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November 2008 
Denver Clubbing vs. Calgary Church (July 25-27)
Posted on Jul 28th, 2008
by 
Brondu
Brondu
I, your humble correspondant, am either a dab hand at sounding out tangible cultural differences by being both a passionate datatician and an ace analyist... or I've got weird issues. What I'm saying is that the differences between two cities' (countries') social scenes, are, to me, as transparent as kids' lies. The subtle differences, the glaring differences. They are articulated to me, you understand, in hue and form. They're as hard to ignore as elephant shit on the kitchen counter. I see things, you understand. I see people who are alive.
So, clubbing and church. These are things that I have moderate experience with in Calgary. In fact, I'd say that when it comes to clubbing (in Calgary) I have moderate to substantive experience. I go. I get in. I bob my head. I tap my toes. I do this oodles of places. Okay? And Church, too, in my five 'r six years of being a resident in that sprawling conglomerate of bubble-dwelling terrace-hoppers---I've seen a bunch of them. In Denver I've only been to one Church, and a handful of clubs. And it's those experiences, the differences between churching and clubbing in Denver and Calgary, that I want to talk about.
One of the few clubs I've been to in Denver, and the one I'll use for the purposes of this blog, just happens to be a renovated Church. A very old Church, re-done to be a party-spot for the kids. The outside still looks very Church-y. Inside there is still some religious iconography creeping about for effect. It's not difficult to intuit what the building was once used for (Lord-lauding, Lamb-praising). And now there are bright, vibrant young folk getting all hot and bothered with each other inside. All heathen, exciting.
There are several rooms, several dancefloors, in the Church. A large one upstairs where erratic/fluid break-dancers carve out a circle of bodies with their skillsets. Want-to-bes inhabit the outskirts like so much tenuous waste, orbiting tonight's avatars of their craft, denied arbitration by their pesky ambition, denied adjudication by these fill-in arbiters of their "shit". It's funny because these guys, the oops-I'm-not-good-enough-y
So, clubbing and church. These are things that I have moderate experience with in Calgary. In fact, I'd say that when it comes to clubbing (in Calgary) I have moderate to substantive experience. I go. I get in. I bob my head. I tap my toes. I do this oodles of places. Okay? And Church, too, in my five 'r six years of being a resident in that sprawling conglomerate of bubble-dwelling terrace-hoppers---I've seen a bunch of them. In Denver I've only been to one Church, and a handful of clubs. And it's those experiences, the differences between churching and clubbing in Denver and Calgary, that I want to talk about.
One of the few clubs I've been to in Denver, and the one I'll use for the purposes of this blog, just happens to be a renovated Church. A very old Church, re-done to be a party-spot for the kids. The outside still looks very Church-y. Inside there is still some religious iconography creeping about for effect. It's not difficult to intuit what the building was once used for (Lord-lauding, Lamb-praising). And now there are bright, vibrant young folk getting all hot and bothered with each other inside. All heathen, exciting.
There are several rooms, several dancefloors, in the Church. A large one upstairs where erratic/fluid break-dancers carve out a circle of bodies with their skillsets. Want-to-bes inhabit the outskirts like so much tenuous waste, orbiting tonight's avatars of their craft, denied arbitration by their pesky ambition, denied adjudication by these fill-in arbiters of their "shit". It's funny because these guys, the oops-I'm-not-good-enough-y
et crowd, are probably the most desperate looking bunch in the club. They want to experience, and have others experience with them, the fullness of kinetic glee. A diaspora of ideal bodily affect. But, yeah, I'm wasting too much time on these want-to-bes.
Upstairs there is trance music playing, and girls dance on stages or hang from the roof by two silk threads. These girls aren't wearing much, and are athletic, and acrobatic, and feminine. Some of them are good looking and one of them is incredibly fucking hot. The sort of hot that makes you want to stare at her, and stare at her, and wonder what it would take to make her fall in love with you. But yes. And downstairs there's a big hip-hop room. They play neat remixes of today's juiciest hits in the hip-hop room.
