The police made sure last Saturday's Summer Aquarian party was about peace, if not love. Promoters thought their permit was good until 4am, but police shut the party down at 2am, forcing an estimated 2,500 partygoers from the beach onto the roads in the middle of the night. An odd choice for public safety, considering the authorities had been so concerned about it all night. Police staked 40 signs at the waterfront -- one every 3m -- reminding people that water really is dangerous. Anyone seen wading past their heels was told to move back.
Also last weekend, obviously a key one for the boys in blue, Purple was raided and partygoers were forced to sit around for four hours while they were filmed for TV. Fourteen people were urine tested, said one of our gangster informers who was there. Room 18 and AXD were also targeted by police, while Luxy got hit briefly on Wednesday.
While the Aquarian party at Baishawan (
PHOTO: DAVID MOMPHARD, TAIPEI TIMES
Speaking of Snoop, Dogg Pound member Kurupt is at Ministry of Sound tonight. Kurupt came up in the gangsta rap scene with Snoop after the two met while battling at LA's Roxy. They started rapping together and Snoop introduced him to Death Row Records' boss, Suge Knight. Knight brought Kurupt into the Row and paired him with other rappers. As a result, you can hear him not only on Snoop Dogg's maiden voyage, Doggy Style, but Dr. Dre's The Chronic, two of rap music's biggest-selling records.
At MoS yesterday Korupt and his younger brother Rosco said they were "real happy" to be in Taipei and they seemed to be having a good time at the soundcheck. "This is one of the greatest trips ever. Tell everyone out there we love it here an' we're gonna get Snoop and the whole pound with us next time we come back. Tell 'em we love 'em," Korupt told The Vinyl Word. The party forecast for tomorrow night looks steamy.
Luxy is drumming up its Summer Jam, with Underground Nation and DJs Enferno and E-Turn in the Galleria. DJ Vertigo and J6 will host The World tribal house party.
PHOTO: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
Down the street at Eden, the Beat Symposium boys are "Diggin' Deep." These are the guys whose "I Love" parties have worked crowds into a sweat. With Diggin' Deep, they say, they'll be reaching far back in their record crates and searching for killer B-sides. Marc Ketts and Zoltan will start things off. Zoltan was a resident DJ at Taichung's Soundgarden before it was turned to rubble and plays a broad selection of house music.
Topping the show after Zoltan will be SL (
Across town at the Source, Tensegrity Productions is going Back 2 Basics with DJ Apparition, a techstep turntablist who has for the past few years been a fixture in the Seoul scene. Drum 'n' bass will be loud and large, with DJs Elements, Zeon, Adora, Funkstar and Remedy. NT$500 gets you in and buys all you can drink until 3am. (1-2 Roosevelt Rd, Sec 1,
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby