Fun in a different corner
Let me let you in on a little secret: despite being the Star Observer’s party correspondent, there is something about big nights like Sleaze Ball, New Year’s Eve and the Mardi Gras that freaks me out.
It’s the expectation to have the best time ever that makes it so hard to enjoy. And I find the sight of so many thousands of wasted people somewhat revolting. So with very few friends actually going to Sleaze this year I decided to have an adventure of a very different kind from your bad self.
With some straight friends in town from Melbourne and needing refreshments, my gay bestie and I took them out to the re-launch of Dean’s Cafe -” now bar -” in Kings Cross, which is one of the very first places to get one of the new small bar licences. New owner Sam Jackson promised me that Dean’s would absolutely remain a Kings Cross icon, untouched by gentrification or dance music, and always with the best nachos around.
From there we hopped over to the Cricketer’s Arms, which our friends loved, the Hopetoun which was generic indie, and then on to the Oxford Art Factory. Then, just as we were ready to call it a night, we went across to the Brighton Hotel for one last beer, and it morphed into one of the best Sleaze Ball nights I can remember! The video jukebox was playing a non-stop 1991 hit parade featuring everything from De La Soul to White Snake to Do The Bartman. We sang along in drunken grandeur to EMF’s Unbelievable (whoa … you’re unbelievable!). It was rockin’.
My straight-but-drunken Sleaze ended at the Battuta Cafe on Oxford St on Sunday night just as thousands of my future husbands walked past heading home from Parklife, in skimpy, buffed, fluorescent glory. What is it about those straight suburban boys? I reckoned that if you drove around Sydney’s suburbs that night you wouldn’t have seen any goodlooking boys, because they were all right here.
Sydney’s party ways continue this week with Glamour pour le Hammer celebrating its first birthday tonight with special guests Remixing History and Trash Vaudeville joining DJ Jack Shit and party host Faggot Rooster. Remixing History will present an audio-visual orgy of pop culture from the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and ’00s while Trash Vaudeville does his drag hula-hoop thang. Entry is free.
Alibi returns to the Flinders Hotel on Saturday night with Ben Drayton, James Bucknell, Magda, Jamie Lloyd, Dave Fernandes, Dean Dixon and Long John Saliva playing disco/nu disco, house, Afrobeat, soul and dashes of tech. Entry is $10.
Then some of the world’s best trance DJs will be in Sydney on Saturday night for God’s Kitchen’s 10th anniversary Angels in White party at The Dome, Sydney Showgrounds, Homebush. Second release tickets were still available at the time of going to press for $79 + BF. Final release tickets will be $89 + BF.
On Sunday night, Heat 2 of the Mr Gay Sydney competition will be hotting up the Flinders Hotel. Application forms are downloadable from www.MrGayAustralia.com.au or from Aussie Boys if you’ve got what it takes.
Next weekend, Bitch Entertain-ment’s Revolution rolls into the Oxford Art Factory on Saturday night, while Sleaze Ball closing DJ/ring-in Simon Caldwell will be joined by microhouse pioneer Matthew Herbert and locals at the Marrickville Bowling Club for Mad Racket. On Sunday night, Dorothy -” the baby sister party to Homesexual -” makes its debut at Home Nightclub with Kitty Glitter in tow. And in news just in, Hunk returns to the Midnight Shift on Saturday 25 October headlined by London’s Mikey D, who spins at Crash, Fire and Beyond, as well as Hed Kandi’s resident Australian DJ Jack McCord plus a special XXX-rated show! It will be worth going back out for.
