Tales of the Ghetto

I’ve finally made the effort to put my “Tales of the Ghetto” forum thread from OCAU onto my blog, this entry also being placed into “The Pool Room” and having just under 9000 views, enjoy!

Hello all,

So time for a funnier less serious story from me   Enjoy!

I'm here to tell you a story of a place that seems to unreal to be real, but rest assured - this place existed and I lived through it to tell the tale.

I'll start right from the start, I was 17 and an avid gamer, on the first weekend of every month we would attend "CQGL" a once a month LAN that was the highlight of my existence, 50+ gamers would gather and we would play computer games. I loved it; I loved it so darn much that I would practice all month round just to appear next month to show everyone how much I had improved.

It wasn't just the games, it was the atmosphere, I was with people who loved this stuff as much as I did.

I was just finishing school when my grandfather passed away, my mum moved to New Zealand quickly after to look after my grandmother, who had never been alone her entire life. My mum told me and my older brother that we could stay living in the house; we would get 3 other people to move in (5 bedroom place).

We got 3 friends to move in all around the same age and I started going to university. Before anything else though - we partied. Many 18th birthdays were occurring around that stage and every night there was a different party to attend to. We were out of control, no parents to tell us we were staying up to late and no rules - I was living the dream.

But we always made sure the first weekend of a month was available - it was CQGL weekend, I let nothing prioritize itself over CQGL weekend, I would be there no matter what.

One CQGL we decided that 1 day of LANing just wasn't enough; we invited a few select people we liked from the LAN back to my place to keep LANing, an ingenious idea. There was only 1 problem - we never stopped.

Those people that came decided it was easier just to leave their computers hooked up at my place with cat5 flying everywhere, have a sleep and come back refreshed after a sleep.

We were gamers from there on in, fulltime. There was always a LAN game of something going up, the news quickly spread and more people asked if they could join in, more and more computers, more and more people came flooding in, even those we only kind of knew, 20+ people were now LANing at one point in time at all times day and night. We ran out of tables - which was no problem, we got a screwdriver and took down all the doors and set them up as tables. Extension cords were everywhere, spaghetti of cat5 flowed everywhere up and down stairs.

The electricity bill went through the roof - we were poor university students and this was a serious problem. We invented "LAN tax" a gold coin donation per day was required for those that wished to keep their computers at the place permanently.

Another problem arose - the mess was out of control, it was impossible to keep such a place clean, as a laugh someone mentioned "Man, this place is The Ghetto!". The name stuck, from then on in my house was called "The Ghetto".

The popularity grew, more people. More electricity - we had to carefully consider the power layout to not trip the power.

There were other problems - my dog, a beagle became a popular attribute to the house who loved getting among the cords and letting people know he was around by running in between the cords, she was a crowd favorite.

Years passed, many nights without sleep, the gaming continued, CQGL was considered an interruption from our normal LANing routine where we had to unplug all our computers and coordinate how we were getting there - a hassle, we would rather LAN at the ghetto.

We acquired a server rack and used CQGL's gigabit switches to power our network, we put RJ45 ports in every room, laying the cat5 in the walls rather then up and down stairs.

One particular night I will always remember, we were all gaming and all of a sudden for no reason, the power goes out. The beagle is barking out of control and we know someone is in the backyard. We were in the middle of a highly intense Turret Defense game - who the F*&K just turned off our power, we run outside to see some kids jump the fence and run for their lives. Turns out some newbies from CQGL had heard about the ghetto and thought it would be funny to jump into the backyard and turn the mains off. Problem is kids love to talk and brag - long story short -we found out who it was.

There were moments where we didn't LAN though, we partied and partied a lot, we would light a big bon fire in the back yard, drink till we were sick and play music so loud that til the neighbours called the police. One night we had the fire brigade turn up because we threw an entire couch on the fire over a laptop, quickly followed by the ambulance to treat a friend with alcohol poisoning and then the police turning up over noise complaints, we were happy - all 3 emergency services, what a great night!

