"I was talking to my friend Mike when all of a sudden we heard this huge electrical current sound, like the world's biggest bug-zapper," recalls Hartman, 31. "We walked over to where this guy had like this mushroom-shaped structure filled with electricity, he had this metal suit on, and the mushroom-shaped thing was shooting lightning bolts at the guy. He was jumping on a trampoline, and those shocks were going from his feet to the trampoline; and he had these plastic light sabers that he was battling the lightning with. It was pretty unbelievable."
Hartman wasn't on drugs. Neither was the guy battling lightning bolts. Instead, both were part of an event described by many in attendance as the party of the decade, maybe of a lifetime.
That reaction is understandable. Imagine this: You're wandering around downtown Missoula late on a Saturday night. You see a couch perched on the curb, with a sign posted next to it. The sign is intriguingly mysterious: "1. Sit down. 2. Wait. 3. Get on the bus. 4. Smile and have fun." You sit down, and wait.
Shortly, a 60-foot-long bus pulls up to the curb. The bus throbs with the sound of electronic music pumped through a 2,500-watt custom sound system. You step on board, and amid a crowd of equally unsuspecting and adventurous folks you find a seat on one of the couches or oversized bean bags.
The bus takes you to a small, run-down house at the junction of Lower Miller Creek Road, where you're confronted with an even more bizarre scene. A huge argon laser sits atop the house, beaming a shaft of colored light into the clear night sky. In the yard, over a towering, makeshift amphitheater of hay bales, you glimpse the tops of what appear to be three colorful domes.
You exit the bus, and are ushered through a long, low tunnel to a spot where a man with goat legs stands, checking identification and stamping people's hands. He asks for a donation of 10 bucks; but when you tell him you don't have any cash, he lets you through anyway. A small bridge leads you over a chain-link fence, between trees dripping with colored lights.
Inside the yard, you find seven deejays spinning records; several wet bars; a big, weird spider hanging from a tree; and a trio of metal-framed geodesic domes, ranging from 20 to 40 feet tall, covered in colorful fabric (which, you later learn, was salvaged from retired hot-air balloons). People lounge about inside the domes and around the yard. Inside the house, hipsters dance madly in the basement, or chill out inside a hot-air balloon that's inflated inside the living room.
Just when you think it couldn't get any weirder, Justin Wagner of Billings appears in the yard in a metal-mesh suit, and sets about battling a 10-foot-high, lightning-spewing tesla coil pumping 1.5 million volts of electricity.
If you think to yourself during the escalating madness that this kind of thing just can't last ... Well, you're right.
Somewhere around 1:30 in the morning, a phalanx of city and county law enforcement vehicles appears, emergency lights slicing the night air. For a moment, the haphazardly colorful display seems to fit right in.
But this is all business. Party over.
As you walk away, wondering how you're gonna explain the experience to your friends - or, for that matter, how you're gonna get back downtown - you see a sight that sums up the whole surreal experience: a guy in a fuzzy, full-body bear costume, being led away in handcuffs by police.
That guy in the bear suit was Chris Nowak, a 30-year-old Missoula scenester who in recent years has earned a reputation as Missoula's king of wild parties. Nowak's first big event, dubbed "020202" in honor of its date (and in celebration of his own birthday), was held in a large mansion on 37th Street.
In retrospect, it paled in comparison to his most recent bash: It "only" featured a few deejays, some fancy lighting, and a groovy lounge area. But it was enough to attract about 300 people, according to Nowak.
In the summer of 2003, Nowak helped organize a four-day event outside Billings, simply dubbed "The Island." Held on an island in the middle of the Yellowstone River, the event drew a few hundred people, many of them from this part of the state. Styled after Burning Man, the massive alternative-culture event held every year in the Utah desert, the Island was a festival of creativity and participatory performance.
"The idea is that you don't just come and look at people; you come to be a part of something," explains Nowak, speaking of both the Island and his most recent party. "That's the whole goal: Meet new people who have something to offer, put what you have to offer together with what they have to offer, and make something that's much bigger than anything one person could possibly create."
A second Island gathering, scheduled for the summer of 2004, ended up diverted to a different location at the last minute, after the rancher who owned the island had a change of heart about a repeat event. Given the loss of that choice location, Nowak and other organizers decided to scrap future gatherings in Billings.
"Billings sucks, dude," says Chris Henry, who helped organize those events and also assisted with the recent party at Nowak's house. "It's so far away, and everybody was coming from Missoula anyway, so it made more sense to do something closer to home."
Nowak took it upon himself to lead the charge for just such a local event. He claims he spent "years" looking for a suitable space, close enough to Missoula that people wouldn't have to drive far, but isolated enough that neighbors wouldn't be disturbed.
But for various reasons, Nowak couldn't find a space that seemed more suitable than his own house.
