Kyle Anderson

"You won't last six months in this town." - Anonymous

If you’re sensible, you take an indirect hint from the broke fuckers who spend half their lives wasting away at the blackjack table, pounding back cigarette after drink after sorrow.

“It’s always like this,” The stranger across the table from me says after yet another losing hand.

I was in the same boat as him, walking away from the cards with 2/3 fewer chips than I started with. Thankfully, the $60 I used to bet with all came from video poker winnings from earlier. No matter what, I told myself, I’m leaving here $20 up.

Greed got the best of me that night. Though ending the night with a profit, it was much less than it could have been. After hitting two four of a kinds on video poker, I had turned my initial $40 into $150 for $110 profit. Half an hour and two more free beers, and that dropped to $60 profit, and I cashed out. It was 4 a.m., and this is when I tried to sleep and couldn’t. So I tried my luck at blackjack at 6 in the morning. On a Sunday. Though I lost winnings, I convinced the pit boss to comp me breakfast.

There are two ways to look at this situation I put myself in. Either I could have won more, got greedy and lost, or I simply won $20, free food and drinks, and a night out. All of this seems to relate back to a concept I recently read about called the anchoring effect.

You’ve undoubtedly experienced the anchoring effect, where your perceived value of something is set by an “anchor” value, then negotiated otherwise. This is why department stores have sales every damn day of the year: All of their “regular” prices are set unrealistically high then put “on sale” to give the appearance that it’s a good deal.

But that’s not the only situation the anchoring effect is found in. From the blog by David McRaney on “You Are Not So Smart:”

Is the population of Venezuela greater or fewer than 65 million?

Go ahead and guess.

Ok, another question, how many people do you think live Venezuela? [...]

In 1974, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman conducted a study asking a similar question.

They asked people to estimate how many African countries were part of the United Nations, but first they spun a wheel of fortune.

The wheel was painted with numbers from 0 to 100, but rigged to always land on 10 or 65. When the arrow stopped spinning, they asked the person in the experiment to say if they believed the percentage of countries was higher or lower than the number on the wheel.

They then asked people to estimate what they thought the actual percentage of nations was.

They found people who landed on 10 in the first half of the experiment guessed around 25 percent of Africa was part of the U.N. Those who landed on 65 said around 45 percent.

They had been locked in place by the anchoring effect.

The trick here is no one really knew what the answer was. They had to guess, yet it didn’t feel like a guess. As far as they knew, the wheel was a random number generator, but it produced something concrete to work from.

When they adjusted their estimates, they couldn’t avoid the anchor.

The populations of South American countries probably aren’t numbers you have memorized. You need some sort of cue, a point of reference.

You searched your mental assets for something of value concerning Venezuela – the flag, the language, Hugo Chavez – but the population figures aren’t in your head.

What is in your head is the figure I gave you, 65 million, and it’s right there up front influencing how you answer the second question. When you have nothing else to go on, you fixate on the information at hand.

Anchoring happens more often than we realize. So, in the example of my gambling situation, I have to consider what my anchor is, and in some cases like this one, consciously set it myself. Is my anchor, “I have more than I started with,” or “I have less profit than I could have had.”? One makes me slightly happy, the other makes me slightly depressed. Which anchor do you think I chose to stick with?

(Click to enlarge. Image source: Unknown)

I believe the anchoring effect can even reach beyond numbers. Ask yourself these questions: Are you happy with who you are? Why? Is there anything about your life that you want to change?

If you are ever unhappy or doubt your self-worth, consider what you’re basing that opinion on. I believe people should be wary of the social anchors they expose themselves to. Societal “norms” aren’t always normal. Remember that. Identify what you (and only you) want to get out of your life and set those as your anchors.

Besides, an anchor should never be above you. If it is, it’s only going to crush you. (Gravity can be a bitch.)

Consider something motivational and uplifting, like the image on the right.

This is motivating simply because it helps to lower your social anchor, your expectations of life and yourself, if not just for a minute. It’s unrealistic to directly compare yourself to someone living in a completely different reality, but to take a step away from your reality for a change of perspective – that’s worthwhile in helping you feel better about who you are.

So, in brief, try to set your own standards/anchors to be happier with yourself. And don’t get too greedy when gambling; quit while you’re ahead!

Standing in this massive line was ridiculous, I thought. $45 gets me this? But after a few directions and the flash of a wristband, I was in.

BT, and his vocal accompaniment JES, performed at Rain Nightclub at the Palms Resort and Casino Saturday night, and it was a hell of a show.

You're gonna have to trust me - this is BT.

Granted, this was my first nightclub experience, so it might as well have been all the same as any other club. But what made this particular venue attractive on this particular night was the man himself, BT.

A crooked hallway plastered in tiny mirrors beings me in to the club. The place is pounding with music. And people.

View from the balcony at RAIN nightclub at the Palms as strobe lights go off.

You have to shove past everyone in a club like this, but they’re all attractive, so I guess it doesn’t matter. Shoving past people for five minutes got me to a relatively uncrowded bar.

“What’s strong and cheap?” I asked the bartender after observing a guy pay $7 for a cheap beer. He gave me a double rum and coke for $13.

