What will be discovered as these essays progress is that I operate on a Batman sleeping schedule. I am out in the evening until the sun rises and the first birds begin to sing into the morning air. This weekend is a perfect example of that Batman sleep schedule: three days, three spots, six sets (that I actively paid attention to), maybe twelve hours of sleep, and one incredibly tiny woman with weirdly high stamina.
FRIDAY
11:15 pm, Basement: I am becoming something of a regular Basement patron. There are a few reasons why I like it more than other clubs in the area. The sets are always great, the women are always beautiful, it's got this interior that makes you realize it's ok to indulge your more hedonistic side, but mostly no one has their phone out except to exchange numbers. They tape up the camera, so you don't have to worry about someone recording you or a camera getting into your line of sight when looking at the DJs. It is a place meant to dance and live truly in the moment. I am there, truly to see one set, but you don't know when those sets are until you get there and look at a single sheet pinned up in the bathroom with the set times and their accompanying DJs. The set I want to see isn't until 4:00 am, so I do what I do when I wait, I dance and flirt and smooch. FIST had made a truly amazing lineup in the main room and the Studio, but Studio doesn't open until midnight, so I joined the first few brave enough to get the floor started. No shade to the first set of the night but I couldn't find my groove, it could've just been the fact that I spent the better half of my day driving (both for work out Montauk and driving back into the city) and so my legs worked like a newborn deer. I felt like my body, a body that usually just takes over and moves, allowing my brain to shut off, couldn't have a conversation with their set the way I know it has in the past to these DJs. I dance all the same, taking breaks every 30 minutes or so for water (I get mad dehydrated). I end up spending a great deal of time in the bathroom cooling down and outside talking to this baby of a girl (twenty-one) before I go back in and catch the end of the first set. I was pretty excited for Mike Dearborn who came after and rightfully so. He had a real heaviness that didn't snuff out the ability to jump and move like one of those inflatable guys outside a car dealership. I don't think I left the front of that set for the vast majority, someone gave me water, so I didn't need to get off the floor. When he was done it was around 3:30 am, I went outside with some regulars that I danced with and we all smoked a ciggie, a nice little cool down for MY main event of the evening.
4:10 am, Rose Kourts: Being a very tiny girl means I can squeeze into places very easily, so getting to the front of a crowd of fairly large men is not anywhere near impossible. I position myself between a couple and some dude and immediately do the opposite of my strategy to get me there, I start taking up space. I have to, I was transported to some Akira, nineteen-eighties Tokyo raceway with the set that Rose Kourts has put together. It is jumpy and fast and I can see colors when I hear certain beats and they are all those technicolor hues that are in Japanese animation from the eighties. Each moment of high adrenaline beats blend into one another and before I know it it's 5:47. I was pretty dumbfounded when this man I met in the bathroom and had been talking up this closing set showed me his watch. For ninety straight minutes, I was dropping it low, bending backward, putting in that footwork, swaying/shaking the parts of me that demanded it, and dancing at times with the legend herself. It all felt like thirty-thirty-five minutes, max. I have never actually experienced the expression "time flies when you are having fun" so viscerally. The lights and the coming of dawn behind the booth add to this almost surreal atmosphere that I had been experiencing, the flashes of red, blue, and yellow are all the stuff of cyberpunk action sequences. By 6:40 the crowd had dwindled down to the final the champions of ass-shaking and that's when the entire vibe changed. The lights seeping through the painted glass were just the grey color of the rain storm brewing outside and it made the entire room feel like a dreamy haze. The heigh-beat music faded into this drum-less harmony that sounded like a woman talking to the wind (it kind of reminded me of the Great Gig in the Sky). No one is bouncing, no one is talking. For the last twenty minutes, we are all put into a trance, my eyes are closed for the most part but the one instant I do look around no one else's are open. In three hours we were living in a video game, the dream-like scenario of high-speed adrenaline, and now it's the morning and it felt like those cozy moments after you wake up and you contemplate going back to your dream.
SATURDAY
7:00 am to 10:20 pm: This time is of no importance. I did normal human being things, all of which you can imagine. But I did listen to a great, upbeat, opposite of the grey day set on SoundCloud by cry$cross while I did my errands. It's their cuffing szn mix, highly recommend.
10:20 pm, The End, KXAH: Another Saturday, another KXAH set. This one is very different though. Last weekend's rave set was very suited to the theme of the evening, apocalypse. Unwittingly the anime and video game sounds from the night before mirrored the entire evening. If Rose Kourts was Akira, KXAH was Tron. High-paced, sci-fi heavy noise filled my ears before I even was inside the venue. I truly felt like I was in the server as racers zoomed past me while I jumped and fist-pumped in place. I felt electrified with each fazer sound that slowly came over a heavy, smoothly blended techno and EBM set. The lights synced up with each imaginary racer I heard and it made the entire hour hypnotic. If I wasn't in a trance from the sound, it was the lights or the way KXAH moved behind the mixer. There was something hypnotic about the combination of the three that made me short-circuit at one point and not change this tiny bouncing movement I had been doing for the last ten minutes.
