Trance party at La Diosa
Now that G-d has (hopefully) inscribed me in the Book of Life for the New Year, it's time to get back to sinful business as usual, and to hit that awesome BA party scene! Tonight, after finishing up with day two of Rosh Hashanah (and with Erev Shabbat), I returned to The Clan, and went straight up to the bar (as one does, when one is at The Clan). We the Clan crowd chilled in the bar over (more than) a few drinks, for a while; then, at about 2am, a group of 6 of us headed to the huge disco club of La Diosa (lit: "The Goddess"). I'd say we were just in time for it to open and to start seriously pumping. And seriously pump is exactly what this place did.
Our group of 6 consisted of: a Peruvian girl (studying here in BA — she's the one who knew about the club); two English guys; Swedish chick; Oly (a third English guy); and myself. Sadly, Chris left town this afternoon — on a bus bound for Mendoza (happy wine-sloshing, mate!) — so he's departed from the Clan scene, for the rest of my time here. From the Clan, we hopped in two taxis, and headed to La Diosa, which is a fair way north of the downtown city centre. Lucky we were three in each cab, otherwise we would have been paying a pretty penny for the ride.
We arrived at the club at about 2:30am, to find the music audible from the road, and a queue of about 50 people waiting to go inside. All we had to do was pay the (total ripoff) entry fee of 25 pesos each, and we were soon through the queue, and in the establishment. Inside, we discovered that La Diosa has two rooms: a spacious front room, where they play a mix of 80s pop and Latin favourites (the "crappy but fun-to-dance-to music" room); and a packed-to-bursting back room, where the DJs pump out some seriously loud, seriously heavy psychedelic trance / house music. We headed straight to the back room.
English guy, Swedish chick, and myself on the dance floor.
One observation that I immediately made, upon walking into this place: when porteños (BA locals) go out at night, they dress to impress. I've never seen a more stylishly- or elaborately-dressed bunch of disco-goers in my life. This is a city where fashion talks. The whole crowd was lavishly garbed, not only in expensive brand-name threads, but also in all manner of fancy-dress outfits, from pink bunny-ears to fur-lined mink jackets, and from polka-dot boob tubes to ear-rings an Egyptian princess would be proud of.
Another observation was not so sweet, nor so savoury; but nonetheless, I'd have to have been both blind and utterly naïve not to have noted it. Almost everyone in this club — especially in the trance room — was absolutely tanked on drugs. I'm guessing that cocaine was about the lightest stuff that people were taking here tonight. Speed and ecstasy were clearly in no short supply at this place. Guys and girls alike were dancing for hours on end, super vigorously, at about double the pace of the music. They were staring at each other, wide-eyed and incredulous, as though they were seeing much more than met their eyes. Those who weren't wearing bikie sunglasses bigger than their faces, that is.
Out back in the men's room, a tough-looking guy stood next to a pyramid of socks, occasionally exchanging a 50 peso note for a pair from the pile — clearly there was something inside the socks, but I doubt that it was a complimentary McHappy Meal™ toy. And out front on the dance floor, I got offered various things about 5 times during the night, by guys and girls alike, as gifts and as purchases. In some ways, it reminded me of being back hiking in Peru. I've been witness to mass drug-taking before, but I've never seen anything like the colossal drugfest that I witnessed tonight.
Anyway, despite the fashion parade and the drug orgy (neither of which I was a part of, might I add), it was a pretty daym awesome night, and we all had a sensational time. The dancing was without end. The beauty was without bounds (guy-to-girl ratio was adequate, although could have been better). The music was without pause. What more can you ask for?
The mosh pit was good stuff, but the roaring house music was getting a bit much towards the end of the night. Oly and I called it quits relatively early, at around 5:15am, and headed back to enjoy whatever sleep we could, until Saturday morning rapidly arrived.