Keimstock

Keimstock was a semi-annual event held in March in Boron, California. Started in 1999 by the Keim brothers as a small sleepover between High School boys, the event would later evolve into a large Woodstock-like festival, complete with live bands, dance, and sports.

1999 - The First Year
Keimstock was the idea of a group of friends at Boron Jr./Sr. High School. The name came from wanting to have something that would intrigue people enough to make them want to attend. Other possible names included Keimapalooza, but that was too close to Mitch-a-palooza from Old School, and The Keimith Fair, which to the guys seemed to invoke the wrong type of image. With there only being one more large festival that they knew of, Woodstock, it was they only choice. Once the name was decided upon the only thing left to do was pick a time. October 1999 was the chosen time to be the first year of the event. With the promotion of Keimstock low with little to no buildup the turnout was expectedly low, with only 8th grade boys attending. The activities that took place were as one would expect 8th graders to participate in, listening to Britney Spears, playing basketball, and wrestling.

2000-2001 - The Lost Years
Since the first ever Keimstock was just a group of 8th grade boys is was seen as a failure at the time. The guys were determined to lose the "kiddie" image of the event, the Keim brothers, with the help of their comrades, launched an aggressive ad campaign. The best route of garnering the desired attention was, in their mind, to go with a shock and awe approach in the promotion. They decided it would be best to go with the offensive slogan "The Keims Are About to Make You Their Bitch, Watch Out Coming In October 2000". This ad campaign did not get the attention they wanted, and in fact, infuriated the small conservative community causing a boycott to be placed on the event eventually causing the cancellation of it. The next two years were spent trying to reinvent themselves so that one day Keimstock would be great.

2002 - The Small Get Together
In 2002 Keimstock was moved to March. With moral still low because of the boycott it was decided that the Keimstock this year should be more low key and only consist of a few friends and from this small seed hopefully Keimstock would grow over the years to be huge. Besides trying a different promotional approach they decided it would be better to move Keimstock to the second week of March due to the weather and the opportunity to have more time to plan the event. The events of that night will never be forgotten. The party became split over the issue of toilet papering other people's houses. Half the party wanted to go and make trouble for innocent people, while the other half of the party thought that was a ridiculous thing to do. So the half that stayed back and called the homes that were being targeted in order to warn the occupants of the impending act of vandalism that was soon to occur. This led the, would be vandals, to be chased around town by angry mothers. Besides the toilet papering incident other memorable moments included "The Sonet-Smokey Rumpus Behind the Couch", "The Peeping Toms", and "Bear's Burka". These events and others led to the revival of Keimstock.

2003 - The Big Return
After the long hiatus Keimstock was officially back after the success of the previous year. It was decided that Keimstock would keep its March date. The Keim's and other planners decided that they would go with an underground ad approach to build a small hype that spread word to the masses. The ad slogan for the year was simply "Beware of the Ides March", since that year it happened to fall on the 15th of March. As the planning crew grew older the events that took place at Keimstock became more sophisticated. The planning crew decided that in order to live up to the hype they would need to do more than wrestle with one another, listen to Britney Spears' cds. They came up with the idea to make Keimstock more exclusive in order to make more people want to be there by setting a limit on the number of people allowed through the doors. Due to the events of the previous year it was decided that Sonet should be banned for the sake of everyone else. Along with making Keimstock more exclusive it was also decided that to make the event grow there would to have to be more events happening outside, what was decided was there needed to be music and sports. Though the idea was good in the organizer's minds, mother nature decided that it was not and decided it was a good day to rain, forcing everything back inside. While inside some of the most memorable events of the Keimstock happened, including "Twister - Crtl Z, Hit Undo", "Garry Potter in Give the Paddle", and "Meatballs in the Morning... Eww". The turn out was higher then expected despite the rain and it would pave the road for the last hurrah of Keimstock.

2004 - End With A Bang
After finally finding success with Keimstock the hype of next years Keimstock began immediately. Though the pressure was on to produce an even better Keimstock the planning crew did not falter. Using new talents that they had a learned in the year they were able to add to the anticipation with a classic Battle of the Bands between local bands, The Electric Socks and Satan's Poohole, along with having a local DJ player, and the innovative idea to include the use of Keimstock lights. For the Keimstock of 2004 there was no need to promotion it as it was talked about all year. The idea was that it would be a party for everyone, well not everyone per se, but everyone who was not on the Black List. Again keeping with the idea that if some people were excluded more people would want to come to see what was going one the Black List increased from just Sonet to G.W Bush, Cheney, Saddam, Osama, Steve Guttenberg, and Paul Rubens to name a few. The night of Keimstock 2004 saw a record number of people show up and even the police, which was a shocking thing to happen in the town, after the police declined in joining the party it preceded as if nothing happened. Though some say that it was not as good as the 2003 Keimstock it was certainly larger and ended with a bang.

After Keimstock
The Keim's graduated from high school in 2004 and they decided that it would not be a good idea to keep hosting a high school party once they were graduated. When news that 2004 would be the last Keimstock immediately there were those that wanted to carry on the legacy, in the end the legacy of Keimstock was given away to the local pizza boy who had a delivered a pizza to the Keim residence from across the street.

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