Dirtybird at the Avalon Hollywood

After the awful experience of the previous post, Colin and I slunk back to his place with our tails between our legs. We chilled out for a while and decided to do dinner at an Indian food place within walking distance on Sunset. My boyhood friend Samah Tokmachi, who was my best friend from 1st thru 4th grades in New Mexico before I moved to California, lives in LA now and joined us for dinner. He found me on Friendster a few years back (remember Friendster?) and I have been trying to reconnect with him but I seldom spend much time in LA so I wanted to make an effort to see him while I was there. We reminisced about our youth and he pulled out some random stories about me that I had very little recollection of. Needless to say it's weird when someone has better memories of you than you have of yourself, especially when they are as unflattering as the stories he was telling. I won't go into detail about these scandalous musings.
Dinner was tasty and the conversation entertaining but it was getting late so we wrapped it up. Both Colin and Samah declined to join me for some clubbing in Hollywood even though they had said previously that they would. Colin had to work at 5am so I couldn't slight him there and maybe it was better for me to make a solo mission out of that evening anyway. I came very close to not going out at all, but Colin had to sleep and I wasn't ready for bed soooooo.......
When I saw that Dirtybird was promoting an event in Hollywood the weekend I thought that I would just have to go. I tried to get in touch with Justin for some guest list action but he never responded so I payed the $30 at the door to get in. Let me just say that I don't do a lot of clubbing usually, I'm more of a lounge/underground/outdoor party kinda guy. I generally stay away from the bridge & tunnel and meat-market crowd in SF. The Avalon Ballroom is right down on Hollywood and Vine and there was a lot of people out on a Saturday night in LA even at 1am when I arrived. The club was filled with guys, lots of guys, lots of old Asian guys, lots of old Asian guys on Ecstasy. And the strangest thing to me was all the people in the club wearing surgical masks. Yes, surgical masks. I would say at least ten percent of the crowd had them on. I think that is very strange. If you are that scared of H1N1 then stay home, right? That's the way I look at it.
I saw a few friends that are ex-bay area heads, which was nice, and eventually one of them gave me a wristband to go backstage, where all the SF folks were hanging out. I got the above shot of Claude VonStroke from there. I hung out totally sober until 4am with people rolling their faces off all around me then I headed out. It was pretty cool I guess. It's just weird to pay so much to see DJs that I can see on the cheap at home. The venue was cool though and now I can add this "clubbing in Hollywood" story to the annals of my personal history.
Got back to Colin's shortly before he woke for work and slept a deep deep sleep. Sunday would include a painful ride home and I really needed to rest up for that.....