Destination NYC Pride: DESTINATION
For the third and final article, I will cut to just the basics, and write a more detailed piece later. I just came home from Pacha, a huge nightclub on 46th Street, near the Hudson River.
The first part of Sunday was spent preparing the Pacha Sunday party, Destination. The later afternoon was an adventure in itself: trying to get to NYC Pride with traffic shut down to a trickle. I did make it to the Festival, and saw our Rainbow Nation in all its glory as streets were filled with families, men holding hands with their husbands, women strolling with their wives, every kind of gender expression and nationality.
A short nap after the Festival and off to Pacha, a multi-leveled building that featured different dance floors for the event. The top was Susan Morabito, the bottom was upcoming DJs Mario Calegari, Carlos Nascimento, Sean McMahon, and Kitty Glitter. The main floor in between the two featured Manny Lehman and Tony Moran.
Susan’s dance floor saw the crowd first, a nice means for introducing people to my favorite sound: deep house. I have rarely seen such a wonderful mix of young people and old people as was on her dance floor. Sometime later, the main room opened up to Manny Lehman, who took off strong.
It is all too easy for a DJ to leave the gate at full speed, so to speak, with powerful beats and hip-twisting songs. Inevitably, even the strongest beats get monotonous. But Manny has been to this rodeo many times before, and his selection for Destination constantly surprised me. The build-ups did not get stale, and their pace gave the crowd reason to be increasingly happy with each other.
Within the grand collective gathered in the main room, I was pleased to see a large Asian American contingent of men and women having the time of their lives. Sometimes I think our little Circuit world in the USA is a bit too White-bread. Like the Toronto crowd, we could use some diversity.
Manny left the DJ booth on fire. It was honestly the best set I’ve ever heard him spin. He managed to put everything good about the Circuit in his set.
Then it was Tony’s turn. Starting with Ultra Naté, Tony doubled down on Lehman’s power-drive.
Have you ever danced so much that, once you left the dance floor you could barely walk, but when the beat grabbed you once again, your coordination miraculously returned? As JustCircuit’s Joseph Mills told me, “I’m hitting my twentieth wind!
At one point, I walked through the crowd, beaming at people like proud father. My people, our people.
