking, lower jaw cocked, crooked to one side, and one eye looking straight ahead with the other drifting off in a different direction, doing its own thing it seemed. So, YES...It WAS quite obvious I was rolling whenever I was anywhere near my peak. Anyways, we did a drive by Victors and sure enough, only a few cars left in the lot, so we cruised on over to the beach. We located the after-party crew behind the Ramada. Someone had a boom-box with a mix tape cranking out some Stevie B and Noel. This type of music was quite new to me. I grew up as a teen in the 80s and liked the Metal music scene. I was never one for dance music, but something about hearing it while I was rolling...just made you want to move to the beat. There were about 20 or so folks gathered on the beach. Off to one side there were about 6 or 8 girls and a couple of guys that were kinda standing around in a loose knit circle dancing; mostly they were dancing individually, but a couple were dancing together. This would be my first exposure to the solo "Trance Dance" as I later called it. We hung out for a short while, drank a few beers then loaded up for the long drive back to PCOLA. I remember sitting in the back seat, staring out the window, letting my eyes play tricks on me. Hwy 98 from FWB to PCOLA is dark and desolate during most of the ride. I knew I was hallucinating and enjoyed the little dazes I would drift off into watching the lights and shadows and such. All of a sudden what looked like a pack of dogs ran in front of the car and Jimmy slammed on the brakes. We had all seen it...or did we? There were no dogs seen behind us, we didn't hit anything, and luckily no cars were behind us for miles. Looking back, I think that some lights or shadows came across the car and we all THOUGHT we saw a pack of dogs running. In reality, we were all kinda dazed and dozed. We rolled down the windows and turned up the music a bit and kept the conversation going so as to make sure Jimmy got us home safely. I recall Jimmy and Jason telling me about the bar that they were gonna take me to the next night; The Fiesta in Biloxi. A big,huge place, open all night until the sun is up, everybody rolling on X, girls outnumbering the guys like four-to-one. The more they described it, the more intrigued I became...Little did I know what the next night would have in store for me......(STORY CONTINUED IN PART 2)