No one in their right mind would dare argue with the statement that
Austin is a
city loaded with youth subcultures. They’re all here, in one form or
another,
from the ubiquitous, mohawked punks that line the Drag daily alongside
their
low-rent cousins, the crusties, to the cannabis-enshrouded, slightly
groggy
hippies and neo-hippies. From the pleasantly creepy, nouveau-gothic
crowd that
makes Tuesday nights at Ohms so much wicked fun to the skaters that
have made
attempting to enter the Castilian one of the more hazardous acts in
town.
And then there’s Austin’s burgeoning, outlandishly creative clubkid
scene,
fueled by the rapid though sometimes shaky success of all-night dance
clubs
like Proteus, the 404, Ohms, and the Hollywood, the latter frequently
staying
open until 10 or 11am on the weekends. These are the crowds of kids
hanging out
front of Proteus in the wee hours, when the rest of Austin’s party
district
have made their scores, found their lays, and are scurrying back home
for one
last Cuervo shot before crashing.
With their see-through vinyl backpacks slung over their shoulders,
red and
violet lightsticks clutched in their hands, and rivers of dance-sweat
ruining
their mascara and making their pancake gob up, these clubkids look like
an
exhausted army retreating under the all-knowing eyes of Generals
Donovan Leitch
and Madonna by the end of the night. But really, they’re just trying to
find a
ride down to the Hollywood, to continue the night’s fierce, fashionable
revelries.
Asked about the youths that descend on Proteus every Friday and
Saturday night,
manager Kevin Campbell quickly professes affection for the legions of
dance/fashion outcasts, and then adds, “They’re multiplying.” Like
roaches?
“More like rabbits, I think.” Bunnies, huh? That’s fitting: I’ve seen
more
“Hello! Kitty” and Keropi patches, T-shirts, and assorted Japanese
cartoon
character-festooned garb in the last three weeks than I can shake an
Astro-Boy
at. And you thought there was a trade war.
As in any scene, the clubkids are fueled not only by music – and here
that
music comes in the form of club deejays that spin endless amounts of
House,
Trance, Jungle, Techno, Dub, etc., for hours upon end – but also, and
just as
importantly, by a deep and vested interest in fashion, and all that
comes with
it.
Shar Superstar, 21, looks like a model, acts like a model, wants to
be a
fashion designer, and enjoys putting on fashion shows and long, moonlit
walks.
Well, maybe not long moonlit walks, but the rest is true. As a longtime
member
of what is more or less a recently developed scene, Shar’s known by
everyone,
and got his start as a clubkid after visiting the Emerald City of
Clubbiness,
New York City.
“For a lot of us, this is not something that we’re going to be doing
the rest
of our lives,” he says. “We all have goals and we all have something
that we
want to do in society. It’s not a complete, all consuming thing. For
many
clubkids, it has been that way over the years, but, you know,
you grow
up after you’ve done certain things, and you just want to move on. I
personally
want to head into more of the designing aspect of it, fashion designing
and so
forth. After all, the life of a clubkid in New York is only about two
years.”
Shar and others of his group – a sort of senior hierarchy of clubkids
that
have managed to stick around longer than most – view the clubs and
their
lifestyle as a stepping stone towards more ambitious ventures.
Malaysia, a
wiry, androgynous Asian with a penchant for what s/he calls
“genderfuck,” is on
her way to being a model/fashion designer. Fashion rules their lives,
completely, utterly, and without a trace of irony, except, perhaps for
this,
from Malaysia: “Everyone thinks we’re rich, that we’ve got all this
money
because we dress up and look so good, but we’re not. We’re all
completely
broke. Most of what we wear is from thrift stores, or we borrow clothes
from
each other to get the look.”
The Look falls somewhere between Priscilla, Queen of the
Desert, and
post-Blade Runner, with a bit of Tex Avery thrown in for good
measure.
