Raziel Reid at Celebrities Nightclub in Vancouver. Photo by Danny Berish. 

 

The Celebrities reopening was so hot fire trucks showed up!

The floor was packed as everyone danced under the club’s new strobe lights, which make you feel like you’re living in the future the ‘80s promised you. DJ Del was on the decks, and when the pounding beat was replaced by a piercing beeping sound, everyone kept dancing. They just thought Del was serving us some minimalist realness and was about to bring the beat back up in an eruption of sound, which blares out of the Celebrities speakers so smoothly, it’s like the music is playing from giant bottles of Astroglide. 

Turns out, the piercing beeping wasn’t so much DJ Del’s innovation as the fire alarm. Most people kept dancing, even when it became obvious that the beat wasn’t coming back and there was the sound of sirens coming down Davie Street. They just took a whiff, and when they didn’t smell smoke, decided they were gonna keep living for this beat. This beep, beep, beep. Uh, uh, uh! What is this, Del, some underground New York shit?! 

I opted to abandon the dancefloor to go outside and sexually harass the firefighters. They didn’t know what to do with their big hoses when I started blowing them kisses. I was about to offer to blow other things, when Joan-E, in all her seven feet of drag glory, bustled past me in her stilettos and said, “I’m out of here, sweets. When the authorities get here, that’s my cue to leave!”

 

For my full review of the Celebs reopening, check out Blitz & Shitz in the next Xtra, out March 13.