“It takes a lot of people,” observes artist Colin Lambides, “to make up what is hip.” And Chicago’s hip scene, even at its hottest venues, is surprisingly varied, open to virtually anyone who is the least bit talented and interesting. It doesn’t hurt, of course, if you’re good-looking, but mostly it takes a bit of work and polish, the right clothes, the right friends and being seen at the right places–the clubs, galleries, restaurants and shops that cater to and sustain the ever-youthful party crowd. Though clubs might seem exclusive, many are remarkably diverse. A place like the Funky Buddha or Zentra on a Saturday offers an eclectic mix of young Chicagoans who don’t care about color, sexual orientation or social background. They care about having a good time. At the heart of the hip scene is a remarkably small and interconnected group, many of them artists, actors, musicians, designers and other creative types. Curious about the lifestyles of the young and gregarious, we spent a weekend hanging out with three such people who, though they resist being labeled hip or anything else, are widely regarded as regulars on the city’s hip circuit:
Lambides, 25, is a Chicago native who has evolved from an outlaw graffiti artist to doing commission work for the mayor’s wife and other clients, and teaching art to young people at Gallery 37. “I just like the people, I like the energy, I like the possibilities,” he says of his social milieu, “the people you meet, the way things can branch out from there. . . . That’s always at the core of everything, that and going out and blowing off steam.”
Whitney Spagnolo is a 22-year-old aspiring model and actress, who fled the boredom of Marquette, Mich., her Upper Peninsula hometown, for the pace and energy of Chicago. “I didn’t like being a small-town girl,” she says. “I never found much fun in sledding, fishing and snowmobiling.” She says that what defines the with-it crowd is the ability to differentiate between what’s simply new and what looks good and stylish. “It’s not about showing off as much as it’s just showing your style, what you like, what you’re comfortable with,” she says.
Obi Nwazota, 33, is co-owner of the trendy Softcore clothing store in Wicker Park. Raised in an upper-class family in Enugu, Nigeria, and trained as an architect, Obi is also involved as a partner, consultant or designer in a number of ventures in Bucktown/Wicker Park that have a hip clientele, though he insists: “In no way do the people I hang out with strive to be hip. We do what we believe in and what we enjoy doing, and that might make you stand out and be identified that way.” Obi is an arbiter of hipness, part of a closely linked circle of merchants sought out by those seeking entree to the scene. For him, making the rounds of parties and clubs is as much a business obligation as a social activity. Being seen with someone like Obi is a sign of having arrived, and on a typical weekend he is rarely alone.
FRIDAY
3 p.m.
Customer traffic is building at Obi’s store as party-goers seek out the perfect Friday-night outfit. Perhaps those spike heels three inches high–with real spikes–and the form-fitting glittery rose dress. Or those jeans, folded on the table by the entryway–pink, blue and, most audaciously, gold. It takes a certain je ne sais quoi to wear these things, and a similar confidence to sell them. Softcore and places like it are where it all starts, where kids who are cool and kids desperate to be cool come for the costume.
3:15
In a windowless basement studio at Gallery 37, Colin Lambides peers through Chanel sunglasses as he labors over a piece of tracing paper, drawing delicate curved lines with a No. 2 pencil.
Maggie Daley, the mayor’s wife, has commissioned Colin to paint blue delftware patterns on three pieces of whitewashed furniture, and he’s about to begin transferring the first design onto a white desk she has supplied him. The designs are flowery and sedate, as Dutch-looking as wooden shoes. Colin, who recently spent eight months traveling the Far East, had proposed drawings that featured Asian dragons and Taoist masters, but the mayor’s wife wanted something more traditional.
Colin got his start as an artist painting graffiti on the walls of Chicago train stations, which led to several encounters with the law and a three-week stint in juvenile jail. His exploits also led to a degree in 1997 from the Kansas City Art Institute, partly funded by a scholarship he won through the city’s probation department. Now he gets paid for his work, which includes murals on the wall of a Ukrainian Village bar.
