On a recent Friday night in San Francisco, a couple thousand fans of DJ culture crammed into the cavernous main room of a nightclub in Hunters Point.

Inside The Midway, it was elbow room-only from the stage to the back patio; many of those in the crowd were DJs themselves. The scene recalled the late ’90s-early 2000s glory days of the Bay Area, when turntablism seemed destined to become the Next Big Thing, and DJ nights dominated SF’s club scene. No one was there to dance; it wasn’t that kind of party.

The occasion was the DMC World Championship DJ Battle Finals, with some of the best DJs in the world competing against each other. But there was another attraction too: live showcases by the Invisibl Skratch Piklz and Mix Master Mike, the legendary DJs who transformed the Bay Area into a turntablist Mecca during a seminal era for local hip-hop. DMC event organizer Christie Zee put the proceedings into their proper context: “You can’t have a battle in the Bay without the Skratch Piklz.”

SEE THE FULL ARTICLE AT KQED