thevandalizedvista

[thevandalizedvista]

Here Dr. Watkins represents the straightforward, commonly understood narrative regarding the 'negative' effects of rap music. But Michael Eric Dyson asks why can't rappers receive the same artistic liberty as many other artists, filmmakers and musicians? For example, does the popularization of Scarface as a film colour your ideas of Cuban-Americans? Seems to be a disparity where while sought after and equally reviled, all of us can't tell the difference easily.

Taboo Patterson

Dr Boyce Watkins and Michael Eric Dyson debate hip-hop at Brown University

[thevandalizedvista]

Once More, With Feeling

Discovering the black and white photography of Mario Testino has proven surprisingly mundane. Playing the rule of thirds with a cavalcade of celebrities, I am falling short in critiquing the images’ technical merits. I suppose a good subject is half the battle won. Nothing capricious in them either I might add; odd for the romanticized stills of the beautiful. I assume the feelings of being out of bounds perhaps due to the realist culture of Torontonian society. Previously, I have loosely mentioned the deadpan offerings of our local creatives. Each historic art period is labelled using the objective philosophical lens of the time. 

Camille Henrot’s Grosse Fatigue highlighted two important comments to me; a handful of living people speak written English, and our rate of obtaining information is at a Richard Petty pace, soon to be Jimmy Johnson. Our biggest proponents of entertainment and culture since 1950 are film, television and music. Just think about the cavernous disparity between how much it was consumed and by how many people before and after 1950. The advent of cable TV was feared as the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids shrinking ray of my generation’s attention span. You could argue that was natural necessity living in the internet age. We had to learn how to keep up! But do we digest culture whole anymore? Are we living in a city filled with a tapas taste test of culture? Who knows the finer points of anything? And I have found that as a society, we hate that guy. That guy used to be a hipster. Now the slur has receded that person into smaller social groups where they live in contempt of others for being deeply knowledgeable. Therefore the most social of us has little creative insight to give because his phantom entry into the industry was not born out of skill or knowledge but the recluse of our best. While possibly technically sound, I find the ideas of the most personable creatives to be particularly devoid of feeling. 

All people please make yourselves known. Care bear stare for all to see. Worst case scenario, you’re assumptions are wrong and someone gives you the seeds of newer, better thoughts! I am not free from criticism myself. I give it to you all everyday for you to tear it down. I keep it one hunnid. I am ‘bout dat life’. If all the world’s a stage, and we are characters in it, how about showing and proving instead of shucking and jiving. My heavy handed use of euphemisms is my last resort when most I meet literally turn off from the simple cadence of my voice. Funny, right? We communicate through a vernacular via similarities of shared cultural experiences almost exclusively. I am completely fine with that as long as your language is articulated with the things you fell in love with; not like. - Taboo Patterson

[thevandalizedvista]

PSA I

Tuesday, March 11th 2014

I’m not particularly sure that I’m cool with the rate of change versus the rate of time. Weekends are entirely too short. The work week is too long. Days take forever while nights blow by. Anything worth having requires time spent. How petulant am I to find this all grossly annoying? This is not a philosophical gem, this is a cry for help. I’m not dying but there seems to be some sort of atrophy of creative enlightenment spreading in my brain. Maybe if lobotomize myself OR wait… maybe I’m in the wrong business. Often I have found that the slow drudge of common life can be seductively numbing, like alcohol or drugs. I did make a point to smoke more weed. I feel cooler but not closer to God. What the fuck is everyone on? Why are so many people a dull version of themselves. To be nice? To not be weird? I don’t get it. I can’t process this rationally either. There is a way to look good being yourself. 

