Eugene Hütz abandons his DJ booth at the Mehanata nightclub to leap behind the bar and pour himself a fresh Hennessy. Over six feet tall, wiry and nervy, Hütz brings the tumbler to his lips and peers over it at the rapidly crowding dance floor. It's 10:45 p.m. -- early for his Thursday night Disco Radical Transglobal party. The crowd, a rough sea of Eurotrash kids and perhaps five Americans, is eyeing him back. Odd, you'd think, for them to be mesmerized by their DJ. But Hütz just spins records in his spare time. In the eyes of New York's Eastern European hipster scene, Hütz is God. The worship is only going to get more feverish after this fall's premiere of Everything Is Illuminated, the film version of Jonathan Safran Foer's debut novel, in which Hütz stars. Hours earlier, I had received a warning that went unheeded. A friend whispered, "The last time I went to Eugene Hütz's party, the hangover lasted three years," and refused to elaborate. "It's like Vegas, but in downtown New York," said another. "You temporarily lose your mind." Mehanata is on the corner of Broadway and Canal, the crossroads where Chinatown intersects with the rest of the world -- in much the same way the Ukrainian-born Hütz's love of punk music intersects with gypsy tunes, reggae, dance and flamenco. The result is a kind of urban black hole of cross-cultural madness -- fueled by music, love, history, absurdity, dancing, sex and lots and lots of vodka -- into which I fall head first.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2009
