Living in New York can be a drag because of too many rats in the box--a good half of them terminally insane. I consider myself to be a scene washout after 3 years of beer, bad art, and noise rock when I was living in Chicago. I'm rarely out past midnight because of the poor train service and drunken assholery. Williamsburg gives me an anxiety attack. I'm more comfortable living amongst the Carribeans and Hasidic Jews of Crown Heights where I'm certain I'm not part of its scene.
However, occasionally I stumble on a spectacle as I did last night at Galapagos where The Hungry March Band(A Brooklyn-based marching band and Texas Couscous from France vie it out in a battle of two marching bands. The performers outnumbered the audience, but the line between the two blurred fantastically in a phantasmagoria Moulin Rouge sort of scene. Briefly, my life was a musical last night. I was entranced by the wonderful shadowplay taking place on the walls.
Only in a cosmopolitan megacity such as London, New York, Paris, or Hong Kong could you get this huge consensus of performers. Thanks Josie and Tessa!