I don’t have what I should have because I have never coveted these things. I wanted what people on TV had. Johnny Carson had an audience for thirty years by being funny. Not to be confused with attention. I fucking dislike the colloquial myopia of the idiots who love psychotherapeutic theory regurgitated by fucks why never cared to know why or read past Freud to Jung and Fromm. I assume it’s because most just want to be good at something. I just want to be good. At all of it. My father knocked up my mother by accident (don’t read too much into that, not crying over here) and I was raised a certain way and bucked every living moment of it to be a blank piece of paper made useful by however I have been used. I am made to entertain. You don’t know me and no one does, just the caricature I have drawn for you to see. So, just invite me, pour me a drink and enjoy the show. Even though I highly doubt anyone will miss me when I’m gone besides my family who have socialized their attachments through the objective falsehoods of attitudes to have with members who you share blood relations. I digress… and clearly didn’t care not to.

Let this serve as public service announcement and feel free to throw your diamond in the sky if you feel the vibe. I do not want to feel luke warm about life anymore. I do not serve your gods. Do not approach me with your scared versions. Even while being a prototype, Jonny 5 had more personality. Find it within yourself to become comfortable with yourself before meeting me from now on. Because if you do not, I will take you to task and I have enough command of the Queen’s English to tactfully shit on you. This is not a surprise. I am not angry. I am a product of four hundred years of unnatural selection where those before me were ideologically washed into a competitive entity. I choose to be competitive at life. It’s just that we’re not playing on the same board. - Taboo Patterson

[thevandalizedvista]

Hidden Homogeneity in Hip Hop

The genre of music people enjoy has been continually separated by class, race and age for about the last ninety years, since the earliest inceptions of Jazz. Its test, invigilated by a predominantly white upper-class, set the table for the every version of popular music that we hear now. After struggling to find its place at said table, Hip Hop has become marketably viable off the work of some brilliant artists and their tireless ambassadorship of the music, its style and its messages. From Grandmaster Caz to the album releases of 1991, Rap examined more identities and versions of itself than an institutionalized multiple personality disorder patient in puberty reading a Justice League comic. The different iterations of these complexions within the music were seen as equal. The battles born out of ‘the dozens’ were rooted in style. The seemingly empirical construct of lyrical prowess, grounded in grammar, musicality and/or politicized social commentary, is only asked perpetually when we arrive at the ‘Golden Era’. Missing in that defining criterion, is the negro sentiment inferred by the black experience. However, it would have been redundant if it had appeared on the scorecard as a category, given the fact that most (if not all) rappers were black. That was inherent. So, there are two ideas which need to be discussed: 1. What is ‘negro sentiment’? and 2. How is anything racial a necessary component of any music genre, much less Hip Hop?

Firstly, the negro sentiment refers to the expression of the tender feelings specific to that of the black experience in North America. It is the tacit, intangible ingredient that makes the music provocative in the first case; as it did with Jazz, as it did with the Blues, as it did with Rock and Roll. The inception of any of those genres was directly born out of the defining of the black identity in America. The subsequent evolution and popularization, of said identity, has left us with what pundits say is a watered down version which was not intended. The difference for Rap is that its efficacy was driven immediately by the provocative. It was provocative because no one outside of New York knew the stories of the black youth. The negro sentiment, brimming with that gall is what makes, and has made, Hip Hop cool. Period. Remove that quintessential element of the genre, and you remove the provocative, you remove the cool. You show me a rap album that is not cool and most will see a weed plate. 

Secondly, this is not another black versus white debate. The dynamics have changed. Whites are for and have been for the success of the genre recently. This is about class warfare. Do you remember that term Mitt Romney used defensively to get out from under his 47% comment? Okay, good. Much like how Romney stated that the Obama campaign was pointing him out as a part of the economic problem, as a member of the wealthy, there are members of the Hip Hop community and lovers of the music, who vilify those who like songs within the genre that they don’t like.   

When did the vast catalogue of rap music enter into a hierarchical strata that now only serves to further compartmentalize a systemically marginalized minority? 

Things done changed. There are those who grew up on Hip Hop who have imposed the word ‘real’ as an adjective of the music based on the categories previously discussed. But, they are speaking from their own interests. And stating that ‘positive’, ‘uplifting’ and ‘conscious’ lyrics should be of paramount importance when, in truth and in fact, the music was for many years a black, inner-city answer to the dance takeover of Disco. Operative word being DANCE. It is not simple music, but when done well it never appears complex. Emcees operate over beat breaks with ease and their prime directive is to “move the crowd”. Hip Hop amnesia has set in the minds of many of the music’s inside critics. Some do not seem to contextually remember that the first songs they heard were new to the genre at that time. Hip Hop culture HAS TO evolve and become new expressions of the young black identity. That is what cannot change; the wants, struggles and analysis based in the negro sentiment. It is not a coincidence that the greatest white rapper, Eminem has had life before fame that mirrors that of many African-Americans. AND his maxed out skill defined by his work ethic in word play and song writing was how he gained an entry point into the conversation of ‘dope MCs’. But I digress...

  Think of each Hip Hop era as one of your five children. The oldest, talks the last living forms of jive, wears leather and fur. But he has done you proud as the first, mentoring his younger siblings on something he started. The second, slightly more successful than the first, put the culture on the map nationally. He popularized sports wear, created an anti-violence movement and birthed some dance crazes like “the wop” and “the running man”. The Middle child is the ‘golden’ child. He was dark and rapped about the hard truths of the city life, with charismatic conceit, and donned timberland boots, baggy workman’s wear and more expensive sports gear. He spoke on violence, gangsterism and thuggery either as the victim or the assailant booming over thick bass. And after prosperity and opportunities gained by your third and brightest thus far, in comes your fourth - spitting out champagne, wearing shiny suits, always having a good time; your ‘Jiggy era’ son. His music seems to have popular music aspirations as his productions crossover nicely with pop stars and boy bands. This inane and flippant noise angers you as it seems to just become more and more ridiculous. Your youngest (rap currently) shows some promise with a healthy interest into the 90’s but his love of all things ratchet, speedy consumption and benign trap music make you reconsider the genre’s continuing legacy.

Some would see this analogy as a stretch. But if you truly LOVED Hip Hop would you not love all it, for better or for worse? If you truly understood why the music was born at all, would you not see the relationship between all the eras? Of the best songs from any time, there is an effrontery defying the social norms of what is acceptable, creating an aura of cool (usually spoken in black vernacular) and they made you move in the process. That’s it. That’s all. Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University and hip hop author, Michael Eric Dyson asked why is Rap held to a higher standard to state something of meaning and importance? Some want better messages to be said in the genre and believe that the most played songs today are bereft of any value. This is the conundrum that surfaces, when the same ‘minority elites’ and hip hop critics who are quick to give you insight into the lyrical dexterity of Mos Def, fail to see the implicitly intricate racial, socio-political manifestation that Chief Keef is just by being a rap artist in America right now. The common celebratory club anthems are overtures extolling the glory of a social status many African Americans do not have. Neither type of Hip Hop is better than the other. It’s all Hip Hop. It’s all connected. And at its best, it all works under the same premise.

- Taboo Patterson

[thevandalizedvista]

How you understand and intellectualize anything is based on your existing rationale creating a context by which it can be understood. That common application is creating a discord in the different arguments put forward as people try to make sense of the Zimmerman verdict. 

What if it can’t be solved based on what we know now?

What if the whole construct of racism could only be solved under the same premise as some video games? Follow me through here... 

Level One: End Slavery. DONE.

Level Two: End Segregation. DONE (more or less).

Level Three: End Systemic and Institutionalized Inequality vaguely implied with race as its root cause. PENDING...

The problem is more complex. The old math is innocuous.  Therefore, the equation can’t not be solved in the simple terms we have been taught. The answer must come from looking at it in a myriad of ways. What effects who is not what you’ve been told. The signs are there, hidden in the obscure.

The video is of anti-racism activist Tim Wise. He will show you how the problem started and how far reaching it can be.

Please find the time to watch all of it. We will only be a part of the solution until we all discuss our culpability in the problem.

- Taboo Patterson

[thevandalizedvista]

September 18th, 2012 was a very sad day for me. Many would shrug at the reason. Even I don’t necessarily understand why I am so distraught upon hearing the news on the passing of Stephen Douglas Sabol, the president of NFL Films. I watched his NFL specials narrated with grivitas by John Facenda; as a kid, never bored, 3 or 4 back to back. I cried. I cried for about 30 minutes watching montages of Steve, his dad Ed being inducted into the Football Hall of Fame, and bits and pieces of his vast work, creative and contextual. This just seems like another out-of-whack, out-of-touch example of my sordid love for football and professional sports. But in trying to examine my own feelings and why they were so strong upon hearing this news, I understood more about what Steve Sabol did and his obvious impact on modern North American storytelling.

Steve Sabol was born in Moorestown, New Jersey in 1942 to an overcoat salesman, Ed Sabol. Ed loved making films and shot many of his son’s prep school games. Young Steve would go on to be an all-conference running back at Colorado College majoring in art history in the early 1960’s. Based on his grades, Ed told Steve that he was uniquely qualified to work for him at Blair Motion Pictures, since all he did was play football and watch movies. Ed had recently bought the rights to the 1962 NFL Championship for three thousand dollars after convincing then Commissioner Pete Rozelle over a three martini business lunch. Steve started out as a cameraman primarily, moving into other roles such as editor and writer during the 60’s and 70’s, but it was his first brainchild, a documentary entitled They Call It Pro Football in 1965 that turned the Sabol’s budding film studio into NFL Films. Wanting to use footage as a marketing tool, Rozelle fell in love with the imagery and the rhythmic depiction of such a violent game that he convinced the 14 team owners to buy Blair at $20,000 each.

It was in those three years of making They Call It Pro Football, Steve Sabol grasped filmmaking and a style that would revolutionize sports broadcasting. The visual stories of football’s savagery mythicized with ballet-like grace over Sabol’s fifty year career personalized the players and humanized the game. Montage editing, ball-spiraling close-ups, super slow mo, bloopers, orchestral music, recording players and coaches audibly during the game all started from the mind of Steve Sabol. His romanticized view of the game he loved endeared America to it. Anybody who enjoys the modern day product of sports broadcasting has a debt of gratitude to Sabol, including myself. I spent many summer afternoons glued to my grandmother’s television watching America’s Team or any Super Bowl special on ESPN. I assumed that my teenage self was enamoured with the constant intake of archival sports knowledge, but I was wrong. His artistry is something that I emulate strongly in my writing. Like him I display my subjects in a conceit often greater than they seem in reality, creatively showing my own judgements tacitly through a rose coloured vista of epic proportions. Borrowing from the pop culture of the time, history, to a careful yet seemingly capricious jazz-like cadence, written by him as memorably as wars fought and battles won. A nation fell in love with a sport because a man spoke of his own love for it.

Steve Sabol was a palpable innovator, with 35 Emmys to his credit; the only man with that many in so many categories. If you’re anyone from an artist to a sports fan, you can only hope that your loves come to fruition as bountifully and beautifully as his.

- Taboo Patterson

[thevandalizedvista]

ITZ SO Simple - ITZSOWEEZEE's Organic Partying

Part of doing anything at a high level is based on the intrinsic enjoyment of the act. Often times people will give you a list of technical merits, each with their own details, of how in sum, things are to be done well. Those same people often forget that capricious effortlessness is a MAJOR tipping point of anything artistic; the unceasing ability to do the same thing well over and over and over again. It’s a philosophical adage which Kellogg’s used to sell Apple Jacks in a 1994 Saturday morning commercial starring a young Julia Stiles when she asks why they taste so good. “They just do.” The same quality can be found when other Basketball Hall of Famers speak about Michael Jordan’s sleep schedule during the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. Jordan would often go to practice, play three rounds of golf and still be up with Charles Barkley and Magic Johnson playing cards until 5 in the morning, only to be at the next practice or the next game with infinite energy and be nothing less than exceptional. Advertising executive, Dan Weiden of  Weiden and Kennedy, who coined the phrase “JUST DO IT” for long time client, Nike, in a 1988 ad meeting spoke on the pliable, can-do attitude of the company which lead to their athletic product dominance in 30 years from their inception even while younger than their competitors, Adidas, Puma and Reebok. The message is simple. Those that really can, do so easily. They do so through their love of what they do. The easy love gives them a blistering number of repetitions and the repetitions give them the skill. 

ITZSOWEEZEE (it’s so easy) easily and thoughtlessly embodies Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule with regards to throwing a party. How many people throw parties just to party? How many people continue to go to as many events as humanly possible outside of their own even after their own party’s success? While there are new deals to be had, new goals set and milestones crossed, it would seem that the gentlemen of ITZSOWEEZEE have an unquenchable thirst to attend an event and make it a party, some with more success than others. Four or five of their ten members can be seen EVERY weekend on Queen West well dressed and joshing with one another as though they are hanging out in a friend’s suburban basement.

As a unifying theme, partying was, in essence, what formed the group like fighting in cybernetic cat-like robots did Voltron. Ronnie Lander and Rohan Ramsay have known one another since going to high school on the small Caribbean isle of Grenada but their friendship did not begin in earnest until both continued school in Toronto where their weekends were used sampling the club district. Concurrently, while attending Sheridan College, Rohan and Manar Alsamman would become friends from countless hours wasted in the school pub. That was 2003. Fast forward to the summer of 2007, on Centre Island for the Virgin Music Festival in a Toronto that had yet to see young black men in skinny jeans or having mohawks en masse, there in attendance are Rohan, Manar with Mark ‘DeMiggs’ DeMarco, Michael Imperial, Anthony Velardo and Corey ‘Jazz’ Grant.  It is important to mention that through the next 3 years, with Ronnie folded in, that the friends soon to be ITZSOWEEZEE would bond over the ritual of Toronto’s electronic dance music nightlife missing only a handful of weekends to responsibilities but never to fatigue. Enter Tom Wrecks. A local DJ originally from Ottawa, with his own successes, having made Kanye West’s favourite remix of Love Lockdown. While opening for DJ Benzi at the Drake Underground, he would wow each of the revelling friends equally, cajoling them to patronize Tom frequently. Might be that Tom had seen the devout energy first, because with his latest offer to deejay a monthly party at Andy Poolhall, he incorporated his new compadres. And thusly, ITZSOWEEZEE was born. As a collective with a name, it gave credence to the habitual partying. How were they to be successful and achieve longevity? Simple. Party more.

With every new gig Tom Wrecks played and every new residency started, wherever it was, it was an opportunity to spread the good news about ITZSOWEEZEE. Unbeknownst to themselves, their carefree club ways advertised the brand, offering a perpetual enthusiasm to all those surrounding their revelry. Chronically stricken with the Friday and Saturday night fever, some players in ITZSOWEEZEE became patron missionaries of having a good time in venues that may focus on bottle service or having a bevy of scantily-clad women. The most current obnoxious cacophony affects them like the holy spirit, animating their faces and moving them in syncopation. To them, it was as though nothing mattered if the music was good and the drinks were flowing. In their constant club crusades, their own parties at the Drake Underground would grow with the converted. Good party, bad party, they would still party and not insularly, often narcissistically feeding into the crowd with a myriad of waving arm gestures. Hipster cool is relative, yet equally irrelevant. Infecting everyone with the fun of your fun is universal. Some would rather cater to a niche. ITZSOWEEZEE willingly herds in all with the gospel of party according to Tom Wrecks & DeMiggs. They believe everyone will dance... eventually.

