Buffyfest 2009: The Buffyfest Guerilla Drive-In

The Guerilla Drive-In was a total success. EVERYONE needs to try this, it's so fun. The concept, conceived and set up by Ryan, is basically: get some equipment (a projector, a power inverter, laptop, fm transmitter, a bunch of cars and a Buffy DVD), find a random wall at night and rebelliously project Buffy on to it. Every car then tunes in to a specific FM station and picks up the audio. So many things threatened to foil our loitering plans, most notably the torrential rain we've been seeing here in the North East for what seems like forever. It was pretty nasty and that's no way to set up electronics on top of cars. But did we let that stop us? No way! We're Buffyfest! If we can't hold a Buffyfest then something has gone wrong with the world.

Prior to going out we did our pre-party thing. Now, we already knew what we were watching this year. There wasn't going to be any of the usual polling and voting. After a bit of a voting SNAFU last year, we had it slated that we'd be viewing the 3 episode arc of "The Prom", "Graduation Day pt. 1" and "Graduation Day pt. 2". So before venturing out we did the whole, eating, drinking, partying, Buffy Trivia Game show (which Ryan hosted for the first time and Michelle won!), and gift bags (filled with Whedon themed teas and other goodies.) We watched the first 2 eps indoors and then saved the finale for the Drive-in. There was definitely a feeling of doubt and wanting to just finish the viewing inside since the weather was not letting up, but we had to try.

So our "plan B" was to find somewhere underground or sheltered. Now, it was pretty late by the time we set out, so finding a spot in the rain was a bit tricky. But Michael thought of a perfect underground parking garage normally used by stores that were closed at that moment. It was more lit up in there than we would've liked, but was still dim enough. After some very small technical difficulties we were up and running. Watching Buffy in that gritty underground way was so cool! Jen likened it to "temporary Buffy graffiti". And there we were, all in different cars passing the popcorn and movie candy, just having a ball. I was sure the cops would be coming around to bust us, but we lucked out. And really, we just may have convinced them to pull up a police car, tune in to 88.9 and just get into the wonderful season 3 finale of Buffy. Hee!

Special thanks to Ryan as we wouldn't have thought of it or been able to do this without all of his fanciness and fancy stuff! And to Frankie for his fuse :)

Check out more photos below: