New Years Eve was hard . . . kinda. Downtown L.A.’s inaugural HARD NYE, held in the arts district near the 6th Street Bridge, kicked off an hour later than scheduled due to a rouge van parked someplace the fire marshall didn’t like — making the long lines in the winter chill HARD-er to endure for the throngs of anxious hipsters and “non hipsters” wondering why no one was getting in at the scheduled time of 8 p.m.
Seemingly off to a slow start, many of the event’s early performers had performed in front of a barren 200-300 on-lookers.
Even Steve Aoki — with his typical wild shenanigans and all — rocked the meager crowd. It had seemed that most of the people were more interested in exploring the shanty scenery or were posted up at the expensive liquor booths blowing their cash away (or some were hidden inside the seemingly safe confines of the VIP room where the liquor was flowing, apparently free of charge).
Once Peaches took the stage at 11 p.m. there was a rush of party-goers to the HARD stage. It was clear that she had offered to “Fuck the Pain Away” with her unsurprisingly raunchy set (perhaps even raunchier than 2 Live Crew’s set who had headlined the second stage). Rocking the gold leotard like only Peaches can, along with a crew of back-up dancers that wore even less clothes, the Berlin-based Canadian permeated the crowd of hipsters into new year with songs like “AA XXX,” “Slippery Dick,” and rang in the new year with the re-named “Fuck the Year Away.”
Even with the technical issues that plagued the night, the French hipsters Justice are what made HARD NYE, well . . . hard (aside from Peaches’ male back-up dancers). And they were probably the big draw of the night. With the stage already filled with entourages from all camps, Justice capped off the first early morning of 2008 with a cigarette induced, alcohol fueled DJ set that started off with the already intoxicated Steve Aoki once again stage diving, nearly landing head first into the ground. It had seemed that riots were nearly breaking out as the drunken party people were stumbling over each other trying to get the best view while revellers flooded onto the stage, passing shots to one another and spitting vodka into the audience. One person was even found on the ground, popping a squat trying not to lose her spot among the raucous crowd.
DJ’ing atop their illuminated crucifix, Xavier and Gespard won over the crowd, mixing the mid-range fuzz laden hits from their debut Cross album with rave classics like “Dominator,” manipulating the now packed crowd, despite several cut outs in sound —appearantly the combined result of faulty DJ booth activity and a final clearing of the stage of various vagabond (ahem…VIP) dancers. It was a glorious mess that made the price of admission and the expensive alcohol worth it. And judging from the New Years casualties laid out (some face down in the vomit covered streets) it was surely was the party of the year.
**PHOTOS BY MY AWESOME FRIEND CHRIS NGUYEN OF INKSTAIN**
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