"This space is just about perfect," asserts Nowak, hanging out at his house early this week. "It's close and accessible to town, which is important because you don't want people drinking and driving. Over that way" - he points across Brooks Street - "there's nothing for a mile and a half; so we can just point all the noise in that direction, and noise isn't a problem."
Despite those assertions, Nowak knew that there was a potential for trouble with local law enforcement. To minimize problems, he spoke with or wrote letters to every neighbor within a four-block radius. In the days before the event, he passed out earplugs to those neighbors, and offered to rent motel rooms for any who didn't want to be around when the party happened (none took him up on that offer).
Over the past couple months, he also met with numerous local officials, including Mayor Mike Kadas, Capt. Dick Lewis of the Missoula Police Department, Sheriff Mike McMeekin and others.
His impression from those meetings: "I asked if they wanted to see this in their town; they said it sounds incredible but maybe we should start smaller."
That recollection isn't quite shared by those who met with Nowak.
"We all told him the same thing: Go somewhere else, you can't be doing that in a residential neighborhood," recalls Sheriff McMeekin. "We were astonished he chose to do it there.
"But there was no changing his mind."
Indeed, Nowak had already decided to pull out all the stops for this event. He and other organizers brought in professional deejays from around the country, got hold of a 2.5-watt argon laser (for which they had to secure a permit from the Federal Aviation Administration), even drove to Georgia to pick up the hot-air balloons. Nowak estimated that, if he had been hired to throw a party of this magnitude, it would have cost $60,000 or more.
But the money wasn't what it was about.
"What price do you put on the last two years of my life?" he asks. "I've been building this stuff, putting this stuff together, putting my heart and soul and every dime I made into it for that long. This wasn't about making money; it was about building community."
Jamie Butler had a hell of a night on Aug. 6. Not because of Chris Nowak's party, which took place directly next door to his house. Rather, Butler spent the night in pain, battling a bout of kidney stones. He ended up watching Nowak's party from his own back porch.
"The whole thing was pretty amazing," he said. "It was not your typical get-drunk, make-noise kind of party. It seemed like they were really trying to do something different. I thought it was great."
Nowak's house is situated right at the intersection of Brooks Street and Lower Miller Creek Road. To the casual passer-by, it might appear that the house is one in a short row of residences arrayed side by side, facing the sprawling parking lot of Wal-Mart. In fact, a tightly spaced neighborhood stretches out behind those front-age houses, served by two dead-end gravel roads. Three modest houses are within a stone's throw of Nowak's yard; the closest is an arm's length away.
In that closest house lives Ellen, a self-described "devout Christian" who first heard about Nowak's plans about a month before the party. Initially, Ellen (who asked that her last name not be used) was pretty con-cerned about what might be in the works.
"I didn't want to have beer bottles and people bugging the house all night long," explains Ellen. "I'm not a party person, don't drink, don't do any of that Š I was thinking, 'Oh great, I'm not gonna sleep at all that night.' "
But as the event approached, Ellen says she was impressed time and time again by Nowak's efforts to make her comfortable with the event.
"They just bent over backwards to make me happy," recalls Ellen. "They're not normally the kind of people I would associate with, but they were just so nice."
Ellen eventually began helping her neighbors prepare for the event, and assisted in construction of the straw-bale amphitheater. On the night of the party, she not only showed up herself, but brought her niece, who was visiting from California.
"For a secular party, it was really good," she says. "I was meeting people left and right, so many that I couldn't remember any names, but they were super-nice, super-friendly. ... My niece said it was cooler than anything she'd seen in California."
Ellen says she was shocked when police broke the party up and hauled Chris Nowak to jail on a charge of disorderly conduct.
"What they did was way beyond wrong," she asserts. "I am downright ashamed of our police force right now. After that stunt, I don't know what to think."
For his part, Jamie Butler wasn't quite as surprised by the police response to the event. But he says he personally didn't have any problem with the party.
"I thought it was a great thing. ... It didn't seem out of control at all," he says. "I know some of the neighbors probably didn't like it so much, the older generation or whatnot, but it seemed like everybody tolerated it."
Indeed, speaking with numerous other nearby neighbors, it's clear that several were none too thrilled about the events of the evening.
"This thing has just driven us all nuts," said one neighbor, who insisted that her name not be used. "This area is so normal, we just have normal jobs. ... My little tiny neighborhood has been so disrupted."
Notably, that same neighbor said that, other than some items left behind when partygoers fled through her yard after police arrived, the party itself wasn't really a nuisance.
"It wasn't that bad," she said.
That's a sentiment echoed by every other nearby neighbor interviewed for this story. None offered serious complaints about what transpired that night. Instead, most simply worry about what Nowak and his friends might do next.
Don Fowler, who lives four houses away from where the party took place, said neither noise nor traffic were an issue at the party.
"It went very well, for the type of people who were there," said Fowler.
But that doesn't mean Fowler was happy about the whole thing. He believes that the crowd of organizers and partygoers represented a "lost" segment of society, a segment with "no drive, no morals."
