ground zero

Music: Schwefel/Escape with Romeo: German Mystic Sound Sampler Vol. 2 Living in Baton Rouge for three years, I have missed the gothic/industrial music dance scene for some time. In New Orleans my favorite hang, the Kit-Kat club, was closed my first year there, so the Whirling Dervish was the next-best thing, but I didn't get down there frequently enough to make "club friends."

I first started "clubbing" when I was fourteen at the famed Atlanta club Boys and Girls, when I was dragged out by the older and super-hot Cassandra, the sister of my friend David. Anyhoo, back then I started making "club friends," those folks you hang out with usually in the club and nowhere else. It was superficial then, largely a popularity thing. At 32, however, my club friends are older, wiser, much more genuine and fun, and the sorts of people I do end up hanging out with in the absence of a fog machine! (The photo is of Maya and Sasha here; we were in opposite, quasi-rival club cliques back then-- but when you turn 30, club drama is oh-so old! It's like a reunion!)

Friday night Mirko and I went to Ground Zero, a club I used to frequent every week or every other week as a grad student (remember those times, Jenny S-G?). We used to go on Thursdays for "Bondage A-Go-Go." I remember I dated a local Minnesota woman my first year in Minneapolis who was not really exposed to this scene and, after dating six months, I took her to see all the black-clad hotties in fetish gear on "bondage" night. She got nauseous, made me bring her home, and asked me (with sincerity) if I worshipped the devil. "That place is evil," she said. "I hope you don't expect me to dress like that." We broke up two days later--many months before I would have started insisting on the whips, the rubber suits, and viscous fluid wrestling (just joshing!).

Anyhoot, oh, the memories. We went on Friday for "Corrosion," which features a better DJ than the current "Bondage A-Go-Go: Reloaded" on Saturday night. It was a real hoot, although it was not very crowded like it used to be (here's the whole photo gallery. The fun thing about goth nights at clubs is that almost everyone in the club is my age or older. It's the same way at Club Elysium in Austin (and Future in Atlanta, which I went to in October): a lot of us thirty-something kids who wore mascara over a decade ago dancing to drum machines. I wonder what this looks like to someone who never frequented the goth scene: would it inspire the fear and feeling of "evil" my former friend experienced many years ago? Sadly, I doubt it.

Well, it's been a great trip. It has felt a bit like "coming home," especially with the snow and minus ten degree chill last night. I'm heading back home this evening; it will be a long day of traveling. The agenda tomorrow: do laundry, meeting at school, pack car, grab cats, head East.