11:00 pm, Estro: I love a DJ who is not afraid to take up space, both in the sets they produce and the way they move behind the booth. The flow from the first set continued and morphed into a more dystopian, hedonistic sci-fi sound that made me think I was clubbing in some background building from Ghost in a Shell (animated version, obviously). I felt like each movement Estro did was a way of conducting the dancers gathering in their movement. I was being choreographed without even knowing it and the gaze that they would sometimes give out to some random dancer was one that said "You better fucking move harder." It was the height of bodily movement, of ass shake, of techno poetry. Given the amount of sleep I had, the amount of movement I had done in the last twenty-four hours, and the amount of ratatouille I had eaten (enough to put a French man in a food coma) it is a miracle how refreshed and awake I felt by the end of that set.
11:58 pm, Walk: Despite my declaration of food coma levels of ratatouille consumption I needed more food. I needed pizza or a taco or some really, truly greasy beef lo mein that I could eat out of a container with some duck sauce smothered all over the fucker. I walked around until I got to Blue Collar Burger near Maria Hernandez and got the greasiest burger I could and onion rings. I had smoked a joint on the way over and I knew that although my eyes felt fully opened, they were closer to being closed than open. I was sitting jamming out to a truly unhinged musical choice, the hardest, nastiest mix of "You're a Mean One Mister Grinch," by DJ CHUNK FUNKY...on repeat (no one can judge the habits of a stoner stoned). I spent an hour eating that burger and those onion rings and my big, cold fountain cola before I headed back.
1:20 am, Sploofi: Who needs the gym when you have Sploofi behind the booth? I was sweating within five minutes and gladly did so (I mean this in the most genuine way shaking ass will give you abs and this set made it possible for another week). It felt like I was dancing inside a nervous system, thumping and pumping and punching to each smooth transition from psy/goa trance to techno to driving. The calm demeanor of Sploofi made the experience feel not so overwhelming or pressured (or maybe it was because I was so stoned I just couldn't feel anxiety). I could truly fall into a rhythm that mirrored my heartbeat and I felt like everyone on the floor had their heartbeats syncing up in those last forty minutes.
2:00 am, Elle Dee: I have seen Elle probably five or six times over the last two years, I have seen them at Basement, Elsewhere, and Good Room. I love their sound, last night was no exception. Every time I hear what they have produced it makes me think that Jinx from Arcane would rave to their set for days and days at a time, sleep be damned. A decade of experience is proudly on display as they blend disco, techno, and house into a set that seems to become something entirely its own. I am always reminded of David Grohl sneaking in disco drum beats during his time on Nirvana when I can hear a disco beat sneak behind techno on one of their sets. I feel like I can spin and jump and move my hips like a snake whenever they get behind the booth. I can be free during that time.
3:00 am, L train: I had to tap out, it turns out eight hours of dancing followed by four hours of sleep and a day of errands can make even Batman tired.
SUNDAY
3:00 am to 3:00 pm: shower, ZZZ, munch.
4:00 pm, Maria Hernandez Park, Public Services: I love when I can shake my non-existent ass for free. Public Services provide that for children, toddlers, teens, adults, the elderly, and anyone with a pulse. The community building project is operated by Toribio and DJ Mickey Perez with speakers from Karlala—three stand-up dudes who know how to bring strangers to their feet and asses shaking. From 2:00 pm to 8:00 pm it is non-stop meringue, afro-beats, disco, soul, hip-hop, etcetera. I spend the first few minutes of my arrival near the booth, chatting up a friend of mine (and Toribio's sister), before I move to the large open space. A woman is holding it down and two little boys are shyly dancing with their grandma. I love going out on the "floor" before people show up, I can move chaotically and take up as much space as I want. Me and this dancing machine of a woman are determined to get the little boys to dance and I can say we were successful. It turns out all you have to do is get a bubble gun going and throw your hands in the air and make tiny shrieks with them and they will start to mimic the goofiness of all the adults that are starting to gather around them (the bubble gun is also a war cry of sorts to get adults to come out of the shadows and dance). I can't stop moving, not even when I am taking photos, answering a text, or putting up my hair. The music demands to be recognized with hips moving, arms waving, and shit-eating grins. There is nothing that can stop me except for when I have to leave and meet my friend for dinner, but even as I am leaving the park I am still dancing to the music that becomes more faint with each step I take. If you ever are in the park and hear the pink speakers of Public Services, change your plans, cancel them, do whatever you have to do to get some dancing in.