The natural still have to work for the sake of consistency. ITZSOWEEZEE maintains their website, itzsoweezee.com which draws more than two thousand unique visitors a month. There are constant plans to adjust the current event and create new ones. As their reputation builds, opportunity organically arises. But every new venture is planned only to house a place where the prime directive can be executed proficiently. It is the only aspect that matters. It perpetuates the product as if on auto-pilot and more importantly, it makes it look easy and fun, which makes people buy in quicker than David Koresh followers in Waco, Texas. Tearing the roof off and burning that mother down might not be elementary, but it sure as hell better seem that way. - Taboo Patterson

[thevandalizedvista]

Penn State Scandal Still Holds Many Questions

  What do we know? Sparing the clips of what you have seen, read and sides taken, what do many really know about the Pennsylvania State University scandal? We know Gerald A. Sandusky committed horrible acts of sexual abuse on at least 11 child victims for more than 10 years, some of which happened on PSU’s campus in the Lasch building holding the football facilities. He has been convicted of 45 counts of sexual molestation and will be sentenced to at least 60 years in prison. What are the details of the cover-up? And do the sanctions leveed by NCAA President, Dr. Mark Emmert rectify what he has called an unhealthy football culture that was ‘too big to fail’ and ‘too big to be challenged’?

The NCAA’s punishment of PSU includes a sixty million dollar fine (equivalent to their average annual revenue), a four year postseason ban, a loss of 20 scholarships each year for four years, a five year probation after those four years and a vacation of one hundred and eleven wins from 1998 to 2011. Existing players are also allowed to transfer to another school, even in the same conference without losing a year of eligibility. This cripples everything the late Joe Paterno built over a 45 year career as Penn State’s head coach. The football program will be a shell of its former self under current head coach, Bill O’Brien. The esteem of the university has been tarnished. The bronzed statue of ‘JoePa’ outside Beaver Stadium has been removed.

The sordid acts of Sandusky are made even more egregious when reading the report released by ex-FBI Chief Louis Freeh who was commissioned by Penn State’s Board of Trustees. After a 1998 investigation of Sandusky by University Police after showering inappropriately with an eleven year old boy, emails between then PSU President, Graham Spanier, Vice President Gary Schultz and Athletic Director, Timothy Curley are damning. According to the Freeh report, along with Paterno, those 3 men sought to deal with Sandusky on their own terms in order to protect the image of Penn State.

Long time and respected sportscaster, Brent Musburger told ESPN’s Mike and Mike in the Morning that the sanctions were a misstep by the NCAA, questioning their jurisdiction on matters not economic or academic. True. New College Football wins leader, and former Florida State Head Coach, Bobby Bowden said that there is no way for the NCAA to punish schools without collateral damage. These sanctions were doled without the NCAA doing its own investigation. But in the court of public opinion, the unprecendented nature of these crimes has everyone involved doing what they can to the fullest extent of it so as not to condone the inactions of Paterno, Spanier, Schultz and Curley. Doing anything less puts you in their light. 

How much did Paterno know in 1998? With Paterno deceased, Spanier and Schultz facing for indictment who is left to be punished? Has the culture not changed in the climate of his scandal parcelled with Paterno’s passing? How are the victims being helped? Did a lack of leadership in Happy Valley lead to an abuse of power by the NCAA? Those are what we need to know to prevent this tragic happenstance that itself should have been prevented.

- Taboo Patterson

[thevandalizedvista]

Slowed's Singular Sense

   Do you remember the electro boom of 2008? Do you miss it? Do you remember dancing to blaring synthesizers until your heart gave out? You remember. Before Crookers’ remix of Kid Cudi’s “Day and Night” shifted electronic dance music into mainstream popularity, you loved the freedom of being in the company of that many fun-loving people only seen at raves and large music festivals. But those days are gone now. And they were taken from us. I swore to whatever club god that exists wearing a well tailored Yves Saint Laurent royal blue suit and Cole Haan shoes, that if I heard about finding love in a hopeless place again, I would District of Columbia snipe the next kid wearing an Affliction tee (and don’t care how ironic he was wearing it). Do not misconstrue my displeasure’s placement, Rihanna is dope, but the formulaic taste of popular music has soured many of their beloved genre from rock and roll, to hip hop, and lately dance music. If you can not taste it, you should have asked your jaded disc jockey friend why he seemed wrought with malcontent while he played and you had such a good time. Look around, look around. The consumer landscape of club music has changed like the cast of every post apocalyptic Mad Max film. How can a feel-good excitement party be created in the wake of such disappointment?

