THE NEW YEAR came roaring in like a lion – a wet, spitting, and hissing one that couldn't catch a cab. At 3:30 a.m. Jan. 1, 2004, I'm sure that simile was on the minds of the revelers freezing in strappy dresses as they stepped into Folsom Street – excuse me, Folsom River – flooded shin-deep thanks to Mr. Storm Drain. Walking was a washout. The hordes were better off huddled beneath tents outside 1015 Folsom, peering out through sheets of rain in search of transportation.

As for myself, I had to stifle the urge to elbow my companion, safely ensconced in the car and amusing himself by waving at all the forlorn partygoers trying to hail taxis on every South of Market corner. I took one look at the line snaking around the block, rain be damned, outside the Endup and ended up at a local diner where the prices were ratcheted up for the occasion and all the action was by the his-and-hers water closets. Best way to cut in line? Say, "Can we go first? My friend's going to be sick – and those shoes look expensive!" or simply announce, "I gotta pee!" and rush in before anyone can stop you.

Earlier that night, before the heavens split open, I dropped by Slim's, which was scattered with vintage girls and the occasional dude in a cowboy hat – rack it up to the Supersuckers. Across the street, StudioZ.tv was fighting them off at the velvet rope, and up Market Street, Cafe du Nord was hopping even as Persephone's Bees played out the evening. I didn't manage to wash up to the former Pond Gallery for Eats Tapes or rumble over to a Third Street house party for the Coachwhips and Numbers. I gave the slip to the lingerie show at the Moonlight Mansion Pajama Party at the Archbishop's Mansion, and I ran, I ran so far away, from Flock of Seagulls at Bambuddha Lounge.

Rather, the evening's highlight had to be the spectacle at the Hemlock Tavern. Even the wet couldn't stop Comets on Fire from lighting up and smoking through some bowl-clanging, ear-bleed psych-punk. But that was nothing new, or news, on this New Year's Eve. The, um, grace note was delivered by opener E-Zee Tiger, alias Anthony Petrovic, whose show roared to a halt as his delay-pedal button crapped out on him after one stirring number. He had to resort to telling jokes and free-associating – as he tried to unscrew, take apart, and fix the device. "I've never screwed onstage before," the one-man band drawled, cuddly cute clad in a furry, gray feline suit.

When that, and a brand-new pedal from down the street, failed, Petrovic, ever the trooper, tried to carry on. He called for a drummer and bassist to join him onstage and tried to rap, ending with a lament about getting paid, directed at booker Anthony Bedard. It was a sorry sound, and Petrovic knew it. Still, you had to admire his show-must-go-on chutzpah, even while clutched in the maw of musical disaster, like Roy and that not-too-e-zee-going white tiger.

It might not have been everyone's cup of chaos, but the episode chased the chill forming around my dark, dark heart. Regardless of what 2004 sloshes in, we will survive. We can always freestyle. Even if we look and sound ridiculous. Even if we're stuck in an overheated fuzzy animal suit. Even if we can't agree on anything like we agree on OutKast's 2003 year-end critics' poll-topper, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (Arista), or the gut- and butt-busting verbiage of "The Way You Move" 's Earth, Wind and Fire revamp ("Well let me listen to the story you tell / We can make moves like a person in jail").

Mono aural Good to know that even when the bay is threatening to sweep us away, others will be there to pick up the pieces of the local music scene. So thank Neptune for Kim Harrison-Lavoie of London's Monotreme Records – a music fan who has been putting out CDs by Bay Area artists for the past year. I had traded e-mails with Harrison-Lavoie a while back, before her most recent releases, the Mass's City of Dis album and Lower Forty-Eight's Skin Failure full-length, but the urgent, hard-rockin' sound of the latter's disc – reminiscent of the brainier neural firings of Jesus Lizard – roused me from my pleasant snore as I dozed at my desk, dreaming of wartime rationing of songs and whiskey.

Harrison-Lavoie got in the game after striking up an e-mail-based friendship with Chad Bidwell of Ral Partha Vogelbacher. She downloaded a lo-fi MP3 of his music off his Megalon label site and was immediately floored. "Chad's music has such a warmth, intelligence, and sensitivity to it, and he has an exceptional talent for writing humorously skewed and poetically perceptive lyrics," she wrote to me. Not long after they began corresponding, she put out her first Monotreme release, Ral Partha Vogelbacher's Kite vs Obelisk.

Through Bidwell she met, as she puts it, "a wealth of talented musicians struggling to get their music heard." She discovered RPV members and Thee More Shallows brainiacs David Kesler and Tadas Kisielius a few years ago when she was visiting Bidwell in S.F. After seeing their debut live show at a block party, she immediately offered to put out their album, A History of Sport Fishing, overseas, without even hearing it.

In a way Harrison-Lavoie's involvement in the Bay Area music scene boils down to the power and glory of the Net and the relationships she has formed online with other music lovers via music e-mail lists.

"I do think that many Bay Area artists are overlooked at home," she wrote. "This is also true of other U.S. bands. Many of my favorites, such as Grandaddy, Sparklehorse, Lambchop, and the Handsome Family, eventually found themselves in the odd situation of playing to packed venues in Europe, the UK, only to return to the U.S. and play to a handful of people." Next she's anticipating Thee More Shallows' second album and organizing U.K. tours for the Bay Area's Virgil Shaw (who played at the Way Beyond Nashville Festival in London, in part thanks to Harrison-Lavoie's efforts) and Experimental Dental School.

Go west, young man Below the Surface, San Mateo's five-year-old hip-hop specialty store, may have closed its doors Dec. 15, but although it has gone underground – West Coast underground, that is – it's far from dead and buried. On Christmas Eve, former Below the Surface proprietor Shane Nesbitt launched So Far West (www.sofarwest.com), an online music store focusing on exclusive, usually self-recorded and self-manufactured CD titles by independent West Coast hip-hop artists like Wreccless, Blackbird, and Subtitle. He buys directly from the creators, if not a label, and the catalog is thinner – Nesbitt told me he culled it by 60 percent – but he has faith in his stock. Besides, specializing is "what I had to do to survive as far as being a young proprietor," he told me.

Despite the expansion of the Below the Surface store earlier last year, Nesbitt made the tough decision to close up shop when the landlord raised the rent, and he decided to go back to school and begin a Stanford University radio show. "The landlord was unorthodox, heavily," he said. "Realistically, I could have afforded it, but I was tired of eating beans and rice everyday." In the short time since the site has rolled out, Nesbitt says he's gotten orders from Japan, Germany, and Finland, in addition to New York City, Los Angeles, and the Midwest.