Friday night Nathan Zeno
There is no Saturday night in Cape Town – or rather Saturday night is for losers. Let me qualify that. If you know anything about this town, you’ll be in bed recovering on Saturday night. There is enough on any given Friday night to exhaust you and if not there’s always the sophisticated barflyness of The Magnet with its easy Latin and ironic beats. Here there’s a choice between the Fiftiesesque bar or the poolroom with its lounging, well-dressed intelligent (looking) types who, given half the chance, will seduce you and take your money. Let’s look at it this way, the evening began …
Determined to have an early night is the first way to guarantee sunrise. We are for some reason at that horrible, uncomfortable hole known as The Beehive – known only for its desperately flashy display of Tretchis and badly laid out space. The music is always incidental and so are the ex-art school types, who look like salesmen in a John Waters fantasy.
I’m resisting drinking by taking up an offer from a Tanzanian friend who just walked in and offered me a discount. So I convince Matt to buy drinks and then we do it and I’m in a bathroom with this girl and we’re arguing or agreeing … One thing we do know is that this is the wrong place to be, so it’s a bit of a: “where to now ?”
We stumble in and out of The Magnet and, realising we’re on a different mission entirely, decide to head for ice cream. It is then that we run into the other face of Friday – that ugly detritus of teenagers that wash up from Bellville to go to dark, almost existential rave clubs like Rush. Bashed out on fake ecstacy and cheap speed, and wearing too much lycra and vacant expressions, they sit in Steers waiting for the clubs to open. There’s that, but you must avoid – it’s Dorian Gray, you’re the portrait and they haven’t a clue.
We’ve lost a member of our party so we retrace steps and have to deal with The Fez – part of a weird circuit in Cape Town that includes 021 and All Bar None. It’s all slick bars, slick staff, almost background house music, and very wealthy people (advertising, import/export agents, coke heads and has-been models) all dressed in black – very much the cocaine and champagne set (glasses in hand, heads held slightly back in half laughter). The music is top 20 and we’re out faster than the bouncer can complain about our slip slops.
Before we know it it’s four and we’re on the dancefloor at the Take Four robot party and it’s ballistic brother – the wildest electro and hip-hop. Genuine teenage art students in thrift store chic and that hollow empty in-control feeling you get in a big space like this. Then the next thing it’s sunrise from a park bench on Table Mountain for the three of us.
Now for a tip for all those awake at this early hour. The President Hotel (Alexander Road, Bantry Bay) serves the most luxurious buffet breakfast at the poolside, overlooking the ocean. And they serve it to anyone – even a man in cowboy boots dressed entirely in black and covered with thorns and grass; his friend with a huge parka hood over his head and a girl wearing only a towel and a snowboarding jacket-thing.
It ends as it begins, with a promise that you can keep – that there can be no Saturday night, nor day. You crawl into bed noting that the one superior thing about a good Friday is that it completely shields you from having to deal with Greenmarket square in full bloom on a Saturday morning.
Nathan Zeno is the alter ego of a local filmmaker. One of his short films will be screened at the upcoming 206 film festival