mile end kicks (104 bpm)
(fake loft parties & pop music on the dance floor)
It’s Sunday, I’m back at Daome in a few hours, waiting to be picked up for dinner, trying to figure out the weather, avoiding a bag of dumplings outside from the night before.
My cats fall asleep on top of me. I leave the house at 11:30 PM and wonder if starting my set at 104 bpm will be too slow. The song is good enough that it doesn’t matter. It’s warm enough to wear the jacket I bought in Kyoto. Trent & I text about dreams & books about music. I think the bass is missing in my headphones.
I have another dream where the mixer melts into my hands, none of my files work on live radio, and it’s only a half-hour set. I wake up, and text back about something else DJ-related. I get a reply immediately:
“TERROR”
I walk to refill my prescription before my calls, and I press play on “Spring Is Coming with a Strawberry in the Mouth” by Roger Doyle. Two women walk by me, one loudly exclaims, “The aesthetics of fascism” with an identifiable TikTok accent. My hands are cold. A teenage girl tells her mom she’s in the wrong aisle. My meds aren’t ready, the prescription is on my kitchen table. I’ll try again tomorrow.
I post for everyone; I try not to make a face when someone tells me about AI “content,” I answer my emails.
I’m at the show again. I need to get electrocuted. Electrified. Whatever. Nora and James are behind me in line. I say hi to Bailey, Ariana, Joanne and Z. Sextile remind me that punk is the same as techno. The Machine Girl is on the stage, illuminated from the back, hung up, watching over.
Hands over the balcony ledge, music melting my brain. Again. Machine Girl covers “Kinky Love “ by Pale Saints. Pure joy. They ask us (Canada) to adopt them, applications open at the merch table. Someone’s cane is in the air. I love hardcore, I love guitar music, I love live drums. This is more important than anything on a USB. I try not to look at Instagram stories.
It’s Thursday. I finish work by booking a last-minute, overpriced flight to Los Angeles for someone else. I meet Seb and everyone at Nouveau Palais. I asked him to order a mac & cheese and a caesar salad for me, my order for the last 10 years. I arrive and sit beside Jane, across from Jackson and Seb, beside Amery and David, and I order a rhubarb cider.
We walk to the premiere of Mile End Kicks at Outremont Theatre. We run into everyone we know waiting outside. We get our tickets out, I don’t realize that one of them is for the after party, and see a few on the floor. I say hi to Cecile, take a photo with Seb on the “red carpet,” and we give David $20 get us beer. We go to our balcony seats, the people beside us whispering to each other, wondering why TOPS is the best band in the world according to Chandler.
The movie is funny. The parts that make me cringe only feel that way because they’re too relatable. Overall, it’s pretty good. It is exactly what it feels like to be a 22-year-old idiot in the Mile End, incapable of resisting getting swept up in The Scene™. Simultaneously, it captures what it is to be a young woman trying to be taken seriously in the Music Industry™.
We stand outside for a bit, a bike alarm is going off. We get tired of waiting for everyone to be ready, Seb and I walk to the after party, we run into Oren and Eevee on the way there. The party is above his studio, and it would be ridiculous if he didn’t get in.
It’s kind of a fake loft party, probably meant to mimic the Durocher era that the movie details, that we all experienced. I was an extra in the “loft party scene.” My role was to reject two guys who come and try to talk to me while I’m sitting on the couch with my friends. Unsure of how I got typecast as myself, but I’ll take it.
Back to the afters. It’s pretty fun, pretty funny. There are sandwiches, donuts, and bagels with cream cheese. There’s beer, wine, and seltzer. There are influencers from Toronto.
All my friends are there. Friends who weren’t at the premiere, friends who were in the movie. I think I saw the back of my head in one of the shots. We talk outside on the roof for hours.
Flash photos are going off around us, an Indie Sleaze specialty. I say hi to Liv and meet some other people from Toronto. They tell me that the influencers were flown out for this event. They got a tour of the Mile End, which included the Rialto roof, the real Mile End Kicks store and the alleyways of the neighbourhood. I find this pretty funny, but also pretty insane that there was a budget for that.
There’s someone DJing on a laptop. We dance, we take photos on the Photo Booth app on a purposefully old MacBook in front of the “DJ booth,” and grab free tote bags. The illustration seems to feature one of the characters doing coke. I try to leave at a reasonable hour. I think I get home at 2 AM.
It’s Friday, and I work until 8 PM. I take a break at 6 to do Pilates. I lie in bed for 10 minutes, fighting my social anxiety. I put my new songs on my USB and head to Datcha. I see a friend from Paris. I see my friends crowded around the booth.
A girl asks if I can play “songs with the lyrics,” right before I go on. No problem. I played for three hours. I take a Polaroid of dancers in front of me. A girl pretends to be mad at me because it’s her friend‘s birthday and I don’t know what she wants. Another friend tells me he didn’t know I could techno DJ. I’m usually a band music person.
My cat stampede me awake at 9:30 AM. I feed them, order breakfast, and then head to Saturday Cafe’s joint birthday party. I soundcheck at Système, I put everyone on guest list.
I go home, pass out, wake up an hour later, and panic download all of Addison Rae’s self-titled album. I meet Tay for dinner at Yakitori Hibahihi. We have a life-changing tiramisu, and walk to Système a bit early. I have a nap on the newly installed couch in the minibar, trying not to look at my reflection in the mirrored ceiling.
My mom is one of the first dancers to arrive. I open the night B2Bing with Oren until Can’t Believe are ready to go on. Seeing live pop music on the dance floor feels good. I DJ the interlude and play all my favourite pop songs, hard cuts, minimal mixing. sineila and Public Appeal are on after, both pop princess in their own right.
Someone puts a baguette in the water bottle holder of Oren’s bicycle outside. Sam Blake closes out the night with a DJ killer set.
Everyone leaves later than they thought they would. I feel grateful for pop music on the dance floor.
