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I like the raver kids in their too-bright too-big pants tight shirts dancing too hard in their bouncy new sneakers waving glow sticks drinking water because they took too many uppers. Pacifiers, candy bracelets, omnivorous sexuality, PLUR (Peace Love Unity Respect, man) - mock them, sure, but love their determination to live in a bright shiny simple bubbly anime world. I wish they were today's hippies. I know and they know they're indulging a fleeting hollow fantasy. The drugs make a person friendly and touchy and dance hard, but there isn't a sitar-strumming god in background orchestrating the experience as a lesson plan for Transcendence 101. Drugs are weekend recreation, a support for the dance and an excuse to leave the adult world of FUCKPLUR. PLUR is dancefloor philosophy and not a lifestyle no matter how nice and spacey and feel-good the talk gets in the chill room. Leaving the dim club's blacklights behind, the kid picks up the sides of his big pants which are already streaked with mud and rips at the bottom to walk up the stairs to the BART platform for the 4:30am train home.
 

I like the uncertain boys who dance hard but contained. They become jerky puppets pulled by the drum and bass loops, uncertain whether to jerk to the impossible 160 beat per minute drum or the 5 beat per minute rise and fall of synth washes, moving between the two in sincere awkwardness. There are moments of epiphany when the body merges with the music, and times of (endearing to watch) profound self-consciousness.
 

I like the industrial chicks in their tight black clothes (leather and shiny and expensive and cheap and decayed) wearing hair that is brightly dyed or tragically awful or regulation short black asexual. Too self-conscious to dance, they wallflower and watch. Something snaps, the fuckit point is reached, and suddenly they are Strong Women striding to an open area where the dance can happen. And then they flee, Cinderellas to their own princes.
 

Industrial guys are OK. Some are insecure boys dancing too hard in mock combat with inner demons to impress who? Some enact sweet dramas on the dancefloor, the "I am a tree" dance or swirling like an Edward Scissorhands ballerina parody or just dancing the old ass off. The thing I like best and worst about industrial guys is the age range 15 to 50; accepting, open, but weird to turn the corner and see a guy who could be your dad wearing spiked collars head down sweat beading on chrome-y forehead because Skinny Puppy declares "now is the only thing that is real."
 

I detest the vulture men who get behind some chick's ass and move closer, hips pretending to match beats until - oops! - hello.
 

I detest the women who back into the sleazy embrace like cats in heat, walking backwards and yowling to the music.
 

I detest the preppy sluttish college kids who yell "whoop whoop" into my ear off-tempo to match an imagined pause in the pulse of a club track.
 

Gaggles come and go and may be safely ignored. Usually college kids, either all-female or mixed exactly one boy per girl. They arrive, have some drinks, dance a bit, and then leave after an hour without interacting with anyone else. They are annoying only if they start dancing because they form a large circle which from above would look like a call armored by flapping arm appendages. The go to a club to fulfil the idea of Going Clubbing, but only one or two actually wants to be there. Group dancing is invariably initiated when precisely two girls in the group standing at the fringe but within the unseen "safety diameter" start a determined effort to Dance and Have Fun.
 

The lost people scare me. Guys sitting alone in the corner just watching to forget themselves in voyeurism. A woman who's had too many shots on purpose, barely aware of the laws of gravity, enjoying losing control in a social setting of complete anonymity. The sad slow swayers to a rhythm having nothing to do with the music and everything to do with a mind gnawing at itself trying to forget itself in sensory overload of lights people sound, bones vibrating with bass.
 

The people I like most are the drifters who want to fuck off and dance (which is completely unlike the dance off and fuck types you find at meatmarkets like 1015 Folsom). In a friendly anonymity of mutual acknowledgement, they dance hard and trade dance interactions (I swirl my wrist, a nearby guy does the same, a couple smiles and improvises on the theme) without dancing as a pretense for hitting on folks or finding friends by appealing to some naïve mystical vibe-energy. I like them because they recognize everyone without wanting something from them.