As for the designer sunglasses with iridescent frames, Colin says they have a practical purpose. “I sit under fluorescent lights all the time, so they keep me from getting headaches. It’s not like a rock star thing.”
5:00
Whitney Spagnolo is taking a borrowed car from her Gold Coast apartment to a casting call–a “cattle call,” as she calls it–on the Far West Side. She heard the director is looking for some rock ‘n’ roll fans for a concert scene.
“Do I look like a rock ‘n’ roll fan?” she asks, spinning around the grease-stained concrete of a Lawndale gas station.
Whitney is more than 6 feet tall with her heels on. She wears a black leather racing jacket over a black sweater and black ribbed cotton shirt. Her skin is bronzed from the tanning salon, and her eyelashes flare like stars. Since she dropped out of Lake Forest College to concentrate on modeling and acting, her career has taken off; in the past year she has supported herself doing fashion shows, acting in small film and TV roles and working as a “fitting model” for the International Academy of Merchandising and Design.
6:39
Obi flits around his store, bringing outfits to a wasp-waisted woman with smooth mocha skin and stiff curls. She totters out of the dressing room in a purple dress that drapes smoothly, at once floaty and clingy. Balancing on the metal spike heels, she looks like a lost doe, peering into the mirror in disbelief.
6:45
Whitney’s casting call is in a warehouse the size of an airplane hangar. She greets a stagehand in the parking lot, not sure where she has seen him before–either a cattle call for an ‘N Sync movie or on the set of “Return to Me,” where she was a stand-in for Minnie Driver. Whitney’s game plan for these cattle calls is simple and her standards are admittedly high: She won’t wait too long for the director, and she won’t wait at all if the director is just looking for bodies to fill a several-second shot. “If it sucks, I’m gone,” she says.
Several technicians, stagehands and an actor dressed as a priest watch Whitney find her way to the casting area, where more than two dozen people–showered, shaved, groomed and dressed for rock ‘n’ roll — are waiting. Whitney introduces herself to a woman with a clipboard. They chat for a minute; then Whitney smiles, throws her bag over her shoulder and heads for the exit.
“They just want pretty girls,” she says. “No tight shots. And not till much later.” In other words, she’s gone.
7:22
The credit card has been processed, the lavender dress tightly folded and packed in a daisy-covered Softcore bag. After the customer leaves, Obi observes that she was “too thin. It used to be frightful to me. You’d crush someone and you wouldn’t even know you crushed them.” The fashion industry, of which Obi, as retailer and designer, is a well-respected member, is of course a prime venue for women who are vanishingly slender. “The funny thing is,” he says, “we still appreciate real women.”
7:30
Stuck in traffic on the Eisenhower Expressway, Whitney is making calls on her Nokia. Everyone’s talking about Friday night, but so far no one’s proposing anything crazy. Friday is really Thursday to “industry” people in her crowd, who work regular jobs at bars and restaurants from Tuesday through Saturday to pay the bills.
7:37
Obi heads across the street to Ezuli. Cocktails. Red Stripe. Bruschetta with peanut butter and papaya. It is early, the music still light enough to allow conversation. People flit to Obi’s table, drawn in like metal filings to a magnet. Earlier, at the store, it had been Geoffrey Mac, a designer of high-fashion latex clothing who got his start with Obi’s support. Mac’s latest coup is having singer Li’l Kim wear his shirt-cum-dress in a recent video. “It barely covers anything,” Mac said. “It was nasty, but it’s OK as long as she’s wearing it.” Later, Ed Marszewski and Joe Collier of Lumpen magazine stopped by. Then Eric Williams of the Silver Room. Obi has lent his eye to the interior design of Williams’ new venture, a late-night hangout called Square One. Giuseppe Cerasoli, Obi’s business partner in the new Orange Skin interior furnishings store, walks into Ezuli and joins Obi’s group.
