And here we are, darlings. The fourth and final instalment of my Halloween night report. This time, I'm taking you to VICE.
Was it actually my last stop of the night? I don't think so. But we've agreed to not attempt to follow any chronological order, and I wasn't keeping track anyway. I was far too busy enjoying myself. You really can't expect me to have a fabulous time and do the administration.
So, VICE.
Where do I even begin?
Well, with Dena Dana, obviously, who was once again behind the decks. Amazing. Awesome. Thrilling. Scary good. I could go on, but I'm running out of superlatives, and I still have the rest of you to talk about. Because, and I know you're getting tired of hearing me say this, awesome people looked absolutely fabulous. Or perhaps it was fabulous people looking absolutely awesome.
You choose. I'm not going to start making distinctions at this point. I've spent two entire weeks looking at gorgeous people, and my standards, while famously high, have become rather flexible.
You know, Halloween has never really been my celebration.
I've never quite understood the appeal of putting more clothes on for a party. My favourite kind of evening generally involves taking them off, if needed with a little help. And Halloween costumes can make that terribly complicated. All those buttons, zippers, straps, layers, buckles and mysterious fastenings. By the time you've figured out how to get someone out of their outfit, the mood has passed, the sun has come up and you're considering breakfast. I'm all for a little suspense, but there are limits.
And yet, this year was different.
This Halloween, you really got to me. You touched me in ways that made me shiver, and for once I'm not even making a dirty joke. Well, not entirely. It was the effort you put into everything. The costumes, the creativity, the music, the atmosphere. The way you showed up for each other, danced together, laughed together and turned an entire world into one enormous celebration of everything strange, beautiful, terrifying and wonderfully inappropriate.
You made this happen.
And so did all those amazing places that opened their doors to us.
Just think about it. I managed to visit La Catedral, NXS VOID, The Continental, Valmoor (twice!), NITE, Afterneath, The Drip and now VICE. And that was only a fraction of what was happening. Everywhere I looked, something extraordinary was going on. Another party, another incredible build, another DJ, another crowd of people who'd spent hours making themselves look like they'd just escaped from a particularly glamorous nightmare.
If my life really were eternal, as some of you seem to suspect, I could have visited every single one of them. I could have photographed everyone, danced to every set and probably made a few extra horrific decisions along the way. Well, more than a few, but even I have my limits. I know, it's disappointing. Imagine how I feel.
So my Halloween coverage ends here, at VICE and if you know me at all, ending with a vice is so wonderfully appropriate that I almost wish I'd planned it.
And there's something else I've been thinking about. People keep saying this world is dead. That its best days are behind it, that there's nothing happening anymore, that everyone has gone somewhere else, and looking at the way we were all dressed for Halloween, perhaps they have a point. There certainly were an awful lot of corpses walking around.
But look a little closer.
Look past the blood, the scars, the pale faces and the empty eye sockets. Look beneath the costumes, beneath the carefully constructed appearances, beneath all those layers I've been complaining about having to remove. And what do you see?
Life.
So much of it. Pouring out of every club, every dance floor, every ridiculous conversation, every creative idea and every person who still bothers to show up and make something wonderful happen.
I've spent the last few days showing you photographs of the dead. But what I really wanted to show you was how very much alive we all are.
Thank you for a fabulous Halloween, darlings.
Now, can we please get out of these costumes? I'm beginning to lose patience with all the zippers.
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This post is not sponsored or paid for in any way. I was also not blackmailed or tortured to write it.
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