Tell me about the greatest party you've ever been to.

Mine was in the summer of 1993, after high school graduation. Friends and I rented a beach house, a gift from our parents for graduating. There was booze, and girls and sex and drugs and squirrels and fish and meat.

It was in an abandonned warehouse in Williamsburg in the early 90s (oh, hush up with your Williamsburg hating and your Vice Magazine-ing, this was well before any of that) and it involved copious amounts of acid and painting the walls and banging on sheet metal and all sorts of participatory art-event-type-things and spooky rooms that artists had turned into installation-type-things and exploring old piers and jumping onto wrecked boats and then there were FIREWORKS and the world went FIZZ BANG WHIZZ BOOM just like in Altered States and then we all ended up on top of someone's roof watching the sun come up over the Manhattan skyline.

It also involved a strip tease to "Blue Dress" by DM. Probably one of the greatest moments in my life.

I remember walking up to the door. Then I woke up in the hallway of an apartment building across town with no pants on.

Performance art/multiple gallery openings/ VUish bands / unlimited open bar in a warehouse loft thingy in Queens, in which we stumbled by accident after one of those August beach parties at PS1, summer of 2000. It's been downhill from there..

2001 Venice Biennale party for Mark Wallinger on uninhabited island in Venice lagoon. We were served bottles of Pommery Pop on the 30-minute water-taxi ride to the island, and the island was lit by fairy lights, bonfires and our personal flashlights from the goodie bag, so the party guests resembled fireflies at a distance. Anyone who counted for anything in the art world was there, and posh people's yachts kept coming to the docks and trying to crash the do (Tom Ford had to blag this party, it seems). Hot and cold running everything, Damien Hirst in Dirk Bogarde wear (he was nice, his Hetero Life Partner K. Allen got a bad rap for throwing someone in a canal, which is just hella toxic) and me in a bias-cut black velvet dress until the wee hours. But as glam as that was (fuck the prom, basically) at the same time I was with a large group of good friends, so it was also the mellowest, most relaxed evening I've ever spent.

Oh and haha I went to the Turner Prize PV last night and made commiserations with Uncle Neil Tennant (because he just *is* Uncle Neil) who I think is mooting Jake and Dinos but is not a judge this year.

Out on the steps talking to various Germans and Stuart, my old friend, I suddenly looked over and saw a squat man descending same stairs like his bunions were killing him. "What the fuck is that?" I ask Stu, who laughs and replies, "Elton John".

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww. The staircase apparently too wild a ride for dumpy old Mr. Toad.

thats fantastic.

Even though I had to eventually get to sleep, the July 4 2002 house party at my old place. Just nuts, trust me. It didn't end until 12 noon the following day.

I don't think I've ever been to a party where I wasn't totally self-concious, and constantly going "What? Sorry I can't hear", or smiling in a dorky manner whilst looking at my watch, and thinking "I'll stay half an hour more, then I'll sneek off". Party's just always feel so imposing. I quite enjoyed my birthday party when I was 7 though, we all ran around the house shooting each other with toy guns, and ate looks of cake.

Mine would have to have been one of the spontaneous ones, I think. Those are the greatest.

Utica, NY- abandoned building loaned by mayor's permission for art show/bands/beer/films and video games with a giant projector on a 10 ft. tall wall. This building was almost a hundred years old, and right across the street from the Hotel Utica where Al Capone got his first shipment of guns. Next store was a pizza place I worked for 3 days until I found out it was run by Italian crooks. The bottom floor of the building was renovated and shiny clean, but a hidden door was found in the closet of the utility room, which had stairs that went to the basement. The basement was a dungeon that had once belonged to a bank and has a labyrinth of tiled halls leading to dead end rooms- one was full of crates of 30 year old pop bottles- another had a squishy dirt floor and a rusty 10 foot tall hulk of a depression era furnace- another was an office that had flooded, and stank of mold, with a squishy carpet- then there was an empty bank vault with a circular steel door a foot thick- at the end of this dungeon, there were stairs going down to a fully flooded sub-basement, and stairs going up (with all the steps rusted out and hanging) to a trap door beneath a strip club where we heard a police bust happening. From this magic stinky dungeon we found another set of stairs going up to the top floor- it was abandoned architect & lawyers offices & full of more crazy shit, furniture, books, copy machines, dead birds, caved in cielings, etc.