7:55
A beauty with long hair, very long legs shown off by a demure mint green skirt, red stilettos and lips to match, walks past the window of Ezuli and into Softcore. An Obi devotee. Obi is appreciative, but at 33 he has his priorities: He’s secure enough not to chase after every pretty young thing–nor, for that matter, to follow every new fad or indulge in the ever-available smorgasbord of drugs, particularly marijuana and cocaine, that are part of the late-night club scene. “If I were to do drugs,” he says, “New York would be my drug of choice.”
8:15
The long-legged devotee walks into Ezuli and hugs Obi. The group is joined by Shaun Pauling, a young businessman in the Bucktown area, and Aitaye Mihrete, a restaurateur and chef from Ethiopia dressed in a simple but stylish denim skirt, blue long-sleeved shirt, black vest and patterned headband.
8:17
Colin and his roommate, Angelina, have just finished dinner and are drinking red wine beneath a vintage crystal chandelier in their Ukrainian Village apartment. The stereo plays hip-hop. The windows look out on clouds tinted violet and electric blue, and a late spring breeze blows through the screen door.
Angelina, a painter, has just been featured in a section on Chelsea galleries in The New York Times, which lies folded on the table. She’s giddy about it. “The art world is so hungry for fresh blood,” she says.
Colin, in a black T-shirt that says “Ranger Trucking, Inc.,” his cell phone glued to his ear, plans the evening. “Wassup, Wolf Castle?” he says. “It’s 8 something. Why dontcha give me a holler when you get this message?”
Wiry and lean, he strides around the apartment smoking Camels, talking, dialing and talking again. “Yeah definitely–you Mr. Pitiful!” he tells someone. “What’s going on with you? I’m feeling like a champ.” He writes, holding the phone between his ear and shoulder, getting the particulars about a show at Metro in Wrigleyville.
“What’s up, Iggy, it’s Colin. Give me a call when you get this message.”
While Angelina showers, he talks about being taken to Playboy photo shoots as a kid. His mom was a photo stylist, and when he was home sick she took him to work with her. He would play endless games of Centipede during the shoots. He laughs about it now: “There were naked twins behind me, and I was just playing Centipede.”
8:30
Typical-girl stereotypes fly out the window of Whitney’s one-bedroom apartment in a vintage building on Maple Street. Not every woman primps for hours; some just look as though they do. Whitney, for example, is ready after two songs from the “Charlie’s Angels” movie soundtrack. She’s dressed by the end of “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” by Looking Glass and finished with her makeup by the last sweet croon of Marvin Gaye’s “You’ve Got to Give It Up.” Her look: black boot-cut pants and a black halter top. The top is definitely the most eye-catching–an extra-long piece of cloth that wraps around her bronze torso and ends with a twist around her neck. Whitney appreciates fashion, but it’s important for her to “put her touch” on the new styles she sees. “We all have our different styles, and sometimes we do go a bit over the top,” she says of her crowd, “but I guess what all of us have in common is an eye for what looks good.”
8:38
Obi returns to his store to finish some work. While they wait for him to come back, his companions make dinner plans at Mod. “That’s the bad thing about going out with Obi,” Giuseppe says. “He eats at very weird hours.”
8:45
Whitney ascends 10 hardwood steps, each softly lit by candles, at the West End Bar and Grill downtown. Two couples and a man at the bar watch every step, staring as she orders a glass of Moet champagne. For a model, she is surprisingly uncomfortable with such attention from strangers. “I don’t go out to meet people,” she says. “I go out to see my friends. We’re not trying to pick up guys or show off. We just want to listen to good music and have a good time.”
9:38
Colin, Angelina and another friend drive to Standard Gallery, which is downstairs from Colin’s old apartment in a gritty area southeast of Bucktown. “Between Ashland and the expressway, this area is called the Dog Patch,” Colin says. “This is full of gangbangers. It hasn’t all been bought up and gentrified.”
The street is packed with cars, so Angelina, wearing white shoes, denim pedal pushers and pigtails, parks in front of a fire hydrant. “I got my flashers on,” she says.
