"Just when you thought it couldn't get any tackier, there go the lights," Carlos whispered to me as we stood pressed against the wall in the smoking area of Avalon.
He referenced a twig-thin blonde who walked into the room a few moments before, a girl whose face could have disappeared easily against the crowd, but whose outfit did not.
She hiked up the skirt of her skintight dress in time to Ellen Allien's set as she walked into the room, which seemed a bit odd given that the dress extended a mere inch below the nether region. It was a Bebe Does Dallas sort of ensemble, with a neckline that plunged almost to her naval and a back that cut into a V clasped by a rhinestone pin somewhere right around the crack. When her clonelike friend, whose own gold sequined tube top looked like something I saw on clearance at Harlot Russe three years ago, moved, we noticed her shoes-- five-inch lucite stripper heels with blue and red lights that seemed to move in time to the 4/4.
Hers was the last in a long line of fashion tragedies we witnessed last night. There was the girl who, thinking that electroclash-style irony was ever fashionable, showed up in dolphin shorts and leg warmers. Then there was the buxom brunette in a black halter top and skin-tight white bellbottoms offset by a large silver and turquoise belt that looked as though it came from a souvenir shop in New Mexico. An exceptionally short blonde bought into the recent trend for military-inspired clothes by wearing a camo hot pant-jumpsuit. Plenty of girls seem to think that urban cowboy is still the way to go, as made evident by the blonde in the pink cowboy hat, matching boots and fringed jeans. Add this to the proliferation of what Mary refers to as "action suits" (skin tight jeans, tank tops and stiletto heels) and men in Stanleys (another Maryism) and the scene turned into an all-too-real fashion nightmare.
Blame it all on Ferry Corsten, the turntable troubadour of the "I Wish I was in Ibiza" set who headlined Avalon's main room that night. Corsten is apparently much bigger than I had imagined as I had not seen so many piss-drunk weekend warriors in one club since Labor Day Weekend 2002 at Beat It. Every bar inside the venue boasted a half-hour wait and the bathroom lines were even worse. That said, Carlos and I did not even entertain the thought of a beverage, which I suppose just made us more irritable. Since the Droid Behavior party was relegated to the smoking patio, it seemed as though the bulk of the crowd had wandered in from the main room. This seemed to be our biggest gripe of the night because Droid Behavior put together a really incredible bill and, from where we were in the midst of the crowd, it seemed that there were more people stumbling about looking for lighters than dancing and really appreciating the music. (Case in point: I didn't hear so much as a scream when Allien worked in "Stadtkind," her signature track.) Both Richard Devine and Allien played stellar tracks. We only caught the last half-hour of the former, but Allien started out with an old house track, moved into minimal techno and then towards the synthpop realm before getting a bit acid on everyone. All we wanted to do was dance, but it proved to be impossible. Over the course of her two-hour set, I took more ass nudges than I could count and one stiletto heel to the top of my foot. I dodged the whack of a beefy forearm and was pushed over twice by the same asshole, who didn't even bother to say "excuse me." The whole concept of personal space was lost on this crowd. We eventually threw in the proverbial towel at the end of Allien's set and left before Matthew Dear, aka Audion, took to the decks.