Da Club, Yo

originally posted on 12/14/06

So, I headed to the club last weekend, with a few co-worker friends. We went to Hongdae, a hip, clubby area in western Seoul, and a place that is quite a departure from my usual comfortable drinking confines of Itaewon. Hongdae seems to have actual hipsters there, a bit of a Park Slope / Wicker Park kind of vibe, with all the good and bad that this entails (good, like, really hot girls, decent music in a lot of bars; bad like paying 5 bucks for a 12 ounce bottle of Cass, the Korean equivalent to PBR, even in non-hip bars with fat waitresses. At least there's no spock rockers. Then again, in Korea there's no need for black hair dye.) So, quite different than Itaewon and it's non-ending streak of Mos Isley Cantinas that somehow work despite making no sense at all.

I am not a club kid, not by any means, as anybody reading this already knows. I'm a bar guy, preferably of the dive variety, though I have deviated to clubs from time to time since my first club adventures at DV8 in Seattle, probably right around exactly 10 years ago. And, throughout my checkered club history, I have never gotten it. Not it as in "the deed," although that is true as well club-wise, but gotten the club thing at all. I don't understand it. Nothing makes sense, it's loud, the music is often horrible, and the light effects are usually worth about 4 extra beers on the drunk scale.

Add to that, I have no chance at these places. None. I know that my game is the subject of ridicule, and deservedly so, but putting me in the club with the idea of meeting girls is like taking a club-footed blind retarded guy, throwing him in a straight jacket, and expecting him to be able to kickbox. As for me, in the regular bar scene, my only hope is to hit the right level of drunkenness (thus requiring a dive's cheap beer and hooch) in a bar with music set at conversational tones so that I can crack a few jokes for a girl at the right level of drunkenness (passed out.) At the club, the only determining factors in getting girls are how you are dressed (which I suppose I could fix) and how well you dance. I have a cool two or three dance moves that make for pretty good jokes – one I call the helicopter backpack, plus I do a mean start the lawnmower, but these do me no good in the club, as it's too fucking loud to tell anybody the joke anyway, and if I can't do that, I just look, well, like a clubfooted blind retarded guy in a straight jacket trying to kickbox. Which I don't think wins over the ladies.

The other thing that clubs seem to come down to is blind luck, and you know that's not going my way. For example, I was sitting on a stool outside the dance floor. Some hot girl game up to me and said hi. At least I think it was hi, it was of course too fucking loud to actually hear. I responded in kind. She then walked to the guy sitting at the next stool, said hi to him as well, and then started randomly and vigorously making out with him. I am convinced that my only crime here was sitting on the less lucky stool.

Anyway, if the club thing happens again, and god knows it will whether I want it to or not, I'll be better prepared. I went out today and finally bought some shoes, to replace the ragged, hole-ravaged shell tops that have served me well for the last two years or so. And, for what I lack in aesthetic style, I think I make up for it a bit in international variety. In fact, as I sit here typing this, I am wearing shoes I bought today in Seoul, jeans I bought in Chicago, a shirt I bought in Paris, an undershirt I bought in Lawrence, a jacket I bought in Munich, and a hat I bought in Venice. Which, admittedly, is a 12,000 mile road that still leads to a look somewhere between Salvation Army and Target.

One other note I want to make before I end this blog about dance clubs and shopping and begin writing the next installment about, you know, hair styles and celebrity gossip – er, I mean, eat a steak and have heterosexual sex with a girl – the design of urban department stores. Department stores in Seoul, much like any in Manhattan or Paris or Chicago between Belmont and Roosevelt, are vertical. Meaning, they are generally several different floors, no fewer than 5. Now, I understand that females dominate the retail space, as each department store generally has at least 5 or six floors devoted to chick shit and one floor, tops, with men's clothing. That's fine. I understand that girls are way more into shopping and what have you, stereotypically speaking, and I for one hate the mall and want to leave as soon as possible. So why is it, at every one of these stores that the one floor that sells men's wear is always on the fifth floor or higher? Why must I ride through several floors of escalators through all the chick shit to get to what I want, when all I want to do is get in and out as fast as fucking possible? I know there's the elevator too, but that's even worse, since by law, every department store elevator everywhere must stop at every floor every time. Would it be so hard to put the guy shit on the ground level, or even in the basement, so that I can get out of the store in under 10 minutes? I mean, with 9 floors of women's shit, the ladies are going to be cruising multiple floors to begin with, so why not just start them out on floor 2? And yes, I do actually have real problems, yet I choose to take time out of my day to complain about riding too many escalators.