“Dude, I swear I was in there looking at the art,” Colin says, predicting what she’ll say to the traffic cop. “It was just for a few minutes!”
The gallery is on the first floor of a three-flat. The back room is small, with a makeshift bar and a blond wood bookshelf packed with volumes. There are small, bright rectangular paintings that look like jigsaw puzzles and big, pastel-colored canvases hanging under hot white lights. The prices range from $300 to $1,600.
“It’s pleasant,” Colin says. “But every time you go out to a gallery lately, it’s eye candy, really designy stuff. It probably jibes with decor. But it’s hard to feel like you’re learning anything by going out looking at art.” He wears a black shirt and a black leather jacket. He hasn’t shaved, and his chin is shadowy with stubble.
A group of raven-haired men and women, clad entirely in black, walk by. “What time does clubbing start tonight?” one asks another.
9:50
Obi arrives at Mod after going up to his apartment, just steps from Softcore, to change. White shirt, jeans, Nike sneakers. Understated. Obi doesn’t need to flaunt his style.
Suhail, a local designer, sits under fisheye mirrors framed by orange screens and lit by the blue of overhead lighting blocks. This is his creation, an interior he envisioned and helped produce.
A woman with lots of hair, lots of cleavage, lots of tan, walks out. Stops to hug Obi first.
10:12
That woman and others are forgotten. A curvaceous brunette, perfectly coiffed and made up, bronze skin set off by a coordinated bronze outfit, is sitting by the window. Long time no see. A graduate student, she has been studying for exams. Obi’s girlfriend? Not exactly, but it’s hard to miss the chemistry between the two.
10:16
Angelina leaves the Standard Gallery for a party on the South Side. About the same time, three of Colin’s friends show up to give him a lift to a West Side bar where they’ll celebrate a friend’s birthday.
Ian drives and his girlfriend sits up front, singing along with the stereo. Colin sits in back with another man and asks about his work at the Mercantile Exchange. “He trades across the pit from me,” says the girl, a clerk at the Board of Trade.
Rain spatters the windshield as they reach the bar, the Udder Brudder, and park.
Inside, Colin hugs his girlfriend, Cecilia, a 24-year-old with a bright smile and a cascade of blond ringlets. He drinks Corona with lime, smokes and talks to friends he hasn’t seen since high school. He has a lot of friends from those years, having attended five Chicago high schools before graduating from Truman Middle College in Uptown.
11:01
At Mod, Obi tries to persuade a dinner companion to try his fish. “You know, you cannot be in a porn film being a vegetarian,” he says cryptically.
11:07
“How on earth do you eat it with the bones?” asks the brunette. “It’s an African thing,” Obi replies. “You talk to the bones, they talk to you.”
11:40
Obi and the brunette return to Ezuli. Like many of his hangouts, it’s within a five-block radius of his store. Obi makes his way through the now-crowded room. The volume of the music has been cranked up, the sound enveloping. Bodies are packed tight, movement a delicate dance of shift and shake. Obi is stopped frequently. “One girl, I met her two years ago. Haven’t seen her since. She remembers my name.” He’s surprised?
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11:52
At the West End, a busboy clears away a mostly eaten plate of grilled calamari and Whitney switches from champagne to a screwdriver. It’s almost closing time; even the music says so. The Stone Temple Pilots and other loud forms of rock ‘n’ roll suddenly replace U2 and Prince. Music to work by, music to clean by. Still, Whitney and a friend, Mona, sip their drinks around a slow game of pool. Whitney takes a call from a friend wondering when they’ll leave. Mona suggests they go to the Funky Buddha Lounge and then maybe Rednofive, clubs just west of the Loop.
“We’ll go soon,” Whitney tells her caller, but makes no moves to leave.
“It’s still early,” Mona says, waving at their nice setup: no crowds, no men behaving badly, no trouble getting a drink.
“OK, maybe 20 minutes,” Whitney says.
