Meltdown at SubZero by Joshua Bligh

Meltdown at Sub-Zero

by Joshua Bligh (author of Cassadaga and The Interstate Generation)

Being quite possibly the biggest 80′s new-wave fan in the universe, naturally I was coming apart at the seams when I heard that Corvallis was getting a nightclub dedicated to my favorite decade. Clad in my Joy Division shirt and constantly checking my phone for eight to become nine, I did my best to avoid skipping down 4th street en route to Sub-Zero. If you go in to battle not caring if you are killed, it makes you very strong. I surged up to the well-dressed doorman with an assassins kit of oversized smiles and unchecked hubris, the way one may act while meeting their icon — that blend of hostility and elation that would shoot God from the crows-nest of heaven if he disrupted your perfect moment.

‘I swear to God, I will leave this town if this place doesn’t make it,’ I informed the bouncer.

‘You’re not going to believe how cool it is down there,’ he smiled. ‘This place really raises the bar.’

We shall see.

With my ID holstered and my wrist stamped with a red-star, I entered through frosted doors, down the flashing staircase and into the basement club.

The colors are magnificent, like walking into the brain of Liberace. The large checkered dance floor was breathing with sword -strokes of light bending hypnotic splashes amid the throb of Morrissey’s crooning, ‘ Last of The famous, International playboys.’ The walls fleshed with the music video, a projection controlled by the DJ, surveyor of the scene in his neon corniced siege-tower. I had wandered through the wardrobe.

Apart from the dance-floor, the bar crouched in the gloom, far enough from the dance-floor where a conversation could still transpire without having to mar ones vocal chords trying to out-scream Siouxsie Sue. A projection of the video also mamboing on a wall above several taps of micro-brews and of course, PBR. Below the glitter there is always hard tinsel. I paid four dollars for my pint of PBR from a friendly, tattooed bartender and took a stool, my feet glowing above a running board of blue neons. Besides feeling gouged for my spirit, my spirits remained invested.

I thought it vulgar that there weren’t more people, but I guess that the opening was not megaphoned. As the night tore on and I tore back, I met with some friends and huddled around one of four spool shaped standing tables. I was reminded of being in New York City, so much so that I forgot I was in Corvallis. I had been meaning to take a vacation but I could not afford it, so I figured I would drink until I didn’t know where I was. But Sub-Zero would not hear of it. I left off drinking to visit the DJ booth and request a song. The DJ, also one of the owners was glad to take my requests (I had made four throughout the night). Great music purges people into happiness, where bad music can slay happiness quicker than car accident. I was disgustingly overjoyed.

80′s music, like any art form, is a reflex to the futility of existence. Flashy, extravagant, grandiose. To the artists of the 80′s these things were not abberations, but the point. The true test of an art form is whether it withstands laughter, then tests itself to destruction. 80′s music is a mirror for the romantic nihilist in us all, such decadence! And Sub-Zero seems to get this.

The empty spaces and lack of seating in Sub-Zero purveys the feet to find a partner and get busy on the dance floor. Never mind the crassness of hip-hop, 80′s music infamously gleams with crimson, sex, disregard. Marc Bolan set the pace in the 70′s with the glam and the consequent decade ran with it. They called it new-wave which seems to trump all other genres at Sub-Zero.

Moogs and Synthesizers. Wails and moans. Bouncy choruses. Feathered hair and spandex, latex, guyliner, and something strangely homoerotic. The new-wave movement served to hack off the ball and chain of personality and cobble together an ego not so different from Dandyism of the late 19th century. I am convinced that Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron would have loved The Cure.

A couple friends took to the dance floor while I stood at our spool, one leg relaxed and my hip consequently pronounced, sipping slowly on my spendy drink and feeling gratified and eternal in my surroundings. It seemed that some of the bouncers had opening night jitters and were looking for a chance to flex their muscle. One in our group was singled out for raising her voice to the bartender and was asked to leave for merely trying to explain herself. Mother said that in another life if I hadn’t have been an artist, I’d have been a priest. So I became a beast instead. I was too flippant to come to her rescue or likewise declare a moratorium on Sub-Zero so I lowered my head and waded into another sip of my four dollar Pabst.

After leaving Sub-Zero, we tracked her down and I gave her a hand-picked flower to apologize for my nonchalance and temporary possession. A man in his musical element is like a monk in meditation. Sadly I didn’t dance but I stood fawning the buffet of lights and pogo beats letting them into my bloodstream like a shot of heroin so popular amidst the brackish artists of the 80′s. It wasn’t self-destruction but self-worship, that wily desire to plumb the dark places in your heart that allows the greatest to transcend the flesh whether it be by music, clothes, art. If you should be sick of the same old Peacock and Harrison and want a taste of an upper-end, big city nightclub, whether you like 80′s music or abhor it, you will completely disappear from Corvallis inside the pulsing walls of Sub-Zero. You may even become addicted as I am now. By far, my new favorite haunt.