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| City's Best Hot Dogs, Reykjavik, January 2002 |
THE RUNTUR
As midnight and the runtur approaches, we aim for Laugavegur.
“Speed up, would
ya?” I call back to my lagging gang.
“This is supposed to be a runtur, not a walktur!”
Sirkus, our
designated starting point, looks downright funereal. So does Kaffibarinn. And Prikid looks no better.
As we deliberate, young ladies catcall us
from an apartment on high; we accept this as a sign from God, or the devil, to
duck into Prikid for a drink.
Van Stein runs
up to a gaggle of gals at the bar. They
are British, also in search of the runtur, if shy and indifferent to a
clump of three crazed Americans and one seriously disordered Scot.
One drink later,
not much action, time to check out the lower end: Rex, a club designed by Terence Conran, the
British decorator.
We’re standing on
the pavement when a glass from nowhere explodes beside us. “That’s
it,” I say. “The runtur has
officially begun.”
Rex, of
minimalist design, caters, we find, to a minimal clientele.
“Welcome,” says
the manager. “We will fill up.” This is wishful thinking on his part.
“Terence must
have designed this one in his sleep,” says Erik the Red.
Flashing a Press
card, I weasel us into their private-membership Mafia/VIP room. Once a bank vault, this windowless basement
is furnished with red vinyl booths, imported from a 1950s American diner. It is emptier than upstairs. We can stay, we’re told, if we order champagne.
“We’re not staying
if you give us champagne,” I say.
Upstairs, Rex
does not pick up. And midnight is upon
us. Floater strolls out to investigate: How
did our recon go wrong?
Floater races
back inside. “This place is dog meat,”
he hollers. “The new hot place is around
the corner. It’s called NASA,
and there’s a
long line to get in!”
We drain single-malt
whiskey and charge out. Indeed, the
young sons and dottirs of Iceland are queued up on Austurvollur Square to join whatever
is happening inside NASA.
Floater tries to
grease an early entry by tipping the doorman, but this Guardian of Berserk won’t have it. So, we dance in place to stave off frostbite
and curse ourselves for screwing up.
Soon, a thousand
kronor (ten dollar) admission gets us inside to a
berserk-ness-in-progress.
Someone tells
us that Club NASA, a converted church, opened one month before and immediately
replaced Rex as runtur headquarters.
Beneath a
vaulted ceiling and purple strobe-lights, a sea of young Icelanders jerk to–egad!–disco
music. Even worse, it is a track from Saturday
Night Fever.
Van Stein
perches near a railing, an unobstructed view of dance floor. He has already prepped his palette with nine
colors of paint from ultramarine blue to titanium white.
“Eighty percent
of an artist’s
work is preparation,” he says. With a
shot of Black Death Brennavin in one hand and a filbert brush in the
other, he deftly captures moment and mood inside the Church of Berserk.
A stocky bouncer
in gothic black trench coat approaches.
“What you think you doing?” he asks, not comprehending the antics of
foreign interlopers.
“I think I paint this
place,” says Van Stein.
The bouncer
shrugs. “Okay.”
Stooled next to
the artist, I sip whiskey and watch young berserkers mix it up.
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| NASA by Thomas Van Stein |
Today’s Vikings have
traded their shield for a cell phone and their sword for a “short knife” (as
the Icelandic sagas called it). Although
their forefathers were tough and bearded, these dudes are tame and clean-shaven
and, dare I say, somewhat gay.
The girls,
fashionably attired, are more serious than the boys about drinking and
pairing. And maybe that’s because these
mostly blonde, high-cheeked Nordic goddesses outnumber the guys three-to-one.
We puff Cuban
Cohibas, mesmerized by a constant stream of comers and goers. Most of them seem to know each other, like
cliques at a high school dance. But
unlike a high school dance, booze flows like a wild river; the dance floor is a
rave, a free-for-all pulsation of sumptuous shapes. Most of these late-teens and
twenty-somethings had tanked up before coming out, a local custom to save money
by boozing at home until midnight.
One gal, drunk
or nuts, fixates on Van Stein. She wraps
herself around him and whispers into his ear while he struggles to paint. (“I wish I could understand elf-talk,” says
Van Stein later. “A foreign tongue in my
ear. I think she wanted to suck my
paintbrush.”)
I set out for
the men’s
room—and a carnival. At first glance, it
looks like a long line for several urinals.
But it’s not
a line at all. These guys are
loitering. Who loiters in a smelly
restroom? I weave around them, business
in mind. A guy with shoulder-length hair–-the Unofficial Toilet Man–-assigns cubicles
to designated males.
Drugs? Blowjobs?
Maybe both.
Back on the main
floor, everybody bumps off everybody else, with accompanying sound effects,
like a living, breathing, heaving pinball machine.
Floater falls victim to
a butch lesbian who thrashes her arms at any guy who dares check her out. Then
two large women—the dancer’s
friends—try to smother him with their boobs.
Women are
falling over, in waves, onto the dance-floor; bumping and grinding all over
each other, some in tears. The beat
vibrates my organs.
Van Stein calls alla
prima at three a.m.
We spill onto Austurvollur Square, where it’s
colder than a witch’s tit in the Klondike yet the once eerily quiet streets are
now full of young berserkers—more disturbing than the earlier calm.
City’s Best Hot Dogs
has a line around the corner. We weave
up the hill to Hus Malarans.
At
quarter-past-three, this boozerie is winding up, now down.
A surreal
mess.
Van Stein and
Erik the Red charge upstairs to tackle heaving sound waves.
I need a men’s room, but the
door to the toilet is as unhinged as the action around us.
Two guys are
trying to fix it onto hinges while another impatiently urinates in a corner.
I walk back to
Hotel Holt to use my own toilet, fully intending to return to the madness of Hus
Malarans’ madness.
But the
eiderdown quilt and feather pillows on my bed whisper lullaby and good
night… and thus, at 3:43 a.m., it is more appealing than a dirty
barstool.
Truth be known,
I walked out on the runtur.
