oh nine, so fine

So you probably want to know about the aforementioned best new years eve ever, right?

New Years Eve 2008... 2009? It was turning into 2009, so whatever that means.

I was at the tail end of a 3 month lease with a lovely artist from Marin County.  I was subletting her son's room in her cutesy little Mill Valley (Tam Junction, to be exact.  That's right, eat your heart out, Kerouac) townhome.  Move out day was January 1, 2009.  I was to move in to another sublet on Ocean Beach.  (For those of you who have been following- I finally made it into the city!!!)

Mill Valley is known for stroller moms, overpriced coffee, and obscure film festivals.   There's also a fair amount of runaway hippies living in the woods.  It is not known for fun things twenty-somethings can do in their free time.
 Enter my first real friend in the Bay Area.  Sonja was a Marin County native, and I loved her instantly.  We laughed a lot at work, and we hung out sometimes in San Rafael, the hippest digs in the North Yay.

Naturally, I headed up to San Rafael for New Years', expecting an early boring night because New Years' Eve is amatuer night at the club and it always blows chunks.
After a preliminary brew at a friend's unreasonably messy apartment we began the walk down to 4th street, where the only agreeable bar was.  (is? probably)

On the way, we passed an apartment that normal people would have walked by as they jokingly said, "Man!  They're having a party in there!  We should see if we can crash it!"

Spoiler alert!  We left that party at 5 am.

Andrew, our ringleader, opened the door of this townhouse to a rousing chorus of Salsa music and laughter and cheering.  We were hastily ushered inside and fed stereotypes like burritos and tequila.

We spent several hours salsa dancing and shooting back tequila before I realized... there is no way I'm ever leaving this party. 
No one there spoke English.  None of us spoke Spanish.  who... cares?

That's when they started gambling. 
"Oh, no, I don't have any money... thank you"
"Here, take!  I pay for you to play!"
"Oh no, no.  Really, I don't know how to play or anything."
"Take the dollar, you play, I show you."

Every time someone bet out, someone else would put money into their hands. Never any more than a dollar bill. It was just a giant circle of circulating money that never ended, because it was impossible to loose. 

FOUR HOURS LATER:
The game was clearly never going to end. 
How are these people still gambling?  I have no freakin idea what's going on.  I somehow have made $50, lost $78, gained it back, and lost it all again.  I never put any of my own money on this table.
How much money is on the table?
What...is...happening?

I walked away with $20, and the phone number of a man who called me "Sausalito Anna" and was going to teach me how to salsa "like a real Mexican".

Sonja and I left the party at 5 am.  The rest of our group soldiered on.
A few days later at work I learned that one of the girls walked away with $250.  Two hundred and fifty dollars worth of other people's money that they had no objection to random strangers who didn't speak their language taking.

Wait... what?