There are times in your life where the stars align. Things just seem to go your way. You’re doing what you love to do, you’re living somewhere interesting and you have great friends. For me, most of my life has been this way, but there are peak experiences mixed in which alter the way one sees the world. When a group of people click and you have a group of friends who get together for the sheer pleasure of each others company, it’s amazing. There isn’t a magic number for the group’s size, but its more interesting when it’s larger than, say, five people. You’re a collective, a crew, a posse, whatever cliché you want to insert here.
In D.C. we were a crew and did everything together. Since then, I’ve always sought to re-create that. It started to gel in Poland. Our posse spread across the country and we’d get together in different cities; it was like a rolling party when we did. It involved a trip to Berlin, to e-Werk in particular. A weekend with the crew would begin Thursday evening with people meeting in Warsaw at a bar; I forget the name of the place. That included Josie coming in from near Krakow, often it included Gabby and Bruce. Andrew and Solli might be there; Patrick too. DJ Misha, a German cat, could be found there. Same with (name escapes me, anyone , help, please). He was quite the character, half Chinese, half Portuguese. He used to be the lead singer for a metal band. We’d have a few beers and catch up on the week’s news and make plans for the evening. It basically involved finding a place to eat dinner. We’d go have oriental food in the old town, the Middle Eastern restaurant at the train station, or some other place that took our fancy. The variety of food in the capital was in and of itself a big draw. By 11:30 or so, we’d head down to Sczatnia, a local club that had a good house night. A Dutch DJ would play house and breaks along with some local DJs. It was brilliant. We’d catch up with whoever else we hadn’t met up with yet. There’d be a couple of guys I skated with at the Pepsi demo in Wroclaw. In short, we’d start the weekend off with a bang.
On one occasion we went to Ground Zero, a club in Warsaw, which Andrew used to manage. It was a Chippendales night the night we went, which as pretty funny. There were other great stories from that night, but I won’t get into them to protect the innocent.
Left to right: Back row: Bruce, John, Front Row: Gaby, Josie, Solli, Tyson, Andrew, Front, Eva.
On another occasion we went to some party in the outskirts of Warsaw, a hazy memory now. It was somewhere in the woods on the outskirts of Warsaw. Yet another time, we got together to see a Nick Cave concert. It was held in an auditorium that used to be used for Communist Part functions. The chairs were red velvet and there were boxes behind each seat where microphones used to reside. One time we were wandering back from a party when we passed an after hours bar, and someone opened the door and said “we were waiting for you.” It has a most surreal affect on us. We did a variety of things together. Anyway, Thursday and Fridays were really just a prelude to Saturday nights because that was when we went to e-Werk in Berlin.