I had an Elton John party experience similar to Suzy's earlier this year in Paris, a Dior after-show party. I introduced Uncle Neil Tennant to Casey Spooner, chatted with Malcolm McLaren (Uncle Neil was being very bitchy about him, rolling his eyes at his very mention) and almost got into a fight with dealer Jay Jopling, who was drunk and insulting. Elton didn't stay long, and Karl Lagerfeld flounced about.

BUT that wasn't the greatest party I've been to, just a room full of famous people who gave the impression of being infatuated / bored with each other and were all sharing suites at the Ritz. No, the greatest party I've been to was in Berlin in 1999, with my friends Shizu and Hiroshi, (Matthew Barney composer) Jonathan Beppler and the dancers from the Sasha Waltz company, who proceeded to do all this semi-naked dancing for us, trying out pieces they'd been working on. What I liked about that (apart from the nakedness, obviously) was that the whole situation had just the right balance between the structured and the spontaneous. It wasn't just people standing around in a room drinking alcohol while loud music played. It suggested new forms of social organisation and better ways than we currently have of being free and being human. (/ star trek voiceover)

Have I had sex at parties? Yes. Have I been to other parties where nakedness featured? Yes (Satyrday Knights in East Williamsburg). Have I been to parties in amazing architectural spaces? Yes (Mains D'Oeuvres in Paris last December). Have I been to parties with members of Warhol's Factory? Yes (Gerard Malanga at an Index magazine party last year). What costume shall I wear to all tomorrow's?

I've never been to a party in an amazing place...unless a beach house is amazing.

One of my favorite party moments was on a brisk summer night when we spontaneously organized an interdwelling fiasco between four homes with adjacent yards wherein I "tuned" a set of beer bottles to the 13 notes in the Western scale, duct taped them together into a massive abomination somewhat akin to a glass panpipe and led a parade of debauched semi-nekkid tomfoolery from house to house. I loved the way all these different college-town intrascenes cross-pollinated that night, stanky hippies and drama and architecture students and this hip-hop crew and punk rockers and ballet dancers and drag queens and such.

Most amazing place I've "partied" = OUTSIDE. "God" is my favorite architect.

but god is MY co-pilot! moonlighting bastard!

Here's the best (commercial) party this week, if you're in New York City: Scott Hug's K48 magazine is launching its new issue (featuring a CD with an unreleased Momus track on it!) with a Halloween party at the Williamsburg Deitch space Friday.

KULT 48
HALLOWEEN HELL HOUSE
Deitch Brooklyn
110 N. First St.
Friday, Oct. 31st
9pm - 4 am

$10
(includes copy of new issue, booze, a haunted
house and a whole ghoulish
tribe of bands and deejays)

My mates Rusty Santos and Phiiliip will be playing, as will tons of other people.

Also, if you know somewhere Scott can move into, tell him, because he's homeless right now.

(Also, J0hn Darnie11e will be standing outside preaching hellfire sermons in an attempt to save some of the sodomites and sinners from eternal writhing agony in a trendy hell.)

No he won't, he'll be cranking the Amorphis and laughing.

it was a religious theme party. seriously. portraits & posters of local & international religious figures stolen from churches & local catholic schools hanging all over the place. and all the other fun stuff you get at huge parties - lots o' sex, drugs, drinking going on everywhere. plus a mud wrestling pit that made its way from the backyard into the basement.

I'm probably forgetting the real one (and it's the real one probably because I'm forgetting it), but a contender would be the senior class party at the end of my last year of college. At Windows on the World. One of my best friends put the whole thing together, so we got to cut the line and go up in the elevator to the top of the Trade Center before anyone else was allowed in. Four or five us (3-4 girls, plus me) go into the restaurant, line up lemon drop shots (hey they were girls; i was outvoted) on the bar and toast looking out at the city.

the real one might have been Heidi Klum's 2002 (? 2001?) Halloween (?) party at Capitale if I hadn't been lame and not gone with my (fap) friend

OK, taking sides: parties thrown by friends vs. music event or corporate or art parties thrown in celebration of some event or person or other, featuring loads of celebrities?

Whenever I've been to instances of the latter, I've generally been too self conscious to enjoy them. It's like someone has organised AN EVENT, and you feel so much pressure that it's very hard to enjoy it.

Best *sites* for parties I've been to:

-an abandonned furniture showroom, with crazy light fixtures and ancient decrepit stuff
-a spooky haunted house upstate on the Hudson River
-roof parties on Manhattan

Paying for a party = k-lame.

Paying for a party is acceptible only if they have free booze. Cause you always end up paying for the BYOB anyway.