The most striking thing about many clubkid’s ensembles – and the most
treacherous thing, as it turns out – are the foot-high, multicolored
platform
shoes that have become so popular. Frequently made by gluing together
the soles
of liberated flip-flops one atop another, this vertigo-inducing
footwear has
become more or less a trademark of the scene. It’s not unusual to see
some poor
kid topple, shrieking in embarrassed dismay to the floor, after putting
too
much weight on his instep. This resembles nothing so much as a
terrorist attack
on the Statue of Liberty. Ouch.
Sliver Cyberslut is another longtime clubkid. Already tall in his
stocking
feet, he’s positively colossal in his heels, striding carefully through
Proteus
on any given Friday night in a way-too-small Starfucker Baseball
jersey, his
hair and makeup done in a style that might put one in mind of Princess
Leia
cross-pollinated with Chewbacca. Alarming at first sight, Sliver’s
modeled for
the legendary Todd Oldham, and currently deejays three nights a week at
the
Hollywood.
“A few years ago I went to New York City after hearing about the club
scene up
there,” he says. “I saw what everybody was doing and I thought it was
fabulous:
They were just having a really good time, and dressing up in these
outrageous
outfits, and being who they wanted to be. Nobody cared if you were a
guy or a
girl or if you were straight or gay or in-between. It was great, and,
on top of
that, they’ve managed to turn it into a business. The clubkids in New
York get
paid to show up, because they bring more customers into the clubs.
People buy
creativity all the time.”
The androgyny factor is a big part of the clubkid scene. David Bowie
may have
made it popular to the mainstream, but clubbers take it to a whole new
level.
The first time I saw Malaysia, I thought she was a girl and flirted
with her
for a while (she’s not, but for the purposes of identification in this
article,
she said to go with the feminine when referring to her). She doesn’t
remember
this, but I do.
“Just recently I started doing the genderfuck thing,” she says. “No
breasts,
but dressing and looking very much like a woman. I’ll be down on Sixth
Street,
and I’ll hear guys behind me saying, wow, what a woman, and then I’ll
turn
around and they’ll be like, shit! Is that a man or a woman? I’ll look
at them
and say, well, what do you think? They always say, `What are you trying
to do?
Make yourself into a woman?’ And I’ll shoot back, `Well, what are you
trying to
do, make yourself a man?’ They’re putting us down because they think
it’s not
normal, but to us, this is normal. I choose to do this because I
feel
comfortable this way.”
With clubkids’ wildly accentuated make-up, outlandish fashion sense,
and
gender-obliterating get-ups, it may lead most in the mainstream to
believe that
the whole scene is a rebel faction from Austin’s notoriously creative
gay and
lesbian culture. But according to Shar, that’s not really the case.
There is,
indeed, a sizable percentage of queerkids embracing and, in turn, being
embraced by the scene, but “as far as it being either a gay or a
straight
thing, it really doesn’t matter. There really are quite a few people
involved
with [the clubkid scene] that are straight. Granted, many of the males
that are
involved are gay, but like I said, you’ve got both persuasions, and
it’s not
particularly either one.
“For example, in New York City, the mixed [straight/gay] clubs cater
almost
exclusively to drag queens, to the extent of consciously excluding the
clubkids, who instead go to, and work for, the straight dance clubs.
It’s the
straight people who accept and appreciate the clubkids, because they
view them
as clowns, you know, as a fun, kind of interesting thing to look at and
be
around. The drag queens and the clubkids don’t generally get along, and
I think
that has a lot to do with the fact that drag queens tend to have such a
seriousness to them – they want to portray themselves as women, they
want to
win drag queen titles, and so forth. Clubkids, on the other hand, just
really
don’t care. They just basically enjoy and carry out the ambience of the
club
scene. It’s something that we do out of a sense fun.”
Getting back to David Bowie, Shar adds, “In my eyes, it’s just a little
bit
more interesting to have someone who’s androgynous, because that’s
where the
mystery is. I believe anything that is beautiful is beautiful because
it
arouses a mysterious interest in itself – you want to know how it
works, what
puts it together, and then maybe you’re inspired creatively to either
look for
something else like that, or maybe do it yourself.”
