The bars of Saint-Laurent are teeming with life every night, but Valentine's day is especially popular if one wants either to grope in public or moon on about how said significant other is soo perfect for them, or, if worst comes to worst, go the cheap hookup route that seems to be everpresent in university.
My compatriots and I visited the Jupiter Room with none of the aforementioned aims. The Jupiter Room is a small bar that thrives on being retro, but I quite like it. The music is old, the lightshow is ethereal, and there is a distinct lack of wanton ass-grabbing. Audrey Hepburn's Sabrina is playing silently on the televisions behind the bar. There are only a few patrons, there is a lack of the swelling sweaty crowds that frequent the more popular clubs. The entire place glows with a dim red light. Though the bartenders apparently can't make a proper martini (my Alaskan climber bartender friend was most disappointed), it's the perfect place to go dance to the songs of yesteryear and pretend to be sixies and fabulous.
I don't know why most clubs today don't resonate with me. I don't like bopping sweatily to the lyrics of "bitches in the club" and being mean to the drunken guys who try to grab me. I find the whole scene fake and somehow hollow. I don't know if this inhibits my ability to have a "good time" by conventional standards, but I can't internally justify to myself getting hammered beyond the point of cognition, dressing in the same low top as every other girl in the room, meshing body parts with strangers and hoping to get some. The possibity certainly presents itself that I am a frigid bitch, but that's the thing - I really, really like dancing. Maybe that's why I like funk concerts and half-empty dancefloors instead of the teeming humanity of places like Krush and Metropolis.
I realize now that when my children ask me what it was like in the days of Kanye and Rihanna, I won't be able to tell them. Instead, I'll say, "Well, I climbed a lot and skied a lot and danced to The Who." And maybe they'll do the same.
I also witnessed my good friends Max and Leon get engaged for québecois tax reasos. That story can be read here, for those not faint of heart or tongue.
I rather like life.
