L.A. Underground vs. the Cops
LAPD shuts down Phoenix Projekt’s pyrokinetic party
By Ron Garmon
If you can imagine an infinite variety of Kubla Khan pleasure-domes tucked within the rotting walls of the old Warehouse District, then you are already partially down with the L.A. underground. The rest of the way one finds by the ghost light of insider information, as was the case with the Lantern Festival put on by the sexy firebugs at Phoenix Projekt last Saturday night. Somewhere on an obscure street corner in Little Tokyo, waves of garishly dressed goddesses, freaks and party animalia were squeezing fur and feathers into minivans hired to haul them to the secret location of yet another private debauch.
The shuttle is fine fun, and a colorable chance to strike acquaintance with a G-stringed stranger – I tend to manage first impressions well with the subject sitting on my lap – but totally unnecessary if you have the address. Which I did, but it proved necessary, as I could feel the telltale subsonic oontz-oontz of DJ vibrations thumping against my inner ear as I loped across the Sixth Street bridge to the party. Pausing at Mateo Street, I noted the festive lights of the LAPD flashing in the distance and trusted J.Q. Law had his usual better things to do.
The subsonic beat grew stronger as I headed north on Imperial Street, past rows of battered buildings of elderly brick and dirty stucco. Tonight’s jollification was at the noble Beaux-Arts firehouse on South Santa Fe Boulevard, and this onetime home of Engine Company No. 17 was already rocking as I legged down the dim alley to the gate. The countercultural art party “L.A. vs. the War” made clever use of the courtyard and cavernous interior last month, but Phoenix Projekt had done the place up in a startling pan-Asian Burner Nouveau, with two DJ stations, bars, massage tables and art exhibits scattered throughout. Even by the design-snobbish standards of the underground, the décor was first-rate and the rooms functional and comfortable. Outside, the Phoenix troupe was putting on the first of three combustible dance performances, with the winsome cast spinning, juggling, caressing, eating and spitting flame to whoops and applause. The event was a fundraiser for Burners Without Borders, an organization aiming to harness the protean energies of the Burning Man subculture to humanitarian uses.
The festival, legal, fully permitted and sealed at every aperture by events staff, was beginning to surge with the downtown party elite. A vast, close-knit karass peopled with sexy ladies and eccentric gentlemen living full tilt boogie in a private D.I.Y. Jazz Age, this is a cadre I’ve seen in many combinations in warehouses, office blocks, nightclubs, deserts and forests spread across two states. Some danced, others lounged and smoked peppermint from big hookahs, still others moved in meditative frenzy though a proggy barrage on the dance floor. The heavy brick of the firehouse effectively muffled the noise from inside and the van arrived every few minutes with a dozen or so cheery friends and appetizing strangers, so we all socialized between gouts of fire from the stage. The art rooms got heavy play, Cristina McAllister’s leafy and tumescent female images being perfectly in synch with the incipient goatishness going on around me.
Denizens of this particular subculture survive all manner of party-related accidents, overindulgence and police encounters in jaunty style. Even so, I was surprised and pleased to see dainty blonde imp Lynnsane up and dancing after her celebrated fall last New Year’s Eve. 2008 was scarcely a few minutes old when this heedless beauty casually hula-hooped off the roof of an abandoned building, plunging 35 feet through a skylight onto a concrete dance floor. She looked like a broken Barbie as I peered down through the smashed glass, convinced the scene had paid for our fun with some of its dearest blood. Her warmth as I held her close convinced the empiricist in me she was very alive.
So was the party, which was beginning to veer further off the hook with each load of revelers. It was already just past the midnight hour and voices from the crowd were calling for DJ Oscure, 1990s breakbeat pioneer and the evening’s star attraction for the dance-dance set. It was just at that psychic moment when I wandered out to Santa Fe for a smoke and found the LAPD there.
Four friendly, grinning cops stood at the gate, peering at the paper-lantern hullabaloo deep inside the alley and dropping hints about a noise beef made by some disgruntled citizen or other. They took their time going in, but soon afterward the plug was pulled on the outside DJ stand, sending a first wave of deserters piling into the shuttle back to the rendezvous point. The hardcore refused to be routed, and we all packed inside, our bodies providing an extra layer of insulation against Breakbeat Buddha’s set. He upped the tempo, mugging and capering, cranking the party to life. Veterans congratulated themselves on Burner-ly sticktoitiveness, and the goodtime arc rose to another giddy parabola before the inside DJ was abruptly shut off as well.
Bratton’s boys have been leaning on the downtown party scene hard this year, with several recent events raided on unknown or specious pretexts. Indeed, one semi-permanent scene playhouse was cleared out one cold midwinter’s night even as a line of ticket-holders wound down an unlit street, and the only neighbors for blocks around were the species of rat unable to use a cell phone. It would be a lamentable night in the underground when the odds of seeing a cop draw even with those of kissing an ex-lover. Whether the shutdown better illustrates the power of Artist District gentrification or the futility of getting a police permit is still an open question at press time.
Well, on the eighth day, God created the after-party, and officers didn’t stay to hustle us out after the music ended. There was talk of action over on Washington Boulevard somewhere in the teens, and Cre8tivity, a Westside party-space hidden inside a vacant office building, was hosting another of its infrequent all-night romps. Home and keyboard were nearer than either, so I squeezed friends goodbye and made for Whittier Boulevard, where the only sounds troubling the early-morning air traditionally come from sirens and helicopters.
Published: 05/14/2008
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