12:49 A.M.
The Funky Buddha closes in less than an hour, but 40 people crowd outside its leather ropes hoping to get in. Valets run wind sprints returning cars, cabs come and go, and a host wearing Gucci-style shades and a scarf is smiling as he checks IDs. A security guard, looking like a Secret Service agent with his earpiece and microphone, flicks aside a curtain for Whitney and Mona. He’s thanked with a kiss, as are two other guards who also clear the way. Mona yells, “What’s up, girl!” to the hostess, a friend, who waives the $10 cover charge and hands Mona complimentary drink tickets.
Whitney likes familiar surroundings when she is clubbing; strange places and people make her feel vulnerable. At her preferred nightspots, “there are a lot of regulars . . . and you see the same people whether you know them or not. And you know the people who work there, so they watch out for you too.”
The deejay works in a booth well past the bar, beyond a room’s-length couch and a curtained area reserved for special guests and private parties. Deep bass lines dominate his controlled slide between hip-hop and dancehall reggae.
Whitney and Mona lounge, VIP style, inside a two-room wing accessible through a small door cloaked by a long black curtain. The rooms are filled with wall-length sofas, footstools, pillows and murals. Buddha’s owner, Mark Klemen, is making his rounds. Whitney rises to say hello and as they chat, Mark invites her to his birthday party Tuesday. Whitney offers regrets; she’ll be vacationing in Miami Beach.
An older man, dressed in a black suit sans necktie, bumps Whitney’s shoulder in passing and apologizes. He waves a $100 bill at the bartender and orders a glass of Moet, two glasses of cognac and two vodka sodas. He leaves a $20 tip from his $50 in change.
12:51
Hugs, kisses, greetings galore racked up, Obi departs Ezuli. “Let’s all go to Buddha,” he says, more announcement than invitation. The brunette drives.
1:20
In the Funky Buddha’s back room, the cast-iron filigree lamps throw down their scarlet light, and the orange walls with the blood-red peacock imprints are a perfect frame for a languid Obi, ebony skin glowing. Whitney greets him and joins him on the settee.
1:37
A woman wearing a handkerchief masquerading as a top races over and screeches, “Obi, let’s go socialize.” He nods but doesn’t move. She disappears. In a mural on the far wall, a girl in a purdah looks out from behind the veil, surveying the scene. Obi sits and does the same.
1:52
Closing time. Lights go on. Music stops. Obi goes in search of the brunette, who has the car keys. Time to head home and snatch a couple of hours’ rest before opening Softcore Saturday morning.
2:02
A Ford Windstar with South Carolina plates is parked across the entrance of the Buddha, its tinted windows scrawled with a warning in white, John 3:3: “Unless a man be born again, he won’t see the kingdom of God.”
2:15
Le Passage is 50 yards down a red-brick alley off Oak Street, and its 4 a.m. liquor license and Casablanca atmosphere make it a destination for late-night revelers. A suit-wearing security guard lifts a velvet rope, and Whitney smiles at the hostess/friend, who offers her a kiss and a complimentary pass. She sends Whitney in just as the house intercom crackles, “Don’t let anybody inside.”
2:43
Colin and Ian have moved on to Metro, but Ian has forgotten his ID and decides to head home. He has a funeral to go to in the morning.
Inside, Colin pays the $20 admission. The high-ceilinged club is dark, filled with fake smoke and colored lights and throbbing with a hard dance beat. The hall and stairs are packed with young women in see-through tank tops and backless shirts. A woman in red eye shadow carries a backpack shaped like Snoopy. A blue-haired guy walks by in a jacket that appears to be made of plastic garbage bags.
On the shadowy stage, a lone black man named Derrick Carter stands behind a table weighed down with record players and sound equipment. “He’s Chicago’s primo house deejay,” Colin says. “He’s so funny. An all-around good guy.”
