Dance club field trip.

[mishak]

Friday night after dinner at Syprina's ex-house, people wanted to go to Matrix, a club in the Theatre district downtown. I honestly can't remember the last time I'd been to a non-goth/industrial club ("What kind of music do you play?" "Why, we got everything, Goth and Industrial!") so this sounded like a wonderfully opportunity for an anthropological foray. Whoa boy was it ever. Matrix is one room of hip-hop, another room of housey techno, hot and crowded with kids who look like the people in dance clubs you see on MTV or E!'s Wild On Annoying Frat Parties shows. Girls in halter tops and tight pants, guys in short sleeved button up shirts and jeans or slacks. Pumped up hardbodies. Tans.

Must be because I'm used to ManRay and Ceremony where everyone knows everyone else and everybody likes everybody else (I know, I know. Just work with me, ok?) but it seemed that at Matrix people weren't having very much fun. Not a whole lot of animated facial expressions…I dunno it's hard to explain. It looked like people were holding themselves behind this narrow-gazed emotional wall that kept them from laughing and having a good time. Maybe I'm just tuned to a different set of body language cues, but the whole thing seemed kinda wrong and uncomfortable. Which is not to say that it wasn't fun, it was really amusing to be immersed in a foreign environment for a night, and hanging out with Syprina's friends is a total riot.

Comments

[spriggan.livejournal.com]

it probably depends a lot on the club you go to. we went to this hip hop night above the hong kong a few times last year and it seemed like people were having _more_ fun than they ever do at manray. at least, there weren't people looking mopey on the bench and stuff. maybe the one you went to was just a bunch of people trying to look cool, which also means looking bored and unimpressed with everything?

[mishak.livejournal.com]

Hey cool, was the Hong Kong fun? They still do a hip hop night? Wanna go?

[spriggan.livejournal.com]

i think so, i was walking by on saturday night and there were lots of black people outside.

yeah, but we'd have to do a few scorpion bowls first though.

[mishak.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, black people. That's another thing Manray doesn't have.

[captain-grim.livejournal.com]

those glazed looks and tanned bodies are exactly why I got out of the club scene. =)

(btw, thanks for the elk on saturday!)

[mishak.livejournal.com]

Not that there's anything wrong with tans, of course, I love 'em. A healthy light tan has this beautiful deep luscious glow…you only see that one some people tho, I think there's a racial component involved. On a lot of people you see this unfortunate flat, damaged browning that looks like too much time in the tanning booth, makes you wanna say "Aw, honey, you gotta remember to baste every ten minutes…"

Cheers on the elk. It wasn't horse, but it was pretty good anyway.

[cris.livejournal.com]

I dabbled in the Euro scene back in college, heading out with some Thai and Korean kids to party at Avalon, Nicole and a bunch of fly-by-night spots in and around Chinatown and the Theatre district. It always felt like walking into a fashion editorial out of The Face or Details, except with eight dollar cocktails and high cheese factor techno. Lots of posing and creative pouting, always crowded, never much space to dance.

I don't know if the kids I hung out were representative of the scene, but they did seem to know everyone at the club, at least in that jetset small world sense. "oh yeah, that's Hae Sun, she went to Andover at the same time I was at Hotchkiss. Goes to Wellesley now. Dad's a big exec at some chaebol back in Seoul, played golf with my dad."

Fun bunch to hang out with, but we always had these feeling that we were sort of mutually slumming in each other's turf.

[gobetween.livejournal.com]

I don't really remember my stabs at the Euro scene -- my Cypriot roommate usually got me too drunk beforehand/during for me to recall anything other than haze (although I do kinda remember her carrying me down the stairs of the Roxy one fateful night :).