Chicago is full of Kansas City expats right now. I’m not sure if it’s always been this way but it seems like droves ofskinny, artsy cats with a kinda crisp punk rock aesthetic have been flooding the city from KC. So when I decided to make KC, a place I’d never been to before, the first stop on our road trip, I had a lot of people around to give me the inside scoop. So pretty much everyone I talk to tells me to try and hook up with Botnet, and to look out for parties in West Bottoms.

The Bottoms is one of those areas it seems like every town has, full of old warehouses and mills repurposed for cool shit, like the Marigny the last time I was in NOLA or Red Hook the last time I was in Brooklyn. Chicago sucks for comparisons, because the neighborhoods are always changing as places get shut down and neighborhoods gentrify. It was the South Loop and West Pilsen/Little Village a couple years ago, then Bridgeport and Fulton Market, it’s been Lake Street and Rogers Park and Goose Island multiple times, sometimes decades apart.

I don’t know if the space we ended up with was the Botnet Hive, or if it was just a space the Botnet cats were using, but it was a pretty well-utilized warehouse space, with lazers and smoke machines mounted to the ceiling, a ten foot papier mache Buddha, vivisected and backlit by a strobe, raised platforms, chill room and bar. I don’t know if the crowd was typical for KC, but they were a pretty mixed bag of artsy folk.

There were extravagant party monsters, decked out in Victorian gear and flapper garb, there were glittery burner ravers in fat pants and hula hoops, there were hipsters and MFA students (and teachers), fashion punks and gutter punks, and then two guys dressed as the Bloody Beetroots (or maybe they were the Bloody Beetroots, how would I know?). It was a sexy crowd. Skinny jeans. Asymmetrical haircuts. Heavy pheremones. Assorted cultural markers.

When we got there, the DJ was playing some deep disco. Save for a remix of the Peggy Lee/Jessica Rabbit song “Why Don’t You Do Right?”, I wasn’t really feeling it, but the next DJ played a really dope wobble set.

Shenanigans ensue throughout the night. A crusty kid decides to ghost ride the whip as he drives by. Girls flash a passing train as it blares its horn for everyone to get out of the way. Hula hoops and poi are set ablaze for a demonstration in the middle of the street. A woman gets a bucket full of water to keep the fire spinners safe, only to find out that it’s amber color is not the result of extinguished cigarette butts, but that she’s been wrist deep in a bucket someone had been bleeding into after busting his nose earlier. A crew of zombies employees of the haunted house down the street arrive in full regalia after closing time.

We recognize a couple of the hoopers from a party we shot a few weeks ago, and they let us crash at their place. Shit stays positive, and our trip is off to a good start.