And there is also, downstairs, a very expressive group of dancers, going at it in their unique way on an alternate dancefloor. Remixed house music or something is what these lovers of kinky flow go for. And they are so cool. You can do anything on their dancefloor and get away with it. Sometimes these dancers look constipated and meditative at the same time. Some nights this floor, the one I'm describing, is reserved for goth kids who dress up as depressed masochists. Often their costumes are literally bleeding.
Did I mention there are lots more black, brown, and Asian folks in Denver? And more people in general. When you are dancing in the hip-hop room there are whole bunches of black people in there. And lots of cute girls who can manipulate the junk in their trunk with a dexterity that alarms, surprises, and is kind of joyful. It really is cause for jubilation, these precise maneuvers of the ass. It's hard to dance with them, cause you pop bone awful quick. When you're dancing with the hip-hop crowd, as long as you have a girl, and a girl has you, you're both fine. You're even eligible for random pounds and high-fives from black guys. I get a lot of these.
So the first thing I want to say is that clubbing in Denver is more fun because, and perhaps I can drag all America into this, people around here know better what they came for, and are equipped better for getting it. What I'm saying is that people are relaxed here, and free, and they have fun, and they celebrate (not resist) the hemorrhaging of their personal lives into atavistic excellence. Cuz that is what is happening, that is the ethic of their night. Except there's nothing atavistic about it, really. Everybody has a cell phone, you see. Contrast this to Calgary, Canada, where there are no party people. Only normal people. Poor bloodless motherfuckers, cramming themselves into an oversterilized batch of their embarassed and embarassing familiars, co-pilots on Calgary's collective and cold trajectory to half-assed legitimacy. Public identity, in Calgary, is an art we've lost. We think we know what a good public identity is, but what we have actually created is a simulacrum of ourselves, a remote-controlled avatar whose operations manual we misplaced in a toilet-flushing mishap. We take this show, this avatar, on the road, and we mash it into other people's. We display ours if they display theirs. But this is not fun, what we are having, because fun is something we are not allowing ourselves to have. Fun is when you get your personality wet, when those traits of yours, the ones that want to come out and play, come out and play, fully and passionately, in public, and you find that this is where they belong. Shared. You see, Canadians have mixed up the true meaning of private and public domains. In private, Canadians go for the big Reveal. Americans go for the big Reveal in public. They do it every day, all the time, in the street, at Taco Bell, and most purely... in da club. And it's no big deal. Except when it is. When folks start not being able to tell the difference between themselves and all these others they want to be (or don't want to admit they are) like. Then it gets annoying.
But Church. What is the deal with actual Church in Denver? I went to Church on Sunday, and man oh man was it ever not what I was looking for.
You see, and here is where things get interesting, in Calgary there are churches for young lads like me who drink and smoke and occasionally fuck, and definitely swear, and still want to sing loudly and get together and emotionally leech whatever we can from Christian archetypes and themes for one night. Churches where incredibly hot chicks come to strut their stuff and look good, and get over their guilt-trips about the weekend. Okay, it's not quite as sleezy as it sounds, but it's close. And, sure, I'm quite a bit more, you know, intelligent than the average person who attends these Churches. (I am conscious about my desire for "fellowship" with the prevalent meme of my upbringing, that incontrovertible rite of my youth, my taste for Christian themes in my spirituality. I would never get guilty about fucking one of these youthful Christian girls, or anything else for that matter.) But still! There's singing, and youth, and kids. And they're so funny to watch cause some of the geekier kids actually get into it.
In Denver, apparently, the closest thing to this phenomenon is a bunch of adults who have a hardly emotional connection to God, and all the Christian talk, who, worst of all, aren't funny to watch, and who actually do things to help folks in the world. What a load of shit. I'm not making a joke. It's a load of shit!
So the really big question of the day that I need your help for is: what about Calgary makes their Christian youth more fun than the Denver Christian youth, and yet their clubbing pop. is as bear-ass-hair-in-my-mouth as anything can be?
Weigh in! Love your neighbor as yourself. God be with you.
Upstairs there is trance music playing, and girls dance on stages or hang from the roof by two silk threads. These girls aren't wearing much, and are athletic, and acrobatic, and feminine. Some of them are good looking and one of them is incredibly fucking hot. The sort of hot that makes you want to stare at her, and stare at her, and wonder what it would take to make her fall in love with you. But yes. And downstairs there's a big hip-hop room. They play neat remixes of today's juiciest hits in the hip-hop room.
