Posts Tagged ‘lego’

Dancey-Dance and Urban’s House 1 Year Anniversary

THURSDAY
The past 2 weeks have been non-stop promoting, rehearsing and preparations for parties and shows. Last Thursday was the 1-year anniversary of our Thursday residency URBAN’S HOUSE at Betty’s and earlier that day myself and Rees went to the club to decorate it with tons of neon-colored circles, making the room look like a giant skittles-twister-like creation.

Early evening all my dancers convened at my place in preparation for the dance show later that night, and by the time we got to the club some of them had already had too much to drink.

That night we had guest DJs Mike Dunn, Nick Gunz from Minneapolis and resident Rees Urban, and what a fantastic night it was! It started off a little quiet, and we had MAJOR DRAMA with the sound system cutting in and out…man that was stressful. But in the end everything turned out wonderful! The show went great, the DJs played their asses off and everybody and their mama showed up! Little Louis and Peven Everett even came through which was a very pleasant surprise =)

FRIDAY
Friday night was the relaunch of Jack Fridays at Fuel Lounge, where Rees was a guest DJ and I the guest host. The Friday Zentra crew has now relocated to this lovely Wicker Park spot, and it was great to see all our old friends again. (p.s. That snatch bartender really needs to be fired. I will make her life miserable until then.)

SATURDAY
Saturday we head over to the Mexican neighborhood of Pilsen for their 4-day celebration called Fiesta del Sol. House of Sol had the House stage filled with lots of talented local DJs. Everybody was drunk as a skunk, but because I had a long day ahead of me, I remained the good girl that I am and partied with sobriety while everyone around me was screaming and spitting in my ear. Fun!

SUNDAY
Sunday was the big day, as me and my dance crew Fivestarboogie would be performing with 13 other dance companies at the enormous outdoor stage of Pritzker Pavilion at the Millenium Park. At 1pm we had a brief technical rehearsal so we could get our bearings onstage, and then we came back later for the 6:30pm show. It was interesting because we were the only non rhythmic/tap group. There were at least 5,000 people out there in the audience, and walking out to that many people seriously caused me to blank out for a few minutes. Luckily we all got it together and gave an awesome performance, and a lot of folks really enjoyed it so yay! =)

After the show, me and Rees head out to the last day of Fiesta del Sol to catch a tag-team set between Johnny Fiasco and Lego. There were 5 times as many people as the day before, and the dancefloor was packed! Old school was in effect, and the energy was absolutely infectious.

After that all wrapped up, we dragged our weary corpses over to Subterranean for the afterparty. With my tank running on negative-empty, I hoped the in-house grilled cheese sandwich would provide me some energy. Instead I could hear myself snoring while pretending to talk to people, so at 2am we jump into my coche, go home and sleep the sleep of the dead. Happy weekend.

Boom Boom Room 18 Year Anniversary

Kevin Hedge @ Boom Boom Room's 18-year Anniversary

me with the famous Reggie backstage @ Boom Boom Room's 18-year Anniversary

Paul Johnson chilling at the afterparty... my crib!

Boom Boom Room, Chicago’s (and possibly the world’s?) longest running House night celebrated its 18-year anniversary on Monday. They brought in Kevin Hedge from Blaze along with locals Jesse de la Pena and Lego. 5 Magazine was a proud co-host for the night, and the party was a great mixture of friends you don’t usually see, smoke, heat, shots and dancing bodies everywhere. Everyone looked really happy to be there, and the vibe was very celebratory. Of course there are always those 1 or 2 bitchy drag queens that I’d really love to trip, but hey I controlled myself :)

Birthday Party

Thursday early afternoon the decorating of Betty’s Blue Star began. After I picked up 2 dozen white balloons from the party store, Carlos and Raw Food Chris were kind enough in helping me hang up all the white stuff and throwing balloons everywhere. After 3 hours of decorating I rush down all the way to the southside to pick up five 3-foot-long hoagy sub sandwiches from this tiny weird shack called Taurus, then went over to another southside joint to get 150 pieces of chicken. Then it’s back to up north to get another black light and the birthday cake. At home all the tons and tons of food had to be cut up, arranged and brought down to the car. By that time (10:30pm) I had 30 minutes to try and look like a birthday goddess as opposed to the housekeeper look I was rocking all day.