The beat is inescapable, hard techno over “Staying Alive.” The dance floor looks like a cross between a mosh pit and a rave: Teens sway lyrically, waving glow sticks; an empty-eyed kid dances alone, his limbs stiff as a robot’s.
Colin goes upstairs to the bar, orders a Tanqueray and tonic and takes in the scene. “This is like a kiddie club,” he says. A black girl in a white T-shirt with a hoop through her nose comes up and throws her arms around him. It turns out she is a former student at Gallery 37, where Colin has taught classes in stone carving, mural painting and graphic design.
Iggy, a slim Bangladeshi with a silver nose ring and an electric smile, comes up and embraces Colin. “Hey, baby,” Iggy yells. “How’s it doing?”
He flits around chattering, telling stories, dropping strands of gossip. He’s wearing a red-and-white striped shirt and narrow-legged blue jeans. “I’m giving you the gay sailor boy look tonight,” he confides.
3:30
Whitney sits in the VIP room of Le Passage, sipping from a champagne flute. Two movie screens show a black-and-white film with subtitles. No one is talking. Ten people sit with their backs against the bar watching Whitney and five others watch the movie. Whitney rolls her champagne flute back and forth with her index finger and wonders aloud about tomorrow’s weather.
3:45
The lights come on at Metro. Iggy invites everyone to an after-party at his house in Wicker Park. Colin follows the stream of clubgoers outside, hoists Iggy on his back and runs down the street. At Iggy’s place, they relax and talk until dawn; then Colin heads home.
4:30
Whitney leaves Le Passage. Homeless people are asking for change, birds are chirping and the morning’s blue hue is quickly taking over. She takes a cab, occasionally closing her eyes in the few minutes it takes to get home.
SATURDAY
Noon
Whitney gets up to order a pizza. She eats and goes back to sleep.
Mid-afternoon
Colin rises, does some housecleaning, makes an omelet and heats up Friday night’s leftovers. Still hungry, he goes to a neighborhood Mexican place for tostadas. “I eat like a pig–like a pregnant pig,” he says.
5 p.m.
Scraping away some gum that got stuck on her leather jacket sometime last night, Whitney gets on the phone and consults with her friends on the evening’s plans.
6:30
Obi’s angular 6-foot-2 frame is folded into a leather chair next to the dressing cubicles at Softcore. He is dressed comfortably–hooded fleece jacket, faded jeans, Nikes. He and Giuseppe shuffle papers back and forth. It’s only about a month until Orange Skin opens, and there’s tons of work to be done. Obi, a University of Illinois at Chicago-educated architect who left stints at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Eva Maddox Associates seeking a less structured existence, still can’t escape the long hours of work.
6:38
Suenman Lam, Obi’s partner in Softcore and the women’s clothing store e-octopussy, is in high spirits in a red Rorschach print shirt. She peers at the gray sky and says, “It better not rain because I’m going out tonight.” Suenman, a designer and “the business brain,” Obi says, is as warm and outgoing as Obi is reserved. “Almost everything I wear is from [Softcore]. I work seven days a week, so I don’t have time to shop except when I travel,” she says.
8:50
Colin is at Gallery 312, west of the Loop on May Street, amid the warehouses. Under red lights, men in thick, black-rimmed glasses and ’70s gym shoes mingle with women in towering heels. They sip wine and grape Crush and sway to the beat drifting down from a small balcony, where a deejay works.
On the wall is one big canvas, 60 by 20 feet, covered with giant shapes in silver, fuchsia, red and yellow. Colin, wearing a pale marble-print blouse, a baby blue corduroy jacket, khaki pants and immaculately polished brown shoes, eyes the work with suspicion. “It’s a backdrop for a party–that’s exactly it,” he says, as he and some friends from his graffiti days appraise the canvas, peering around the back where it’s attached to the wall.
