Event Review: Gentleman's Techno

Gentleman's Techno was the most bangin', full-on, hardcore, punk rock techno party I have attended in a long, long, loooooong time. You know it's a great party when you can look out the window onto the street below and see a half dozen kids getting down to the music. I'm sure the cars cruising by must have wondered what was going on; if they'd come inside they would have seen a mad dancefloor with a good hundred or more techno fiends and heard some of the most knarzy, hard-ass techno this side of Berlin.

I showed up a little after midnight with the boyfriend, my friend J and his boyfriend. The first DJ was not that great, really mashing the tracks together and not keeping a consistent flow. There was a clot of Marina girls in black cocktail dresses and red pumps wiggling around on the dancefloor (at one point I thought I was watching a Robert Palmer video), but they were offset by more boys wearing eyeliner than I have seen in any club, gay or straight, since I stopped going a-gothing.

By 1AM we had a change of DJs and the Marina girls were completely out numbered on the dancefloor. The crowd was a little bit of everything, from one crazy guy in a dress to a couple packs of gay boys to semi-industrial types, though all of those typical considerations of gender and sexuality were dissolved as everyone was united through the techno beats. The music went very hard, and aside from a ghetto tech interlude, I had nothing to complain about from C.L.A.W.S., OonceOonce, The Jealous Lovers DJ Team, or Benz. In fact, when J and his boyfriend wanted to split at 2, we decided to stick it out and take our chances with getting a taxi because we really wanted to hear and see what would happen next. We danced until 3.30, when our legs felt ready to buckle beneath us and the swigs of Jack finally made me feel a little woozy, and left with the party still raging in full-on mode.

If you ever get the chance to hit one of these parties, by all means, do so. As promised, it was the closest I've come to the vibe of a Berlin squat club techno party since leaving that city, complete with people smoking cigarettes on the dancefloor. Bring some earplugs with you, as our ears were still ringing on Sunday, and be prepared for a joyous night of being a techno outlaw.