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What: Review of Blow Up, a music and fashion show.

Where: Clubhouse 24.

Punchline: Pay no attention to the timid man behind the curtain.

It was raining Saturday night in Midtown. Not drizzling, raining. It was coming down so hard that any heads of hair not beneath an umbrella or the hood of a raincoat had that fresh-from-the-shower look. Meanwhile, on the sidewalk outside Clubhouse 24, a newly opened party space at 24th and J Street, there was some kind of sculpture/assemblage in the form of a tree. Christmas tree bulbs the size of disco balls decorated its branches, and it was on fire. Well, more accurately, it had been rigged with a large propane tank so that flames shot out of metal tubes that made up some of its branches, but it looked like it was on fire. It looked like a tree on fire in the middle of a rain storm. I stood in front of it and stared. As you might imagine, I was bewildered, but I was also getting wet, so I went inside.

The first thing I noticed when I entered Clubhouse 24 was the giant head on the wall. It was a cut-out of Twiggy, the eponymously slender fashion model. A psychedelic light projector cast a puddle of rainbows across her face. Again, I stood and stared, but unlike the fire tree the Twiggy head didn't confound me. A theme was emerging, and when I spotted some women dressed like Chelsea girls and some men dressed in retro mod attire it was confirmed: I had arrived at a costumed affair dedicated to 1960s decadence. All I knew about the event beforehand was that Th' Losin Streaks would be playing and that Joni Jacobs (full disclosure: she's a friend), proprietor of Opaline's Closet, was putting on a fashion show. Later, I learned that the DJ and promoter, Paul Tunkin, had come from London, England to give Sacramento a taste of his Blow Up club. The evening's entertainments were in honor of his arrival.

Balloons covered the floor in the room where the Th' Losin Streaks were setting up. Once in a while someone would pick one up and bat it into the air. I hate balloons, because they inevitably pop and startle me. By and by, someone smacked a balloon right into my face. This was an ice breaker for the guy standing behind me to strike up a conversation. We were both dressed unfashionably (I was wearing my "good" blue jeans) and had beards, so it made sense we should talk. I like small talk only inasmuch as it is mundane and practical. My intolerance towards prattle is the most macho thing about me. Some might give that award to my Grizzly Adams beard, but in fact my beard is not macho at all. It's what I like to call manly soft.

Happily, my interlocutor shared my bias against prattle, so we talked about the rising cost of liquor licences and remarked on the exposed rafters above our heads. He said the building reminded him of an auto mechanic's garage. I agreed that it did. Lots of empty space, lots of dark corners, a bit chilly, unadorned, clean but grungy.

We were just getting on to the topic of business opportunities in Placerville when his date arrived, so I went out into the patio, where I found my friend Joni, and she introduced me to her friend Tina and Tina's husband. Joni always introduces me to people as "a journalist." In reality, I am a feckless blogger who freelances on occasion, but this is usually too difficult to explain, so I just shrug my shoulders and go with the characterization. But this evening the white lie paid off.

"So you want to go back stage and take pictures of the girls?" asked Tina's husband.

"Take pictures of the fashion models?"

"Yeah."

I had my Nikon Coolpix with me, so why not?

We pushed our way through the crowd. Th' Losin Streaks had started their set while I was outside and filled the room. I paused to watch them a moment before my rendezvous with the "girls." I'm not sure what to think of the Streaks. Their songs don't do much for me, but they

are a mesmerizing band to see live.
Tim Foster looks angry and dangerous when he gets on stage. I don't know how else to explain it. The whole show you are expecting him to knife somebody or, more likely, fry them with his laser eyes. Yes, I secretly believe Tim Foster is the X-men character known as Cyclops.

Across the stage from Foster, Mike Farrell is having voodoo fits. His little leaps into the air and Mick-Jagger-ticulations seem at once to be postmodern quotations and genuine precognitive stimulus responses, as if God were tapping his soul with a rubber hammer.

Shrugg beats the living daylights out of his drums and bounces his sticks into the air, and Stan, the bassist, adds a little low-end melody to the simple changes.

The "girls" were standing in a semi-circle in a cramped room. A curtain kept them hidden from view of the audience. Most of them were dancing and flailing their arms to the manic rock'n'roll blaring from the other side of the curtain.

"Just tell them what you want them to do," said Tina's husband.

There was no way I was going to do that. I couldn't even look the women in the eyes, much less command them to pose for me. It didn't matter that I told myself that a model's job was to pose in interesting and provocative ways for the camera or, if you prefer, the male gaze. I'm too much of a nosferatu man (or, if you prefer, a creep), and I didn't know how to share in the joy these women felt about dressing up in beautiful clothes for exhibit. I snapped my shots in a hurry and made my escape.

The fashion show itself was anticlimactic after my moment backstage. Access has its downside, too.

I did get a few shots with all the models in front of the giant head of Twiggy. That made me happy.

The city police shut the party down some time after midnight. People wandered into the streets, many to finish off the night at the Golden Bear. It had stopped raining, and the fire tree was no longer burning. This time I didn't stop to puzzle over any apparent absurdity. Somehow it all seemed perfectly logical.