Colin and Angelina talk to a young man with a lion’s mane of dreadlocks and headphones pumping hip-hop tunes by Aesop Rock into one ear. He wears a blue hooded sweatshirt and cargo pants and offers up his sketchbook, full of photographic pencil drawings, cartoons and clear-taped public-transport tickets. He was telecommuting to work at a Pennsylvania computer company, but he just quit. “I got to a point,” he says, “where I was like, ‘I went to art school. What am I doing staring at a computer screen?’ “
Iggy shows up in a brown leather jacket, gray pants and a black shirt. Colin chats with a brown-haired girl in a vintage, midriff-baring sweater set and high-heeled boots.
9:00
Whitney dines at Dee’s Mandarin Restaurant in Lincoln Park.
9:04
Just finished with work, Obi spends 10 minutes at his apartment getting decked out for the night: gray suit, set off by a dark orange button-down shirt, cordovan patent lace-ups and amber sunglasses. The lights shine bright on Saturday night.
9:25
Obi walks up the Zen rock-garden-lined entrance to Gallery 312, his arrival acknowledged enthusiastically. “Obi. Obi. You look good tonight.”
9:50
Enough rubbing shoulders, smiling hello, making small talk. Obi installs himself at the balcony, serenely looking down.
11:04
Iggy talks animatedly with Obi and introduces him to Colin.
11:50
Obi and entourage arrive at an after-party at Smartbar. There’s a $15 cover, but no one in Obi’s group pays.
Midnight
At the Drake Hotel, Chicagoscene.com, a Web site dedicated to Chicago’s nightlife, is holding a third anniversary party. Revelers roam from the Gold Coast Room to the Palm Court room to the Walton Street entrance, smoking, drinking and staring at one another along the way. None of Whitney’s friends are there, but she wants to see the Drake, check out a different place.
Inside the Gold Coast Room, a band called the Bandoleros churns out Latin rhythms that draw hundreds of people to the dance floor. Banners, goodie bags and other promotions for Chicagoscene.com are everywhere, and the nightclub atmosphere seems oddly incongruous in this stately hotel. At one point, a woman in a clingy black dress sits on a 10-foot mahogany table and drops the ash from her cigarette on the floor of the Palm Court, a room famous for its Sunday tea. One man remarks that the hotel looks like a “prom gone wrong.”
12:14 a.m.
Slick’s Lounge is a low-slung, blue-lit dance club off Division Street on Goose Island. It has the feeling of an old garage, and has recently been turned into one of the hottest bars in town. The place is packed with rapper types and Asian hipsters, black professionals, women in black leather and the occasional skinny Lincoln Park blond dancing with her boyfriend. Colin is there with Iggy and Angelina.
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In a side room, separated from the dance floor by gauzy curtains, people sprawl on armchairs and ottomans until the pulsing music and cold blue lights draw them out to the dance floor.
Two beat cops walk in and the crowd parts for them. People sneak glances as the pair make their way to the bar, pace around the perimeter of the room and walk out. Under the awning, one says to the other: “Nah, it’s not him.”
On a raised dais at one end of the room, between the deejays’ record-spinning table and the floor full of dancers, a girl with platinum blond hair dances alone. Her nickname is Juicy and she is hosting tonight, her first shot at this key role in the local club scene. Sometimes called promoters, hosts or hostesses are selected by club owners for their connections to the hip scene, and their compensation depends on how successful they are at bringing their friends and others with social cachet into the club that night.
Juicy, who Colin says works at Ezuli, is all poise and kisses, greeting new arrivals like a Rockefeller heiress at the family Christmas party. She wears a skin-tight red dress; a choker of light blue beads; a silver beaded cuff bracelet; and brown high-heeled boots.
12:35
At Smartbar, drinks in hand, Obi is waylaid by a man for almost 10 minutes. When he finally makes it back to his companions and hands out the drinks, he is perplexed. “I’ve been propositioned by a married man,” he tells them, shaking his head. “I could understand it if I were gay…It’s a lot for an African to take in. I’ve heard of these things, but you never believe it.” Most clubgoers would not be so surprised; sexual pursuit has always been the leitmotif of their nightlife.