Waiting for the first DJ to finish, I stood on the upper balcony next to people I couldn’t hear. I watched as security guards ushered people, cleaned up drinks, etc. The dance floor was packed, and there was no telling where I’d end up if I tried to enter it. Best keep my distance.

Fanboy-ism Takes Hold, Pays Off

That cautionary distance broke when BT took the helm. I wandered toward the stage with my sweating drink. Soon they were passing out CDs, and I grabbed one – a super EP of “Every Other Way” with exclusive remixes. The one song BT played with words (“Break My Fall,” Tiesto/BT) I sang along to, along with many others. For a moment, I felt slightly popular.

A few more songs, and BT was off the stage. It was a relatively short set, and it was even met with over a minute of silence because of a power issue. Embarrassing, but it happens. According to an anonymous (but reliable) source, the cause of the issue was a disconnected then subsequently overloaded circuit. BT stepped off-stage for a while, something this source says they’ve never seen happen in a club before.

JES came out to sing “Every Other Way” after BT was done spinning, and afterward, she sang “The Light in Things,” another of my favorites from BT’s newest album, “These Hopeful Machines.”

At this point, I’d been at the foot of the stage for over an hour. I naturally sang along to “The Light in Things,” and as I did, JES looked my way while singing and seemed surprised that someone in the crowd was singing along. She smiled and sang a verse or two while our eyes were locked.

Overall, an electric night, mostly worth the cost for seeing BT perform live. It was bit more exciting than the rave I went to in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago.

Grab Your Glowsticks

The raver crowd isn’t one to be compared. Most of these teenagers and twenty-somethings aren’t exactly 21 (or don’t have a fake ID) so they dress up in lingerie and glowsticks to go to these pseudo-regulated parties in the middle of industrial Phoenix, a city well-known for its massive rave scene.

Several raves happen in “secret” locations in The Valley virtually every weekend. I happened to choose the most well-attended summer rave in town to go to: “MaryXMas in July.”

To figure out where the party is, you have to sift through comments on Don’tStayIn.com, a website dedicated to electronic-music-based
parties and raves worldwide. In a comment will be a phone number. If you call the phone number a few times, it’ll play a pre-recorded message with directions. That was easy. It makes you wonder how secret the location really is.

Not very, as the first people I saw when arriving were cops.

DJ "Teddy Graham" on the hardcore stage at "MaryXMas in July." (Picture credit: Unknown)

The warehouse looked too small to be holding three stages and oodles of people, but you could tell it was the place – Pounding baselines could be heard blocks away.

I stood in line for about 20 minutes before emptying my pockets and being patted down by security. I was pushed through and paid my $20 admission to a company/organization that was announced to no one. It was a pure mystery who hosted this party. No signs on the front of the warehouse, nothing.

It was definitely a warehouse. A gutted warehouse with lots of ravers and loud music inside. The three stages weren’t well separated, so the beats often mixed terribly with each other. One stage was for commercial hip-hop, house, and comparatively slower-paced dance music. Another was for hardcore techno and fidget house. The smallest stage was for what sounded like dub-step.

Outside of the warehouse was another crowd, half of which was smoking. They smoked all night. I found a pack of cigarettes on the ground and tried to sell them for money. I only made 35 cents.

It seemed many of the people at this party were underage, broke freeloaders who loved to wear next-to-nothing and do drugs while massaging each other.

Oh, drugs. That’s what the cops were for. Occasionally, three cops with bullet-proof vests would meander through the crowd outside and take someone away in handcuffs, presumably for selling pills. The going rate for a pill of ecstasy was $10. Why couldn’t anyone give me a quarter for a smoke?

The rave got boring quickly, but it had its perks. One of the hardcore DJs dressed up in a bear costume and called himself “Teddy Graham” and played some decent tracks. The people who were doing E (or X) were slouched up against any and all walls to receive “light shows” from other ravers who had special gloves with flashing lights on their fingertips. With their dumbfounded faces glowing as the lights flew toward and away from their faces, they was amusing to watch.

What I couldn’t understand is how anyone could enjoy dancing for 6 hours straight, even on drugs. On the hardcore stage, shirtless guys and nearly-topless girls danced on stage the whole night. Especially in an under-cooled Phoenix warehouse, this seemed insane. (It makes sense that the people who go to the ER while on ecstasy do so because they’re dehydrated.)

The Bottom Line

If you’re deciding on experiencing night life, the question is how much you’re willing to spend and what kind of music you enjoy dancing to.

If you enjoy alcohol, house/hip-hop, or class, go to a nightclub. Expect to spend at least $50 and be ID’d if you look under 21.

If you enjoy ecstasy, hardcore/techno/electrohouse, or the geeky anime/gamer crowd, go to a rave. Expect to spend $10-20 on admission and $3-6 on water. Plus extras, if you do that sort of thing. There’s no strict age requirement.

Both kinds of parties are perfectly legal. What happens at one of them is questionable yet managed by the police. Either way, I think I’m done with nightlife for a while, unless someone can merge the affordability of a rave with the quality of a nightclub.

Related Links

BT

JES

Rain Nightclub

Don’t Stay In