Slowed has covertly but not quietly rejuvenated the ideas of a good party played with good dance music. Its residents Lucie Tic and Torro Torro created a frolicking, bouncing, smiling monthly child with the help of other local talent and notable international DJs such as Dave Nada, Uproot Andy and Dillion Francis. They do it from a genuine place having been stalwarts of the scene for years. The early Moombahton remixes of Torro Torro tracks by Billy the Gent showed Yo Ev and Mikey Digits something uniquely intuitive. Many house songs can be surprisingly enjoyable from anywhere between 108 to 112 beats per minute. And while Moombahton is peppered throughout the song selection, it was not the prime musical directive; slowing the tempo was. That was where there’s gold Jerry, GOLD. For example, Hip Hop in the form of trap house is now also reliving elements of drawling lyrics over screwed samples. Slowed has found a singularity in the hodgepodge of club songs making its audience far reaching and well satisfied all at the same time.

Most are sold on the party’s consistency since moving to Wrongbar, which will always be a cool venue as long as it is owned and curated by Nasty Nav. Underdog and Le Dew It & Co. are all promotional mainstays of Toronto’s Queen West scene, both throwing quality events separately. Add the event promotion juggernaut Embrace, and you will be wowed by their out of town bookings, making the ingredients for an affair worthy of the memories and what you felt in 2008.

- Taboo Patterson

[thevandalizedvista]

Pop Kult's Pied Piper Effect

If you party long enough, the thrill of it all will dissipate. You wonder what is on Netflix, invite people over, throw dinner parties. Whatever. Maybe, when you really need to get out of the house, you frequent a watering hole near Ossington Avenue; opting for ‘conversation’ with the assumption that your nightly social experiences are ‘richer’ and ‘more enthralling’... And then, one night you capriciously waltz into the Gladstone Hotel for a drink; one drink. But you don’t leave until 4 am. 

Pop Kult holds your old party self hostage; making it impossible for you to leave. The nostalgia washes over you from listening to Peer Pressure and you see all those weekend contemporaries from your recent past. The other kids' incessant energy move to a language your body used to understand. Despite the heat in the room, you want that old thing back and cut a rug.

The party founders - Mansion have carved a niche on Queen West worthy of inhabiting fresh good timers, those on the road to yuppiedom, and the alternative strip’s club veterans by booking blog buzzing international DJs including French Fries, Brenmar, Nancy Whang. Also, Pop Kult sister party, Happy Endings has been wildly entertaining and has been so for more than a year. You might be asking with Joker-like curiosity, “How have they been able to keep it moving and stay consistent?”

Any ‘good’ party is superficially seen as having good music, good patrons and a flowing bar, but there is a definite intangible in Mansion’s events. Especially, one that is so successful with such a fickle crowd; and there in lies the catalyst, the crowd. People come to Mansion events for a libertine quality strongly instituted by the DJs they hire. Then, those DJs carry out a staunch agenda of songs based on what their travels has made them love. There is no pandering to the congregation by the talent and that music integrity is largely the protagonist of every party. Boom. This method is employed tacitly and without fail like Seal Team Six. Nothing kitschy lasts that long anyway.

Every member of Mansion and everyone closely associated feels party tested and uncontrived like a jazz composition. That rubs off on the minority who might not be too familiar with what is being played. That is the mesmerizing opiate effect which gets everyone enjoying themselves. A cyclical system emboldening every one of the party’s characters setting the scene for what seems will always be a fun party.

Taboo Patterson