Obi glides solo onto the dance floor. “Feel the music,” he says, flowing to the beat with a liquid movement that contrasts with everyone else’s hard gyrations.
12:45
Whitney takes one lap around the Gold Coast Room, trades stares with half a dozen people and retreats to a quiet corner of the Palm Court. She leaves after two sips from a tall glass of vodka and cranberry juice. “Everyone was staring, everyone was ‘planning’ themselves–too much attitude,” she says.
1:44
At Slick’s, Colin moves to the pulse of the music, which is growing louder, wilder, faster. One of his friends has left to pick up the next deejay, Honey Dijon. She arrives wearing a black scarf over her hair, a lavender peasant blouse with sparkly beading, jeans and a necklace with a lone diamond dangling from it.
Cecilia, Colin’s girlfriend, shows up with a group of friends. She wears a black, short-sleeved shirt that shows her belly button, blue jeans and a black belt. Colin fights through the crowd to buy her a drink.
In the gauze-shrouded lounge off the dance floor, a woman in a white tank top sits on a man’s lap. They tear up paper napkins and stuff the pieces down each other’s shirts, giggling and nearly falling off the chair they’re sharing.
Colin and Cecilia dance close together. Nearby, two people kiss. A man dances next to a black woman with a crown of bleached-blond locks.
2:00
Whitney squeezes past 70 people waiting to enter Zentra, in Lincoln Park. Four doormen and a hostess are friends who quickly usher her inside, where more friends are waiting. Tonight’s theme is a blend of Fertile Crescent, Egyptian and “Lawrence of Arabia” imagery. Women dressed as Egyptian servants wave four-foot peacock fans, and two desert tents cover the upstairs dance floor.
Whitney and her friends secure a spot near the first-floor bar. “This is more like it,” she says, raising a glass of champagne.
Across the bar are several people that Whitney had seen at the Drake party. There’s also a blond man in a French blue shirt holding his cell phone like a walkie-talkie and screaming, “Zentra! Zentra! I’m at Zentra!” In this scene, everyone’s on call and communication is expected. Pick up your phone, scream your location and keep the party going.
2:20
Obi and his entourage arrive at Slick’s. The doorman looks at Obi, says, “You’re all good.”
2:37
Obi stands against a far wall, drink in hand. He receives his supplicants with the ease of the well-born. But he doesn’t mix. Making the scene is largely, if not solely, a business obligation for Obi. “I cannot endure this kind of stuff,” he says. “I never liked it, but you do it because you have to do it. They live a different life than I do. I’m not comfortable here. Normally I walk in and I leave.”
3:00
At Zentra a tall, muscular man wearing sneakers, a Greg Norman golf shirt and baby-blue faded jeans roams upstairs, an indication that it’s getting late, even by nightclub standards. Most clubs discourage jeans, sneakers and too much testosterone. At least until the bouncers grow too weary to care. A man vomits and collapses on the wet bathroom floor.
3:14
At Slick’s, Obi is getting antsy. “I know so many people here. They’re all like, ‘Obi! Obi!’ And I don’t want to be part of this [stuff]. Chicago is really funny. You have one party. Everyone shows up.” As if on cue, Colin comes into view.
3:35
“It’s over,” says Obi. “What else is there?” And with that, the king is gone. The party continues without him.
4:07
The action is fading, the dance floor clearing out. Colin and Cecilia say their goodbyes and step out into the night. After the heat of the club, the cold air surprises them. Cecilia draws her black cardigan more tightly around her body. Her curls blow in the night wind. They walk off toward Division Street holding hands. Behind them, stragglers seek out parked cars and the energy of the street. To the east, the darkness is giving way to a bright and starry azure.
At Zentra, Whitney plucks her purse from the bar’s tile counter and retrieves her sweater from behind the bar. It’s time for some privacy. “I’m going to an after-hours party,” she says. The invitation does not extend to the news media.
Outside, she kisses a bouncer goodbye and hails a cab.