A few months later the phone rings, my mum wants to visit. She has no idea this is occurring, she thinks 5 guys live here who are going to university and studying hard. Oh shit. We are F*&Ked, jigs up. We have one thing on our side - an army of LANers, we order everyone who wants to stay to clean, clean everything, all doors have to be put back on the walls, everyone needs their computers gone, and we need the place spotless. We clean for a week, solid.

My mum arrives and we pick her up from the airport, upon arriving at the ghetto I quickly say "Oh by the way, sorry, we didn't have enough time to clean".

We got away with it, I still can't believe it. haha.

My brother eventually gets a job north in Townsville and moves out, which starts to signal the death of the ghetto, we've been LANing none stop for years, I was tired, really tired.

Eventually, the phone rings again and mum want's to sell the house, so the end of an era is upon us, we tell the housemates and the LAN regulars who all find arrangements to move out, time quickly passes by though with settlement tomorrow - I still have so much rubbish to get rid of, with no ute or means to get it to the tip, I can think of only one solution.

I grab a shovel and I start digging in the back yard, I seriously just started digging till there was a huge hole in the back yard, I’m talking monstrously huge and I pile all the junk into this hole and fill it back up, the dirt creates a mountain because the rubbish is underneath but I don't care, I’m tired and out of time. It's time to go.

I stay at a friend’s house that night before flying out to Brisbane, I have my last CQGL where I am presented with a mug which I have this day which says "Honorary life time CQGL admin".

Hope you all enjoyed the read.

My older brother steps into the conversation:
He left out so much,

There was the TAFE desk we had set-up (won 30 desk from a TAFE auction)
The caterpillar night
Chicken o'cloak
Midnight movie screenings (BTW I found the news paper article from the opening night of attack of the clones)
The house could take 23 computer with CRT monitors, power gave out and would trip the safety circuit (no hard limit was reached with LCD's we ran out of space)
You forgot about LAN CAT - and all his stories (Jeff's mince is my favourite)
NERD stickers
Milk bottles on the roof.
Vomiting cold Milk (everyone should try this once in their life)
Scrub marathons
Jeff getting kidnapped by the gay guy from the clubs.
The cone saga.
The guy who had the bag of hair.
The guy who burnt his guitar.
V8 super cars and all the rage it generated.
The house putting forward national competitive gaming teams (UT2K4 and BF Vietnam)
Walking down to the exchange and begging for the DSL to be fixed (and the telstra guy fixing it)
Road trips for LANing to Townsville Mackay and Gladstone.
Jo raging at Alan and his paint-ball gun
3AM Spoons
"anyone up for generals"
I'm sure there is more but each one of those is story in its own right.

Me Responding:
Your right eathos, I knew there was so, so much more, but I tried to keep it relatively short just to give people an idea of what this place was like, if anyone wants to continue reading, let me elaborate on some of those headlines that eathos talked about:

Please keep in mind, we were young and stupid at this age and didn't put much thought into what we did before we do things..

There was the TAFE desk we had set-up (won 30 desk from a TAFE auction)
Furthering on on the table department, even pulling the doors down didn't cover enough tables for the house, we ventured to a TAFE auction and bought 30 of these big massive desks for some stupid crazy price... like $2 a table, we were well equipped now!

The caterpillar night
I used to walk around in a sleeping bag sometimes to keep warm, I sort of looked like the hot water bottle from Johnson and friends, some of the guys at the house thought it would be hilarious to pin me down and strap me up with my hands in the sleeping bag with belts and rope, they then picked me up and put me into the ute and drove me to this field about 1km away, it was pitch dark, they threw me onto the grass and drove off back home to continue LANing, a few hours later I caterpillared up the stairs, covered in wet soggy grass, asking to be untied... They put me back into the gutter.

Chicken o'clock
So if you want to be a LANer, you have to eat like a LANer, about the same distance as said field away there was a Caltex Service station who sold this KFC chicken rip-off, you could grab 2/3 pieces of chicken and shitloads of chips for a really small price, we pretty much lived on this, I don't mean that in a we got it all the time sort of way, I really mean, we literally, lived off this stuff.

