After Day One we took the green line back to the hotel, and found ourselves right in the middle of the Riverwalk on a Friday night, surrounded by strangers. It’s amazing the places you’ll go if you simply go out there and find them.
We stood on the bridge and enjoyed the smooth air as it brushed up against the river surface just enough to carry that cool breeze slowly towards our faces that were fried and covered in sweat from the hot Chicago humidity.
It was a welcommed moment of refreshing peace.
After that, we took shots in the hotel room as we freshened up fast and rushed right back onto the subway. The red line this time, where a random guy tried to sell us weed, and we joked with another that there’s no place on the planet like the red line.
Something we knew for a fact now after returning from wandering the Subways of New York the weekend before.
It dropped us off just outside Chinatown, and we rushed through the dark city only to suddenly find ourselves at the foot of Cermak Hall just around midnight, ready for the afterparty.
Cermak Hall and Radius are very unique in the fact that they are two very distinct clubs with their own identities, but they are connected to one another, with the weekend of Arc being the best example of how great it really gets.
Buying tickets to one meant buying tickets to both, and even though our tickets were to the Anna afterparty in Cermak, we still managed to make it over to Radius to see Boris Brechja performing at the top of his ability with an amazing soundsystem and an outstanding light show.
Radius is one of the best clubs I’ve been to in that it still attempts to stay true to the warehouse mentality with minimal decorations, but also still giving that powerful performance that Techno can now give with lights and sound and power.
Many people complained that Boris played early, which is understandable if you bought a ticket to see Boris, but to me he was a bonus on a night where I just didn’t have the time to go see him at the Grid earlier in the night at the festival.
He was closing the main stage out as Richie Hawtin played the Expansions, and Chris Lake played Elrow, so it was very exciting to get a redo with him, no matter how short it was, and how unhappy people seemed to be that next day.
Oh, and believe me, they were.
There’s this thing that happens with the festival crowd, and it’s this obsession with Set times, and planning it just right, and making sure no DJ is missed.
And don’t get me wrong, I do that too, but I’ve also had friends get mad at me for missing a DJ set at a festival, or get upset because we wanted to see someone different than they did, or even force us to see DJ’s we didn’t want to see, simply so we can all be together.
I understand that Unity mentality, and I support it, but not when it comes at the expense of the experience of all involved. We all work hard to get to these moments, and because of that we should all be allowed to walk our own paths and to experience our own moments. What I fear is missing right now is the willingness to embrace the spontaneity of things.
The ability to show up, and let what happens happen, and no matter where you go or who you see, that’s the experience and path you were meant to take. This same idea can be applied to life as well, I suppose, and although I’m not encouraging irresponsibly, I am trying to remind my fellow dancers of where this culture started.
We are not built on set times, but rather love of the music together, and the music should be what leads us, not the list saying what time the cool DJ starts. We should embrace what we weren’t prepared for, and that is exactly what was happening in Cermak Hall. As Boris finished Sama started, and I’ll admit it became a bit of a blur from there.
She played with such power and intent that it stole the day for me, and that’s not even including what happened around 3am or so, as Anna decided to do a b2b with Sama before her own set, something not planned or expected.
Something we do as preparation for a build up to a festival is we love listening to previous mixes of DJ’s we know we are gonna see, and for the lead up to Arc we both had one favorite we loved above the rest. Sama and Anna doing a b2b at Exit Festival in Serbia.
We loved their energy playing together, and yet we had no intentions of hearing them do a b2b at all as it wasn’t planned in any way. But again, that’s the beauty of spontaneity, as the music played by the two together that night at Cermak Hall, wasn’t just my favorite of the night, but also amongst the best I heard all weekend. They left me smiling from ear to ear as we finally tapped out around four or five am, and Anna was just getting started.
After all we still had two more days of the festival, and how in the world could they match or top this?
We hitched a ride with a good friend from Denver back to the hotel as we remembered the red line at five in the morning isn’t the safest option, and I stared out the window at the Chicago morning light as we all asked the same thing. What does Chicago have for us next?
If Techno ruled Day one and even the pre party with Pan-Pot, what would Day 2 give us?
Looking at the lineup before we fell asleep sometime after sunrise we got our answer. Day 2 was about House Music. Because as we all know.
Chicago is about House. And it was time to go home.
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