[IN THE CLUB] What the Hell is a Betelnut Anyway?
FRIDAY NIGHT, DECEMBER
My friend Allen, who was easy to spot with his bleach blonde hair, walked up to me and asked “Isn’t it great to see Asian people uh…having fun?”
I laughed. I was bopping around in the back right corner of the dancefloor, and we were witnessing what can only be described as A Scene. DJ 小慌 was playing manyao [1] – he’s a legend in the scene, one of the OGs of the Taiwanese version of the sound. It was a real treat to scene This Scene - I would have expected him to play at one of the big, anonymous EDM clubs – not at FINAL, one of the Cool Kid Clubs of Taipei. FINAL’s main dancefloor is a room covered in shiny, chrome panels and that night, there were jumping Asians right in the middle, lit up by a zillion phone cameras with the flashlight on, all trying to capture The Scene. I did love the spinning little heart shaped light placed next to the DJ booth, seemingly brought from someone’s home, and doing little in terms of actual lighting after all the phone flashes went on but everything in terms of vibe.
The vibe, as I later came to find out from Allen, was created by the Baby Betelnut crew. They’re technically a betelnut company, a drug created for the truckers. Of course, because that shit keeps you up all night, betelnuts got adopted by the club kids so that they could party longer and harder and of course, Baby Betelnut decided that they also would get into throwing parties, too. The Baby Betelnut aesthetics are a mishmash of y2k nostalgia, hypersexualized babygirl, and internet culture – stripper heels, upskirt photos, baby tees, thongs, and the glow of neon lights. Is it sexist? Is it empowering? Is it ironic? It was probably better not to hurt myself thinking too hard and just have some fun.
With the room fully lit by the phone flashes, I finally caught sight of the stripper pole in the corner. About five minutes later, the girls appeared. As the set progressed, I migrated to the front right of the room right as the girls migrated to an elevated platform right in front of the DJ booth, now fully with phone lights illuminating them. I could now see the stripper pole being occupied by what could only be described as a 哥們, or like a Taiwanese bro, who was having the time of his life sliding up and down on the pole, feeling free enough to get a little silly and sexy with it.
Later in the night, I wandered over to the side room with the bar where friends were loitering about, chatting, smoking, and doing rounds of shots. I said hello to the manager there who I had just met earlier that night when she wandered into art space where my friend Karin was having a pop up, looking for mulled wine from the bar in the back. There was another stripper pole in this room and I found out that the Baby Betelnut gang had installed both poles just for this party. The owner of FINAL was egged on by friends to take a whirl at the pole and of course, he obliged as the night grew later, to the delighted whoops of the staff and homies there.
I’d been thinking about how joyless mainstream Asian American art often is, how concerned it is with concepts of identity, how much time it spends being tortured for existing in an in-between when no one else around them particularly cares. But Asians are so damn silly! Just loud manyao bleeting with people bopping around and strippers and bros taking turns at twirling around a stripper pole.
By the time that 4am rolled around, I walked back into the main room which was still pretty full. The music had switched from DJ 小慌’s manyao to your typical late night rave music - a b2b between JUN and LuuQoo who were playing something in the realm of 160bpm+.
I was absolutely delighted to see that the strippers were still going on that damn pole.
A MIX (OR TWO) THAT I’M LISTENING TO
I think everyone around me knows how I feel about La Darude – they are absolutely one of the most exciting things in music these days with their bright colors, vague y2k nostalgia, and trance and eurodance sound, curated from artists all around the world. I love this mix from LOLALITA, which features plenty of trance fun but also specifically, a NewJeans remix that more prominently features the instrumental than the vocal! The revival is all around us, but La Darude are my favorites doing it.
princess elf bar for hulaHOOP.fm
Been a while since I wrote one of these and since then, I started a club night with my own friends David and Ida called hulaHOOP. We created hulaHOOP because we wanted a club night focused on escaping into euphoric and joyful sounds. I’m super thrilled with the parties we’ve put on in 2023, which include trance, eurodance, donk, happy hardcore, nightcore, and ultimately, loud, fast, dumb (compliment) sounds from some of our favorite DJs all over the world. In creating the party, we found that there are a lot of like-minded connected scenes around the world who are also in the business of having fun. This mix for hulaHOOP.fm, our ‘megamix’ series of concentrated (<30 minute) bursts of euphoria, is by princess elf bar, who helps run booty shakin bestiez out of Leeds, a party that we also love.
The next hulaHOOP is on March 8 at MOOD RING. Full details dropping this week on the hulaHOOP IG (@hulahoop.nyc). Can’t wait to see you there.
You can find a decent explainer of the genre from a Singaorean angle from my friend Karen Gwee for Bandwagon (!).