An 18-year-old UCSB freshman looks captivated by the spotlight of a camcorder trained in her direction. It’s a Saturday night on the last weekend before her classes begin, and she’s standing with friends at a party on the 6500 block of Del Playa Drive. She’s being offered a collegefuckfest.com T-shirt in exchange for the shirt off her back and the black strapless bra off her breasts.
From the moment the cameraman centers her in the viewfinder, an almost nervous tension stiffens the relatively small section of the backyard party that has sensed imminent nudity. No one – besides her roommate – wants to do anything, say anything or make any sudden movements that might shake her resolve to flash the camera.
It takes surprisingly little time to convince her that the free T-shirt is worth exposing herself to several dozen pairs of random eyes, in addition to a rolling video camera. However, the minutes seem like hours to a crowd that holds its breath each time the cameraman approaches a girl and tries to offer her a T-shirt in exchange for a glimpse of naked chest.
She squirms while clarifying what she must do to obtain her prize. She pulls her shirt over her blond hair, hands it to a friend and unhooks her bra. The crowd relaxes. The tension unwinds as the laughing freshman gets her new T-shirt. She even dances half-naked for a few seconds more than the free shirt required.
When asked to say “I love College Fuckfest” while standing topless for the camera, she smiles, sways forward and slurs, “I love Taledge Fuckfest.”
College Fuckfest specializes in selling videos that contain scenes of hardcore pornography spliced in with footage of students partying in various college towns throughout the country. The company, which is unlisted in the phone book and offers no contact information on their web site – besides a link for fraternity members to invite a camera crew to throw a party at a frat house – started sponsoring parties in Isla Vista during spring 2003.
An article in this summer’s national publication of Rolling Stone, circulation 1.3 million, featured an Isla Vista party sponsored by a porn company called “Shane’s World.” It conjured images of porn stars performing sex acts on both students and each other – images more reminiscent of UCSB’s wildest party school reputation of the late ’80s and early ’90s than its rising academic reputation of today. The administration says it is worried these parties jeopardize the health and future of its students. The Isla Vista Foot Patrol says it is worried that sponsored parties damage the reputation of the town.
Micah Coy and Blair Lindeland, who work for College Fuckfest and own Drizunk.com, say they just want to throw great parties where everyone has fun.
When Micah tells you he’s got “triple X” cued in the DVD player, it’s easy to misunderstand him. The 21-year-old Isla Vista resident has worked for web site collegefuckfest.com for the past five months. The site sells access to pornographic videos that include footage of partying students aglow with alcohol.
But instead of naked porn stars, Vin Diesel’s naked head graces Micah’s huge new wide-screen television as explosions shake the floor of his upstairs apartment. It’s Sept. 20, a Saturday night. Micah is relaxing before he heads out for work – College Fuckfest and Drizunk are co-sponsoring a party at 6500 Del Playa Drive for this, the last summer party night before UCSB kids start the 2003-04 academic year.
In addition to working as a cameraman and party host for College Fuckfest, Micah, who worked for his father immediately after high school before starting his own auto-body design company in Isla Vista, also started Drizunk with Blair Lindeland, a 20-year-old Santa Barbara City College student. Blair spent the summer working with Micah for College Fuckfest, but has recently left the porn company to continue school. Drizunk hosts online photo albums that document wild antics at college parties throughout the country, including many photos from the streets and parties of Isla Vista.
Micah sits casually, rattling off the address of tonight’s festivities to callers on his cell phone while a steady stream of close friends and neighbors gradually fills the living room, all basking in the warmth of his new Sony TV. He offers his company drinks and room to sit, and chats with his younger sister, Sarah, 18, who has just arrived from Pleasanton, Calif., where the pair grew up with another younger sister, and where their family still lives and owns a pest control business.
Around 9 p.m., Micah disappears to pick up six kegs, the aluminum pillars that usually support any evening of debauchery in Isla Vista, but which are especially noteworthy at a collegefuckfest.com-sponsored party. When College Fuckfest sponsors a party at your house, you’re not paying for the booze. However, you’re also not likely to see any hardcore sex scenes filmed in your dank Isla Vista living room on your even danker couch.
Blair said that when College Fuckfest began operating about a year ago, they used to bring along porn stars to college parties, like porn video company “Shane’s World” did this summer in Isla Vista. However, he said security issues – including fights – which caused the company to worry someone could get hurt.
“They didn’t want to tempt fate,” Blair said. “That’s why they switched to filming the hardcore porn scenes in a studio and editing in scenes from the crowd footage. They’ll tell us to film a door or something, and then they take whatever the theme and atmosphere of the party is and make it look like it matches.”
The kegs purchased and delivered to the party house, and Micah grabs a pair of jeans, shoes and a belt, and sets down a $2,600 Sony VX2000 camcorder on the floor while he stands on one leg to pull on his socks. The long pants cover the flame tattoos that circle each of his calves.
Micah stands at a lanky 6’7″, resembling some sort of velociraptor with a video camera as a forearm. He dons a shirt that ironically says “White boy, I wish I could touch the rim.” He said companies often give him shirts to wear during his parties for promotional purposes.
“I have the worst memory when I’m drunk,” Micah said. “So I started taking pictures.”
The Drizunk web site contains “the best of what you can’t remember,” according to the site’s header.
“It started as a picture binder, then turned into a small-time website,” Micah said. “Now we’re getting around 3,000 unique hits a day.”
It was the success of Drizunk that landed Micah and Blair jobs with College Fuckfest.
