Friday at the Drake: Lining Up Is Fun to Do
23 July 2007, early morning
Gary and I went to the Drake hotel past Friday. Gary had never been before. We were more or less killing time till Krishna bought his Harry Potter book. We’re standing by the fire place, drinking some beer, when I spot Tiff’s friend Amy. (This is the second time I’ve seen her out and about downtown, the previous time was at the Rat Race event. It’s a small world.) Amy was sitting with a friend on one of the few remaining sofas in the lounge. They were waiting for some DJs to start spinning in the underground. They weren’t too impressed with the lounge; Amy mentioned how out of place she felt. I took a good look around.
The Drake is a very strange place on a Friday night. The crowd looks to be transplanted right from the clubbing district. I imagine it’s full of people who don’t want to pay the cover for This Is London. There were plenty of cocktail dresses and dress shirts to be seen. (For some context, I was wearing my blue Sri Lanka cricket jersey and had some seriously scraggly hair.) Everyone was snapping photos of themselves — to put on Facebook no doubt. The music was really good: it was all old school hip-hop and R&B for the most part. Not that the crowd was dancing mind you. They weren’t doing much of anything really: people were mostly checking each other out while lining up to get to the Sky Yard. The act of lining up to move between floors at a place is straight out of clubbing district. (“Dude, the 3rd floor of Inside is hype, lets go.”) So the Drake on the Friday takes everything bad about the clubbing district and moves it to West Queen West. Well, at least there is still no cover. The Drake is totally different on a Wednesday.
The Underground was a much different scene. They were playing that sort of hipster dance music thats popular with the kids nowadays, with all all that boom boom and scratching scratching. You know? People were actually dancing. It had a much more laid back vibe. I quite liked it. Gary and I didn’t stick around too long. Krishna called to say he had the book and so we were off.