We're gonna Party like it’s 1999
Our first convention took place in 1999. What a crazy, strange trip it’s been.
This month, as I reflect back on last year, I started thinking about where all of this began. It was back in 1999, and now we are about to have our 25th Naughty event in New Orleans. Twenty-Five conventions and 19 sexual freedom parades. It seems like just yesterday…
A little history…
Our original hotel takeover took place in Kenner, Louisiana, next to the New Orleans airport, about 30 minutes from the French Quarter. Our hotel had 302 rooms and we were certain we would sell out.
We didn’t.
We sold 178 rooms that first year and ended up with a $40,000 attrition bill (attrition is what you have to pay for unsold rooms when contracting for a hotel takeover). Even though we knew we were going to owe a lot of money and we did not fill the hotel, we pulled up our big girl panties and threw the best event we could, because our attendees paid for a party and they were going to get one.
It was an amazing time and everyone wanted to know when the next event would be so they could book a room and tell their friends. The photo below is from that first event. We used this photo on the cover of our program the following year. It’s still one of my favorite photos because it captured a fun moment in time of people having a blast.
Here are a couple more photos from 1999, some of which make us giggle and some that really bring back some memories.
We took out a loan to pay off the hotel, then we signed our 2nd contract and went on to sell out in our 2nd year. In fact, we put people in hotels all around us to handle the overflow. Our careers as lifestyle event producers started that year and we are now on our 25th New Orleans, hotel-takeover event.
The Y2K factor
For those a little younger than us, 1999 was the year of Y2K. People were afraid that computers were going to crash, that power grids would shut down, and what would happen to airline reservations, government systems, financial databases, and nuclear power plants.
People feared turning over to the year 2000 might cause computers to crash worldwide. That's because many computer programs allowed only two digits for the year (i.e., 99 instead of 1999). Many speculated that this would cause all kinds of problems and some had doomsday predictions.
Because of that, people partied hard and Prince even wrote the song “We’re gonna party like it’s 1999”, referring to partying like it’s your last night on earth.
Prince acknowledges that “we could all die any day”. Thus even taking tomorrow for granted is kind of a moot point. So in all, “1999” is actually a celebration of life, with Prince and his co-stars admonishing the listener to enjoy the present as opposed to looking forward to a “doomsday” or even an unhappy future.
Did the Y2K hype help make our first hotel takeover so successful? Was there a prevailing fear that this was their last chance to cut loose? I think the success was mainly because we provided a great place for people to really cut loose and be themselves. We are experiencing that now with Covid.
Flash Forward…
This year, one of my (Bob’s) New Year’s Resolutions was to live every day like it is the most important day of my life. I won’t treat it as my last day, because I don’t want to think about the end… rather, I want to celebrate every day I can and I want to Party like it’s 1999 (even on a Monday in January).
It’s been a wild and wonderful time since we first partied back in 1999, and we look forward to our 25th Anniversary this July where we will once again “Party like it’s 1999” and yes, you will hear Prince singing these words (if you are lucky) during Naughty N’awlins this year.