Anytime you don’t know what to do but you know for a fact that you want to have fun, hop on the Ravey Train (a close relative of what my friend Jessica calls the Nonstop Party Wagon). The idea is, you attend as many events as possible in a given night, no questions asked. Nothing’s too big or too small, too weird or too boring, and it doesn’t matter if you’re into the politics or aesthetics of the event in question–if you’ve heard about it, you attend it, then move on to the next thing.
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The Ravey Train’s first stop last Thursday was the Gen Art Fresh Faces in Fashion show at Millennium Park, an annual affair I always enjoy for its local boosterism, even though it tends to be kinda sterile–very clean and organized and attended by well-groomed people dressed with tedious good taste. And sometimes its fake-casual corporate sponsorship makes me want to hurl, like when model/actress Patricia Velasquez, the evening’s emcee, just happened to drop a few lines about American Express’s new In:Chicago card, “the credit card that helps you get the most out of Chicago.”
Next I went to Darkroom for a party hosted by the Modernist, a stark, vaguely literary online journal dedicated to “art, sex, and the New Internationalism,” whatever that is. Saturday Looks Good to Me played live, and usually indie rock ain’t my cup of pee. But their set was so bloated with lush guitar melodies, sweet and husky girl-boy vocal counterpoint, and quirky keyboard it became a happy over-the-top parody of itself, and I couldn’t keep from tapping my toes.
I got to Sound-Bar for the tail end of Ellen Allien’s hard-ass techno set. Harper Reed was doing interviews for a Vox Vodka-sponsored podcast, and though I know I’m the only person who doesn’t really understand what that is, I happily hung around drinking the promotional vodka. When I get drunk I tend to do arty dances of my own invention, like the Jump Rope–I skip an imaginary rope held by myself or by two friends–and lose all track of time. When the lights came on I noticed I was the only woman in the place, aside from a few employees. A guy I’d never seen before asked me to dance, whining that he’d been waiting “all night.” That’s when I realized the Ravey Train had left without me.