Midnight movie screenings
If you want to be a nerd, you have to do nerdy things! Star wars attack of the clones was released at midnight, we were there, first in line, waiting hours to see it, we had made up light sabers from car neon lights and batteries, they were "awesome" haha.

You forgot about LAN CAT - and all his stories (Jeff's mince is my favourite)
I can't even really remember LAN cat, I know at one stage we had a cat... and people called it LAN cat, but sorry - I don't remember this one.

NERD stickers
???? Maybe I missed this ?? Is this where when people were sleeping we wrote stuff on their faces?

Milk bottles on the roof.
Ok.... so this is disgusting, but as something funny to do, I put milk bottles on the roof of the house just to "see what would happen" I totally forgot about them and never got them off, till I would say 6 months to a year later we were installing an antenna on the roof experimenting with putting the ghetto on a 802.11b network because of space/power limitations we were experiencing, so we put up the ladder and a mate jumps onto the roof, finds balls, usual roof type junk you find on a roof of a 2 story house, at this same time another housemate pulls into the driveway and walks upstairs, the guy on the roof finds this bottle of milk and without even thinking, he throws it at me right next to this guy’s car, I just dodge this milk but it lands right at my feet, exploding instantly the smell was HORRIBLE I run upstairs screaming going FUUUU^%$$$K haha, and I decide its funny to say "Oi mate you left your window open in your car and this milk is all inside it!" he gets PISSED this was a guy with serious anger management issues hahahaha, he runs down the stairs, only to find out I was kidding. "COOkie you ASSHOLE" hahaha, good times!!

Vomiting cold Milk (everyone should try this once in their life)
So you know those labels before Jackass that say don't try this at home? Yeah, we ignored that, we all got together and decided to try and drink 4 Litres of milk in 1 sitting. It isn't easy, it really isn't. So we are all there struggling,1 person after another starts vomitting, we are all there just sick as vomitting, and my brother comes up to us "What are you idiots doing?" We explained to him, he instantly grabs 2 x 2L of milk and just chugs it down, seriously just without breathing. "That's how it's done" fast forward 1 minute, all 4 litres came straight back up. haha. Good times!

Scrub marathons
??? I can't remember this

Housemate getting kidnapped by the gay guy from the clubs.
So one of our housemates went out to the clubs 1 night by himself and decided to walk home, absolutely drunk off his head this bloke pulls up and offers him a lift home, Sure! he says! 5 minutes later he realises they are going in the wrong direction, he tells the guy who just nods, they pull up at this Hotel and for whatever reason, my housemate thinks it's all good and he will go inside with him, the guy offers him a drink and he says sure no worries! He offers him to play some games on his playstation, they start to load it up and my housemate suddenly clicks where he is and what's going on and how weird this is. He instantly calls my brother and whispers "help meeee, I don't know where I am but I need you to come get me right now" It's like 4 in the morning by this stage, so my brother gets him to find out where he is and gets him home, he runs upstairs and unplugs EVERY electronic device from his room and locks himself in. He wakes up the next morning hungover wondering why all his shit is unplugged, we to this day still don't know what was going on there.

The cone saga.
As silly teenagers my housemates decided to go hunting for all kinds of roadwork stuff, Traffic cones, blinking lights - whatever. We had an entire cupboard full by the end of it they drove half way to yeppoon made this entire road block and left... Silly silly boys.

The guy who had the bag of hair.
Picture the most disgusting guy you know, double it. That was this housemate, we eventually kicked him out for being too disgusting (and keep in mind this place was called the ghetto) he never cleaned his room when he left so I had to do it. I found a plastic bag, full of human hair, it was horrible, just horrible.. maggots, everything. Yuck.

The guy who burnt his guitar.
WTF? I missed this one, apparently someone burnt a guitar, rock on!

V8 super cars and all the rage it generated.
We did what?

The house putting forward national competitive gaming teams (UT2K4 and BF Vietnam)
Nothing massive to report but when both these games came out EA had online tournaments, being relatively new games without an established competitive scene we used to prac like crazy, I think placing top 4 on both occasions.