“College Fuckfest was trying to get crowd footage down in Los Angeles, where the parties are pretty much twenty people just standing around and talking,” Micah said. “When they saw our site, they asked us if we’d throw a party for them.”
Micah and Blair gave College Fuckfest exactly what they wanted – footage of attractive college students being crazy on camera, some participating in wet T-shirt or booty shaking contests, Jell-O wrestling or just plain Mardi Gras style flashing for a free collegefuckfest.com shirt rather than a string of beads.
Blair said that College Fuckfest has sent him and Micah around the country.
“Just this summer, they’ve sent us to Arizona, Illinois and Virginia,” Blair said. “They tell us that where ever you can find a party, do it. They give us the funds.”
Partygoers enter tonight’s College Fuckfest- and Drizunk-sponsored party through an opening in a blue tarp that is draped across the driveway on the side of the house like a curtain. There are no security guards or homeowners restricting access – just a stream of eager freshmen and other college-aged people filing into and out of the backyard looking forward to a good time, which hopefully doesn’t involve a large police presence.
Blair said he “wouldn’t put it past” the IVFP to cruise the Drizunk online forums, looking for party announcements so officers can stand outside, intimidating guests.
Micah hears that three of the six kegs have already been tapped dry. It’s barely 10:30 p.m.
At parties he hosts, Micah said it’s typically the responsibility of the house’s residents to advertise. For tonight, Micah said the homeowners spread fliers in UCSB’s residence halls. One of the fliers, which hangs in a downstairs bedroom, is labeled “Joey-A- Palooza.” The flier includes the phrase “live music, beer” as well as the party’s address, all under a mug shot of “Joey,” one of the house’s residents who said he helped organize the party with Drizunk.
“It’s a good time with a bunch of girls,” said 21-year-old Joey, who identified himself as a resident of the house but refused to give his last name. “They do it right.”
Despite the presence of Micah and Blair, who make themselves highly visible by dancing the camera’s spotlight like Tinkerbell over the heads of the crowd, Joey says he is unaware of any affiliation between drizunk.com and collegefuckfest.com.
“As far as I know, this is just a Drizunk party,” Joey said. “We buy [the alcohol], then later I think we’re going to talk to them and find out about getting reimbursed.”
A punk band is playing in the corner of the back yard. During a break between sets, Micah gets on the lead singer’s mic and identifies collegefuckfest.com as the party’s sponsor.
“I just wanted to thank everyone for coming out tonight,” Micah says to the crowd. “We’re from collegefuckfest.com. Enjoy yourselves.”
Micah steps away from the microphone as an unidentified male asks him, “Whoa, you’re from College Fuckfest? Where are the sluts?”
“Bring your own whores,” Micah said.
Andrew Leung, a 20-year-old third-year computer science major at UCSB and another resident of the house hosting this night’s party, said he received an $800 check from collegefuckfest.com up front.
Three days later, Leung said he was told to cash it after the party. He said the check, which was not labeled with Micah’s name, Blair’s name, drizunk.com or collegefuckfest.com, was labeled with the name of some other company that he could not remember.
“But it cleared with no problem,” Leung said.
At the party, people mill about the kegs. In addition to the beer, there are two huge blue buckets filled with jungle juice, and at least a half-dozen handles of hard alcohol in the kitchen. A two-story beer bong race is taking place on the other side of the house.
Micah switches on the video camera and begins slicing back and forth through the crowd in the back yard as well as inside the house and upstairs on the balcony, directing the camera into as many girls’ faces as possible. He’s hoping a few will take the bait of a free “mypussygotbeatatcollegefuckfest.com” T-shirt for a quick flash, or that at least he’ll get some good party footage for later inclusion in a video.
Micah is frustrated. There are not many takers willing to bare all tonight. The band is too hardcore to get people loosened up. Plenty of people are drunk, but they’re too busy protecting themselves from bodily harm when mosh pits spring up at random intervals, threatening to knock them off their feet or, worse, spill their cup of beer. Even a mattress that appears on the floor in front of the band only procures timid pogoing, not out of control breast-bouncing.
“This is reminding me of a SoCal party, like in L.A., where everyone just stands around,” Micah says as he contemplates leaving and cruising DP for more footage, since no one at the party is getting filmworthy. It’s around 11:30 p.m.
A lone girl answers the call for females in the crowd to come up and trade their shirts for collegefuckfest.com attire. Whatever hesitation the girl displayed before taking off her shirt and lifting her bra for the camera quickly drowned in a flood of peer pressure.
Next, Micah’s camera and surrounding partygoers convince the blond freshman girl, who would eventually delight the crowd by baring her chest and verbally slurring her love for College Fuckfest, that she wants a free T-shirt.
Blair said that any person, model or contest participant signs a release or verbally agrees on tape to appear in the web site’s footage.
Although the College Fuckfest camera was rolling throughout the blond freshman’s entire mini-striptease, Blair said this girl would “probably not” be included in any website or DVD video the company offers for sale because she did not sign a waiver.
Blair also said that all contest participants, such as the wet T-shirt competitors that appeared naked on an upstairs balcony at an Isla Vista party this summer, were paid $100 to $300 each for their participation. He said each participant also signed a release form.
Another girl at this night’s party, who identified herself as the roommate of the blond freshman but would not take off her own top when approached by the camera, was unhappy with her roommate’s decision.
“Tomorrow, [my roommate’s] going to wake up in that T-shirt,” she said, “and I’m going to tell her that the whole party saw her tits.”