Nightclubbing

On Saturday, Ami and I went to see The Presets. Since this is not Duck & Cover, I won't go into a full music review. Just know it was a dance gig: loud, thumping, sweaty. Having been to our fair share of clubs, we scrambled up the stairs to the top floor where we could gaze down at the pandemonium that is the Plaza at full capacity. Also, from that vantage point we could also indulge ourselves in a game of fashion police, which is decidedly more fun in Vancouver than it was in Wellington because of Vancouverites' remarkable tendency to wear Lycra.

Normally, gigs of this ilk kick off at 10pm and go until 1 or 2 in the morning. But this one was different. With a start time of 7pm, this was going to be the earliest show I had been to since turning 18.

When we got to the Plaza on lower Granville, the sun was beaming. We both mumbled back and forth how we'd rather be at the beach than walking into a dark dance pavilion. The upside of the early gig was that it was still light when we spilled out at 10. I ducked out first, skipping out on the last song due to the fact that I couldn't really hear anymore anyway. Although daylight still pinged the windows of Yaletown's apartment towers, Vancouver's night life was going full tilt. I sat on the curb waiting for Ami and observed: bunny-eared hen parties moved in gaggles, security guards paired up with police and strolled along the sidewalks like nervous lovers, strippers climbed out of white limos and disappeared into windowless clubs.

I refused offers of LSD, ecstasy, sex, cocaine, gay sex, and a few joints before Ami and Jess came out of The Plaza--I had been sitting there for all of five minutes.

I would like to say it was downhill from there, that we fell into a spiral of debauchery. I'd like to say I can't remember what happened next. But I do. We went to an after party in a small warehouse on the outskirts of town. Well, we stood in line for an after party on the outskirts of town . . . okay, we walked up to the line. We quickly scurried away when we realized everyone was between the age of 14 and 16. Ami leans to me and whispers loudly, "This is creeeeeepy!"

Luckily, Jess knows Vancouver. "There's a DJ at the Audio Engineering school," she says as she waves for us to follow her to her car. The only problem is that there were six of us by this time, and we'd all arrived in different taxis. Jess's car is a VW Golf. It was a tight fit.

Because the police were out in force that night, the drive to the next party involved a lot of sudden turns down back alleys, a lot of ducking down to make it look like we weren't sitting on each other's laps, and quite a lot of swearing. When we finally arrived, I got out of the car with a noticeable limp; noticeable because I was limping on both legs. Ami had been on my lap in the front seat, so one leg lost circulations, and the other . . . well, just know that I had my keys in my back pocket.

The party appeared to be in a small theater that had all the seats removed. On screen, some art-school crap flashed epilepsy-inducing , and in front of that some very good DJs mixed some very un-danceable tracks. Ami and I stuck around for about an hour, but finally left from sheer boredom. We felt bad because a.) we wanted to hang out with Jess, and b.) we'd paid $15 to get in (more than tickets to The Presets cost), and c.) we weren't tired.

Outside, the night was warm. We meandered down 2nd Street for awhile before hailing a taxi. Once home I sipped Spanish wine and waited for the sun to rise.