Walking down to the exchange and begging for the DSL to be fixed (and the telstra guy fixing it)
Going off that top 4 placing, was actually in the semi-final, our internet went to Hell, and I mean seriously BAD, and it wasn't just us it was my entire suburb, everyone noticed it and it was horrible, we rang our ISP, we rang Telstra both claiming everything was fine - it wasn't. This almost bought the ghetto to its knees, without stable internet was like a house full of crack cocaine addicts being given flour instead of the real shit - it wasn't working. I got so fed up, so angry that I walked to the local Telstra exchange and started banging on the door. A technician finally opened the door and asked what was going on, I told him my story and he said "oh yeah, hmmm come on in", he pulled out my cord and put it onto a different rack saying it should fix the problem. It did, I was amazed and the internet addicts thought of me as a hero as we celebrated!

Road trips for LANing to Townsville Mackay and Gladstone.
We lived and breathed LANs so it is no suprise as well as going to CQGL we went to as many other events as we could, Gladstone, Mackay & Townsville all received regular visits from everyone who participated regularly at the ghetto. This stuff really did engulf our entire existence, I'm not over exaggerating.

Housemate A raging at Housemate B and his paint-ball gun
So at one stage we had a housemate that LOVED his paint-ball, so much he had his own gun, his own gear, went to tournaments the full deal, he would sit on the veranda and fire blank after blank just because he got off on the sound it made. Eventually Housemate A lost the plot and screamed her head off at him to STFU, it wasn't too long before he moved out.

3AM Spoons
???? Sorry, I don't remember this. Not that there was anything odd about being up at 3am though?

"anyone up for generals"
All day, every day, after C&C Generals came out, there was ALWAYS at any time, crying out for a game to go up, there was always someone playing this game, so much so that "anyone up for generals?" became a quote that makes us chuckle looking back at it.

eathos repying to the few items I couldn’t recall:

Chicken o'clock
We also had a mate who worked at KFC, and did most of the late night shifts, and most of those shifts they would over cook, and the leftovers generally made their way to our place - about 2 shopping bags full of KFC

You forgot about LAN CAT - and all his stories (Jeff's mince is my favourite)
HOW COULD YOU FORGET LITTLE LANNER (I still have the cat it sleeps on you when you visit) He was brought as a kitten and grow up in the house, used to love jumping on CRT monitors and batting the screens and as the PC's where mostly lined up, would walk along peoples keyboards. he general had his run of the house, and would find the lap with the most pats and sit himself there. One day he managed to find his way into one of the fridges, and pulled out a 1KG bag of mince and devoured it, he was so full he could barely walk, he made it about 6 meters to the top of the stairs, and just laid down, The said owner of the mince (same guy with the angry management issues) found said cat, who recovered very quickly and ran for his little life.

NERD stickers
They were placed all around anger management housemate room the day DAN left for WA, they wrote nerd on mucking tape and put there everywhere, they were still finding them 12 months later.

Scrubs marathons
The day/week you and AMH (anger management housemate )discovered the TV show Scrubs the next 2 weeks of your life was watching them all

The guy who burnt his guitar.
He was one of the guys who applied to live in the house when we advertised for a spare room, He had travelled down from somewhere north, had no money was going to Busk for a week to get the bond up, his girlfriend then turned to him and said "How the fuck are you going to do that your burnt your guitar last night" at this point everyone in the house stops and is looking at them, it’s not soon later they leave and we tell them we don't think this is going to work.

3AM Spoons
It was some game with spoons and hitting people with them they would sit in a circle, not sure on the details but it would wake the girlfriend up, and then proceed to tear it up them all.

But as for photo's they are few and far between, this was all before digital camera's where built into every phone, hell there wasn't even you tube (we had a network share with a heap of funny video's in it - crab v pipe how you entertained me) I have the one from the newspaper which I'll scan and share when I can. But if old Ghetto/CQGL people have some pics please send them my way.