these are the good times

Saw Francois K b2b Ron Trent last night at Public Records with Pau and Sloo. The crowd was better than usual at PR, not much phone usage and not much talking, and as we ramped up towards peak time the atmosphere became ecstatic and soulful, they reset the pace with a slow Jimi song that went into the 12" version of Miss You that Barbie played at Nightmoves last fall then one of the songs from American Utopia then Ride Like the Wind by Christopher Cross (Worst Person heads know). At a little after midnight the dance floor opened up and it felt like a real fucking dance party, everybody grooving with abandon both alone and in pairs, focused so completely on moving their bodies to the music. Right before heading over Pau and I had talked about generally living as if the flow of information that one has access to via their phone doesn't exist, "like in the 70s," and I thought about that in those moments; I tried to take some videos knowing they wouldn't do the moment justice so that at least later I would be able to look back and remember what I was trying to capture, an indirect method of pricking my memory, but as I sat in the Uber home and looked at them I couldn't even tell what was really being recorded in those videos except when Francois did a live mix of Warm Leatherette. They closed out the night with Phil Collins' In the Air Tonight and I realized that this whole time I had thought In the Air Tonight was that really shitty Eric Clapton song You Look Wonderful Tonight. The lights came up and everybody cheered and clapped and thanked the DJs, and I was so happy to have stayed til close despite the aching in my knees and ankles, something I'd never done and which was made worth it by this flowing sense of gratitude and community. I ran into someone I had seen but not met at Nowadays on Sunday and went up to them and introduced myself and they gave me a hug, I hope I run into them again. The night also made me think of something I'd read earlier yesterday in an Ali Berger interview: "It was building for a little while before that but it was really Dope Jams that showed me a deeply emotional and powerful side of the House music tradition and taught me to look for a certain kind of physical and emotional release from dancing with other people. Before that party I'd read accounts of the Music Box, the Warehouse, the Loft, the Music Institute and the Paradise Garage, places where it seemed like every track was mindblowing, and the full experience was working to enhance the party. From the sound to the lights to the personalities of the guests and the people in charge. All of these things seemed like myths until I went to Dope Jams and experienced them. It changed my relationship to music and gave me something to strive for. I’m not saying it’s what everyone is looking for in a party or that there’s no other party paying attention to all those things. But Dope Jams parties are incredibly special. Each one is a labor of love and a hot, beautiful, euphoric mess." I have a huge (LOML variety) crush on Ali Berger after seeing him at Nowadays this past Sunday, he was wearing an N95 mask which I thought was kind of funny and very endearing, and he looked like he was having so much fun dancing as he was spinning that I fell in love. The crowd was also so good during his set and quickly went downhill around the time Tony Humphries came on. I'm developing a theory that Nowadays has the worst crowd between 12:30 to 2am. A couple songs into Tony's set, this girl brushed up against the back of my tank top, which was drenched in sweat, and I noticed her and her friends pointing and making fun of me for it in my peripheral vision, and it hurt my feelings and made me really sad and self-conscious and I was glad that Kat and Nilesh were there to cheer me up. The next day I cheated on my Instagram detox and logged on using my laptop and DM'd Ali. During our brief exchange he also agreed with my crowd assessment for the hour after his set, and I was depressed anew about the bachelorette weekend because he told me he would be spinning at the place in Greenpoint this Friday where I'd gone to the Cinemovil screening/rave, a DIY space behind an unmarked door where they were planning on capping capacity at 75 and therefore would have been a perfect way to (sorta?) casually meet and hang out with him, but alas. Anna and I briefly conspired to see if we could drive to Wisconsin early Saturday morning instead, except then I felt really guilty about being so selfish and the maid of honor firmly encouraged that we come in Friday night as planned. The DJ lives in Pittsburgh and not NYC, sucks for me. I can't believe it's been almost two weeks since I've come back from Mexico, it feels like I only came back this past weekend. Catherine says that it's felt weird being back in SF and that she feels out of touch with her life there in a strange but nice way. Other things I did: - Went to the Met with Pau and looked at medieval art (which I learned afterwards did not include early 1400s religious art, the stuff that I had actually wanted to see) - Tanned in Central Park with Pau and Olive afterwards. Olive and I were both in our bikinis and it was fun to partake in this NYC ritual that I would have been self-conscious about if not for the fact that the lawn was scattered with bikini- and swim trunk-clad bodies. The happy medium of feeling like an exhibitionist without feeling out of place - Biked home from the UWS along the West Side Highway at sunset - Got Halal Bae (Kat's nickname for the cart on 14th and 3rd in front of Joe's that is vastly superior to Halal Guys) at 4am and biked home listening to Alex Turner's Submarine soundtrack. WSP was looking very romantic until I looked more closely and saw that everybody sitting on the benches was strung out. Olive had once used the phrase "needing revitalization" regarding my neighborhood, and even though plenty of capital flows through the streets of Greenwich Village I knew what she meant, it's this strange mix of idolized history, bars and restaurants that cater to the NYU kids/drunk youths, and businesses that nobody actually patronizes. Simultaneously a cultural dead zone and cultural war zone, competing economic/real estate-driven interests only exacerbating homelessness and suffering. When I got home I drank two glasses of water and sat on my living room floor and watched an episode of Girls while eating my chicken and rice - The streets were eerily empty on Monday. It was incredible. Inhae and I got coffee at La Colombe and she showed me Sasaki Park, where there was a girl tanning on the deck, and I told her about our fake conversation about Teotihuacan and religion in CDMX ("it's unhip to sit facing the ocean and it's hip to sit with your back to the ocean") and we talked about other things that were both performative and genuine. - Got dinner last night with several coworkers (the OG five, Mike calls us) and the couple members of our sister team that we hang out with most frequently at Sichuan Mountain House. I told Catherine and Rahul about the crushing zine, which Catherine was super into, and we discussed the crush vs. LOML categorizations. Catherine has a LOML who is the bartender at Coast and Valley. On our walk to ice cream after we talked about Ferrante and she lamented about her ongoing friend breakup and I was touched to be on the receiving end of that personal information - Sat in WSP on Tuesday night after a wildly unfilling dinner at Wildair. "I'm not loving when the fountain mist blows in our direction," Sam said, squinting, and I joked that it was unhip to be sitting facing the fountain but hip to be sitting on a bench facing one of the paths