And there is also, downstairs, a very expressive group of dancers, going at it in their unique way on an alternate dancefloor. Remixed house music or something is what these lovers of kinky flow go for. And they are so cool. You can do anything on their dancefloor and get away with it. Sometimes these dancers look constipated and meditative at the same time. Some nights this floor, the one I'm describing, is reserved for goth kids who dress up as depressed masochists. Often their costumes are literally bleeding.
Did I mention there are lots more black, brown, and Asian folks in Denver? And more people in general. When you are dancing in the hip-hop room there are whole bunches of black people in there. And lots of cute girls who can manipulate the junk in their trunk with a dexterity that alarms, surprises, and is kind of joyful. It really is cause for jubilation, these precise maneuvers of the ass. It's hard to dance with them, cause you pop bone awful quick. When you're dancing with the hip-hop crowd, as long as you have a girl, and a girl has you, you're both fine. You're even eligible for random pounds and high-fives from black guys. I get a lot of these.
So the first thing I want to say is that clubbing in Denver is more fun because, and perhaps I can drag all America into this, people around here know better what they came for, and are equipped better for getting it. What I'm saying is that people are relaxed here, and free, and they have fun, and they celebrate (not resist) the hemorrhaging of their personal lives into atavistic excellence. Cuz that is what is happening, that is the ethic of their night. Except there's nothing atavistic about it, really. Everybody has a cell phone, you see. Contrast this to Calgary, Canada, where there are no party people. Only normal people. Poor bloodless motherfuckers, cramming themselves into an oversterilized batch of their embarassed and embarassing familiars, co-pilots on Calgary's collective and cold trajectory to half-assed legitimacy. Public identity, in Calgary, is an art we've lost. We think we know what a good public identity is, but what we have actually created is a simulacrum of ourselves, a remote-controlled avatar whose operations manual we misplaced in a toilet-flushing mishap. We take this show, this avatar, on the road, and we mash it into other people's. We display ours if they display theirs. But this is not fun, what we are having, because fun is something we are not allowing ourselves to have. Fun is when you get your personality wet, when those traits of yours, the ones that want to come out and play, come out and play, fully and passionately, in public, and you find that this is where they belong. Shared. You see, Canadians have mixed up the true meaning of private and public domains. In private, Canadians go for the big Reveal. Americans go for the big Reveal in public. They do it every day, all the time, in the street, at Taco Bell, and most purely... in da club. And it's no big deal. Except when it is. When folks start not being able to tell the difference between themselves and all these others they want to be (or don't want to admit they are) like. Then it gets annoying.
But Church. What is the deal with actual Church in Denver? I went to Church on Sunday, and man oh man was it ever not what I was looking for.
You see, and here is where things get interesting, in Calgary there are churches for young lads like me who drink and smoke and occasionally fuck, and definitely swear, and still want to sing loudly and get together and emotionally leech whatever we can from Christian archetypes and themes for one night. Churches where incredibly hot chicks come to strut their stuff and look good, and get over their guilt-trips about the weekend. Okay, it's not quite as sleezy as it sounds, but it's close. And, sure, I'm quite a bit more, you know, intelligent than the average person who attends these Churches. (I am conscious about my desire for "fellowship" with the prevalent meme of my upbringing, that incontrovertible rite of my youth, my taste for Christian themes in my spirituality. I would never get guilty about fucking one of these youthful Christian girls, or anything else for that matter.) But still! There's singing, and youth, and kids. And they're so funny to watch cause some of the geekier kids actually get into it.
In Denver, apparently, the closest thing to this phenomenon is a bunch of adults who have a hardly emotional connection to God, and all the Christian talk, who, worst of all, aren't funny to watch, and who actually do things to help folks in the world. What a load of shit. I'm not making a joke. It's a load of shit!
So the really big question of the day that I need your help for is: what about Calgary makes their Christian youth more fun than the Denver Christian youth, and yet their clubbing pop. is as bear-ass-hair-in-my-mouth as anything can be?
Weigh in! Love your neighbor as yourself. God be with you.
Access: Public