I get to the club 35 minutes late, and amazingly the club is already crowded. It actually took my breath away when I saw all those people in white. Everyone looked so elegant! It took probably no more than 45 minutes for all the food to be gone. Literally. I turn around and all I see are bird carcasses. Damn. I guess everyone was hungry. But that made me happy :)

As the night wore on more and more people came, and Paul Johnson and Gene Hunt did their thing on the tables. The energy of the party was wonderful, and shots were being poured every which way towards me, even by all those broke and stingy people who never bought me shit. Yay! The drunker I got, the more I wanted to talk on the mic… thank God people steered me away from it whenever I mentioned getting on again. Emanuel, Terry Hunter, Stacy Kidd, Wayne Williams, Dave Risque, Alton Miller, Bear Who, Diz, Andre Harris, Lego, Hector Lopez and Mark Grant were some of the DJs that came through along with my old dancer friends and assorted househeads. It was so awesome!

By 3:00 when some folks were starting to leave, people asked me if anyone was going to sing happy birthday, after all there was still an untouched cake. I said I didn’t know I was hoping Rees was going to do that, so Scott the manager paged Rees on the mic several times. A few of my friends went outside to look for him, and I started getting antsy. Finally after several attempts by everyone to page/find him, the lovely Scott got on the mic himself, called me onstage and did a wonderful dedication to me. Everyone sang Happy Birthday and that really meant a lot to me. I am so grateful to the whole Betty’s staff because they take such good care of all of us.

At the end of the night Rees stumbles into the club like nothing happened. He had missed the whole thing. I guess the story goes was that one of my friends saw him outside the club and told him to come in, that they were about to sing to me. He waves the guy off and says “Hold on…” then proceeds to get inside a car with his boy and get fucked up. Isn’t that awesome? Fuck her birthday, I want to get loaded.

Despite that little tragedy, thank you to each and every one who came out and showed love. Especially those who wore white! I think I’m starting a bday tradition with this white party thing… it’s pretty cool :)

Amazing Success

The show of BADDEST BITCH last Wednesday was an astounding success. The venue is gorgeous with its lights and sound system, tons of friends and new people came, and the energy was on 10 the whole night. David Sabat spun an amazing opening and closing set, and people really really loved the show. It was a wonderful thing to have so many folks respond to it, and everyone plans on coming back! Lego and Ricky Bradshaw, whose music I used in the show were there, Robert Williams, Ronda Flowers and Koko, as were everyone in the House community. We are featured and highly recommended by The Reader, Time Out (2x), Windy City Times and Red Eye. Hope to see you guys at the last show this Wednesday. :)

Happy Birthday 5 Magazine!!

backstage of Zentra... me fielding 10,000 phone calls from people right before going on...

Fivestar Boogie performing a routine from Baddest Bitch

Lego, Roy Davis Jr., and Spinna

The anniversary party was a huge success, and it was so nice to see the House community come out and support. Lego was great as usual, and Spinna took it to a whole other level. He killed it! Special thanks to George of Bassline for being a terrific host and really pumping up the crowd. Did I enjoy my own party? Mmmm… sometimes. Who enjoys their own party? Not when I had to run from my rehearsals that evening straight to getting ready for the party, and late evening I am getting millions of texts, emails and calls from people with last minute guest list requests. Or how about 10 minutes before I’m about to go onstage, my phone is still blowing up with folks saying they can’t get in because they’re wearing Barney shorts, can they bring an extra 5 friends at midnight, or can I find them some “things”?

The dancing went well, I just couldn’t see shit. Them lights were so dark that if I couldn’t see myself, I’m pretty sure the audience couldn’t see us that well. It meant a lot to me to see a lot of my friends come out and support what we do. Thank you!!! For those of you who didn’t… well, whatever. That shit always gets me down because I bust my ass to support as many people as I can, because I know how much it means to them.

Complaints aside, thank you sooo much to everyone who came!!! 5 Magazine is a healthy 2 year old girl, and she will continue to get better and better!