"There is no place that they really fit, so they've made their own little society," asserts Fowler.
Missoula law enforcement officials don't buy Chris Nowak's lofty ideals about what a great house party can mean for the Missoula community. Neither do they buy his assertions that the party on Aug. 6 wasn't a nuisance.
"Mr. Nowak has a very different view of everything that occurred that night," says Capt. Lewis of the Missoula Police Department. "The simple fact is, we're going to respond when we get complaints when there's a disturbance; and we got complaints."
Officially, the police response to the party was led by the Missoula County Sheriff's Department, because the house where the party took place lies adjacent to but outside city boundaries. According to Sheriff McMeekin, "law enforcement reacted in a remarkably restrained manner considering what they were faced with.
"We had reports from throughout the area, even east of Wal-Mart, about the noise," explains McMeekin. "(People complained about) the foot traffic and vehicle traffic and parking along Lower Miller Creek. I believe there were also either complaints about these couches put on the sidewalks, or else city police saw them and investigated them."
In fact, only one complaint about the party appears in 9-1-1 records from the night. Both McMeekin and Lewis maintain that other complaints either were not routed through 9-1-1, or were not lodged in a way that would generate a 9-1-1 call record.
But as to details of what law enforcement officers found when they arrived at the party, what led them to shut the event down without first issuing a warning, and why Nowak was arrested, no one is talking.
Lt. Brian Damaskos, who led the city response to the party, refers all calls regarding the event to Capt. Lewis. Lewis says city police cannot discuss the reasons why the party was shut down, because his officers were at the scene to assist in a county-led response.
McMeekin, in turn, refers inquiries about details from the event to the county attorney's office, saying that because the case is "pending," details "need to come from whoever is prosecuting."
County attorney Fred Van Valkenburg similarly demurs.
"I wasn't there, it was their officers that were there, so I can't answer the question any better than the people who were there," says Van Valkenburg.
The unwillingness of local law officials to discuss what led to Nowak's arrest and the forced dispersal of partygoers is unusual. City and county police officers routinely discuss details of their responses to major and minor law enforcement incidents with members of the Missoula media.
Given the cloudiness of the events of the evening, Nowak's arrest could be interpreted in any number of ways. According to state law, disorderly conduct "includes, but is not limited to, quarreling; fighting; loud or unusual noises; threatening, profane or abusive language; discharging firearms; obstructing pedestrians or vehicles; disturbing or disrupting a lawful assembly or public meeting; submitting a false alarm."
Maximum sentence for the crime is $1,000 fine and/or one year in the county jail.
Chris Nowak doesn't agree with Don Fowler's assessment that he's a lost soul. In fact, he claims he's a spiritual person, who passionately cares about his community.
"This isn't about getting drunk and getting laid," he says. "At my parties, I want you to see something you've never seen before, meet people you've never met before, and imagine things you've never imagined before."
Nowak believes that parties like the ones he organizes can serve as more than mere gathering places. They can be "living art works," and "places to connect with people you never imagined yourself connecting with.
"Where do you meet someone who's different from you? We want to create that intersection."
In that respect, he believes the party on Aug. 6 was a smashing success.
"We had the jocks, the hippies, the hip-hop kids, all these people who are usually separated in life," says Nowak. "I see that as a very positive thing for the community."
Despite the tangle with law enforcement, Nowak says he intends to continue organizing similar events in Missoula. He doubts he'll try it again at his current residence, at least any time soon. But his ultimate goal is to establish a nonprofit organization dedicated to "providing real connections between people and supporting alternative fuels" - the latter related to his bus, which runs on used vegetable oil.
Cynically, one might point out that Nowak's recent party only served to draw a line between him and several of his closest neighbors, as well as between him and law enforcement officers. On top of that, his bus has a flat tire.
Nowak's insistence that his house, is a "perfect" venue for such events also could seem wildly out of touch, given its location in a densely populated residential neighborhood.
"I can't imagine him doing what he wants to do right in the middle of the city, as he's trying to do," says Mayor Kadas. "There's just too much potential for conflict."
But Nowak is a believer in his cause. The fact that he has won over his two closest neighbors - not to mention several hundred random folks who probably will never forget the night of Aug. 6 - indicates there might indeed be something more to the guy than appears at first blush.
"My tip-top priority is that the community is happy with what I'm doing," says Nowak. "I don't want to do this underground; I want it to be something that's for the community, that the community is OK with.
"If the community doesn't want it, I'll leave. But I really hope they'll give me a chance to show them that this is something they would want."
Even Nowak's biggest supporters recognize that his idealism about the power of the great party is a hard pill for most people to swallow. But that's also the thing they like most about him.
"I don't think mainstream America has any frame of reference for what (Chris Nowak) is about, or for this kind of a party," says friend Chris Henry. "I know we're like aliens to most people.
"Hopefully, people will realize at least that we're the friendly aliens."
Reach Joe Nickell at 523-5358 or at jnickell@missoulian.com.
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