On any given weekend, Proteus, 404, and the Hollywood are convulsing
with the
hordes of clubgoers, dance freaks, and clubkids that sidle their
booties
through the door and shake until dawn, but Proteus is clubkid central
(with the
exception of Ohms on Thursday nights, when club fave deejays Carlos and
Rich
are behind the Technics). Boasting the best sound and a lightshow that
must be
seen to be believed, as well as DJ Herb of Alien Records [see sidebar],
Proteus
is the place to be. On any given night, a long line trails out of the
club and
into the street from their side entrance. “That’s to discourage people
from
Sixth Street from coming in,” says manager Campbell. Why? “They don’t
mix well
with our usual crowd.” The bathrooms inside are overflowing (everyone
knows the
bathroom is the place to be, unless, of course, you have to use it for
a
legitimate reason), the bar is SRO, and the dance floors – one down,
one up –
are clubkid paradise, a place to see and be seen, a place where they’re
are
gawked at by the uninitiated, but not spit at, as sometimes happens
outside, on
the more hostile street.
The combination of concussive house music and rampant lasers and
Intellibeams
is bewildering at first, but quickly grows on you, making Proteus the
most
popular of Austin’s quasi-underground dance clubs. Campbell estimates
between
1,000 and 1,500 people come through in a night. It is, as they say,
fierce,
ruling shit.
Sliver: “It’s very much a give and take situation. We give something
to the
club, which is mainly that we bring people into the club because of the
way we
look. That’s our job, basically. It’s a form of promotion, it’s
entertainment,
it’s the whole thing. It’s like a circus in a way.”
Partly because of their affiliation with the rave culture – and
everyone
agrees that this has been a very, very good year for raves in Austin –
much
media attention and generalized public opinion has been focused on
clubkids,
and the underground’s use of the drug Ecstasy. When I brought this up,
Sliver,
who cheerfully admitted to being a recovering addict said: “The way I
look at
it is, yes, there are drugs in the clubs – everybody knows it – but
then,
they’re in all the clubs, from Proteus, to Paradox, to wherever,
and it
really doesn’t matter. We can go out on any given night without any
drugs, any
liquor, and have just as much fun – if not more so – than if we were
fucked up.
Drugs are not what the club scene is about. A lot of people tend to put
emphasis on drugs because they don’t really know what the scene is
about, and
drugs are a convenient peg to hang their assumptions on. It’s just not
like
that, though.”
Malaysia adds: “People think that because we don’t act `normal’, or
look
`normal’ that we must be on drugs, and that’s not always so. This is
just the
way we are, drugs or no.”
Although the clubkids scene in Austin is a relatively new one, it
remains one
of the more vital subcultures around, having definite and decidedly
strong ties
to other clubkids havens such as New York, San Francisco, and Los
Angeles.
Recently NYC’s uber-clubkid Richie Rich was in town, checking out the
scene,
hanging out, and generally acting like the underground superstar that
he is.
The frequency with which ‘kids travel to other cities to check out the
action
there is alarming. Both Sliver and Malaysia have recently spent time in
New
York, and a host of other locals have also jetted about the country,
advertising the Austin scene and, clich�d though it might be,
generally
setting the world afire with their groovy love thangs (“love,”
“acceptance,”
and “encouragement” are three words that seem to pop out of the
lipstick-smeared mouths of clubkids with alarmingly hippie-esque
frequency).
Another word you hear is “power.” The power, and the freedom, coupled
with an
almost inexhaustible pool of talented imaginations, to be who they want
to be,
look exactly how they want to look, and act like the best budding
fashion
plates in the world, Mr. Blackwell be damned.
Shar explains: “The reason we feel power is because these are
characters we’ve
created. This is our own illusion, one that we’ve created all by
ourselves, and
we’re getting attention for it. We become these characters, and when
we’re all
dressed up, we’re completely different than in the daytime. And, you
know, it’s
an empowering character because it’s appreciated.”
This article appears in May 5 • 1995 and May 5 • 1995 (Cover).