City of Dreams
I just slept for 17 hours. It was amazing. You might not believe me, but I haven’t gone that huge on a weekend in a while. It’s usually a few hellos in Chinatown, maybe a special event here or there, and possibly a fancy night at Pearl or somewhere. Never all in the same weekend. Duh, I’d get burnt out. ESKAE’s Soul Clap party was banging as usual with arty T-shirt guys and super-fly looking girls, Nextdoor brought back Vegas Mike to reprise an ’80s dance party and had the usual crazy packed dancefloor and brave stage dancers, and The Manifest made everyone wait in line outside all night so as not to overcrowd the spacious but narrow inner walls for its inaugural event called Celebration. Speaking of The Manifest, I forgot how much of a hipster Brandon Reid is. Damn, if there was ever a person with a lovely collection of friends it’s this guy. Everyone in there had this quiet confidence that you could totally tell they were doing something meaningful with their lives. I saw Kavet and all the Lightsleepers, Lucky and all these killer underground artists, and a wonderful collection of guys wearing plaid with their jeans rolled up. That might sound like a weird style, but trust me, it worked. If Waikiki didn’t have any power, then Chinatown definitely didn’t have any A/C, and the sweat was making everyone look even better. Hipper. Architects’ Blaise Sato had an opportunity to check it out since his popular PEACH night at Level4 had no power, and sitting with him I remember him being all stoked on how cool the crowd was. That’s saying a lot. This guy sees a lot of people. It’s going to be easy to love this place. X Saturday I found myself at Rush Hour, a Chinese-themed party at the Japanese Bonsai that had Restaurant Row looking like a metropolis. Having most of the party outside in the area surrounding Bonsai was genius, I’m all about creating a spectacle. Taller than the average woman, the low ceiling on that top floor scares me, so it was nice to have an open air area to chill out. Hopefully the men weren’t too hot in those sport coats; because that’s something I hope to see more often. Peak time at Rush Hour gave way to more peak time at Apartm3nt, which has cleverly set its place up to always be peak time, and even more peak time at über über ultralounge Pearl for Beautiful. The place was amazing; I need to get over there more. Models, TV people, normal people and nightlife people all packing the place. I couldn’t go two feet without saying another hello to another stellar human. They were everywhere. X The promotional video for The Manifest’s grand opening is what I kept thinking about all weekend. I couldn’t get that Empire of the Sun track “Walking on a Dream” out of my head. We are always running for the thrill of it, thrill of it. X
Empire of the Sun - Walking On A Dream
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