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Last night was a "sweet jam", as my noble contemporary Len Ball would say, and in fact he did say it because he was there. Hongdae is an interesting place, one which I have repeatedly not visited in the past and suffered scathing insults from Len via cellular telephone as a result. I have overcome: the phone and Hongdae are now married, implement and fateful location tied together. You'll see.

Hongdae is, by and large, known as Seoul's primary club district. Alongside the standard hip-hop crawls (or 'black music clubs', as many of them are identified in a not-very-politically-correct-way), Hongdae is a hotbed of alternative nightlife. Lots of electronica, lots of club names that you've heard of but which prove rather impossible to find nestled in the winding, crooked streets of dark neon. We found Cargo in a basement. Inside Cargo we found a lengthy lecture about snowboards. We found gold-digging girls who think white guys are much better than Korean guys until white guys don't want to pay their cover, in which case Korean guys are suddenly better. We lost stolen bottles of white wine, casing smashed against the concrete, bleeding cheap rivulets into the worn cracks. Say sorry in hangul.

We found m2, which is probably Seoul's most notorious club. Notoriety comes from trance, from house, from recruiting DJs from Europe to spin under green lasers and then spend three days in jail for working without a proper Visa. The jam was sweet and packed and deep, pasted with arms and faces and legions of bass. m2 was an exciting piece of work but then it swallowed my jacket, which vanished into coat check and was never seen again, to my wasted dismay. So goodbye trendy iPod and goodbye Dickies Jacket That I Liked and, most of all, goodbye cell phone. I was starting to become reliant on you, like an eleventh finger or some other kind of bizarre radiation growth. In the silent taxi ride home, I examined the hole left by your sudden departure and decided that you were probably a Satan that I had once loved.

Posted by Chris at 12:00 AM >> Commentations (6)