Saturday, May 12, 3:20 a.m.
I wake from a delicious disco nap and slip silently back into today’s party clothes. On the dark and nearly deserted streets I slink through sleepy neighborhoods, down inky highways to reach the Strip where tourists and couples stumble and stroll, respectively, down the boulevard so bright-light-and-big-city dazzled as to wander right into my car. I get the finger, give the finger and settle in behind the streams of cars pulling into Empire Ballroom’s lot. Upping the radio volume I’m still awed by the fact that KLUC 98.5-FM is playing house music. Vibrate Radio (launching officially this Friday at Empire) plays satellite radio-style house hits from 2 to 5 a.m. which, except for the awkwardness of commercials, is mighty convenient; once I hit the VIP room, I expect to hear a lot of hip-hop.
As late as it is, I’m technically a little early for Late Night Empire afterhours. Though the doors open at 1 a.m., it really doesn’t hit its stride until 4 a.m. At four on the dot, Scott Stubbs is on deck, bathed in blinding light which cuts out for the audience to chant in the darkness: “We don’t need no education!” The strobe lights blink to brilliant life and set everyone off all over again, like the first breathtaking downward surge of a good rollercoaster. I can’t see anyone’s face, but everyone seems to be enjoying the new speakers, screens, and plasma TVs, all organ transplants courtesy of Ice nightclub, may she rest in pieces.
Stubbs’ bald head bops to his outro, Beck’s “Loser” as does headliner D:Fuse, now taking the helm at 4:30 a.m. to give one of his energized performances complete with wild wailing on a synthesized bongo drum pad while computer code floats behind him like a horizontal matrix. All this I watch through a Plexiglas window from inside the Pirate Lounge, where DJs Eric Forbes and Whoman are mashing up rock and hip-hop with a Jolly Roger pinned up behind them.
It’s a different world inside the low-ceilinged Pirate Lounge, catch phrase “Surrender the Booty.” Dr. Dre and Snoop inform me that “It’s like this and like that and like this and uh,” their every weedy reference made all the more ironic as thick hookah smoke wafts past me from the bright green Almaza Hookah Lounge booth or from any of the occupied VIP tables. There, feet up and puffing fruit-laced tobacco with a leggy blonde wench on his lap, sits an urban pirate himself. Monied, assured, nodding at the DJ, smiling smugly and surveying his mateys. The guy next to him is doing the same thing. The next guy, too, actually.
Each crevice in the brick wall holds a candle, and the soft effect is very romantic, really. The blonde wench agrees and dances in place while she paws her pirate. I’m pawing the flocked wallpaper and chatting up two Brits who have wandered in here hoping not to be approached by any “ladies of the night.” I assure them I am none such as we check in on Javier Alba and the fast-rising sun on the Patio.
By 7 a.m. I’ve set sail from the Pirate Lounge and moored permanently in the Ballroom where I’ve been given control of the Xbox remote control that sends the images behind D:Fuse careening into spirals of infinity that keep the club kids staring at walls. Wheeee! D:Fuse is running in place, working the dials and knobs hard, practically hanging from them. A few confused souls stumble around, and one suited wild man gets filled with the spirit, yanks his friends onto the dance floor and breaks it down for all. Whatever cubicle awaits him Monday is as far from his mind as his inhibitions. When light jockey Candy returns to claim his equipment, I’m a little reluctant to surrender the booty.