I did something pretty stupid, I wore previously unworn shoes (new-to-me near-mints) on this trip because the delusional bits of my brain convinced the rest of me YOU ARE NOW INDIANA JONES AND THOSE COMFORTABLE EVERYDAYS THAT ARE FALLING APART WON'T SURVIVE THE HARD STREETS SO YOU SHOULD TAKE THE ONES THAT DON'T REALLY FIT.
The mere act of getting to my hotel last night left me with toes rubbed raw, and after a breakfast of scrambled eggs and croissant and bowl of seaweed vermicelli soup with a sausage patty floating in it Mr. M and I went on a quest to find a pair of something Converse and/or Vans-shaped. An amused, apologetic sales clerk and the subsequent frantic scouring of expat forums led me to the realization that there is most likely not a single store in Hong Kong that carries a 13 US in any style. Which in my mind is a bit bananas considering I regularly pass locals that get up to me in height. How do they buy shoes? The internet, of course. I'm in the city that is the single largest hub of exported goods in the world and tall men here use motherfucking Zappos. WAT
Wrapped in bandages and not-buttered corn relievers we slowly made our way to Causeway Bay, through a large park filled with hundreds of young women in hijab - in doorways and down stairwells and on blankets spending their Sunday morning sharing some fabulous looking Indonesian foodstuffs. It was a bit of a parallel universe Shibuya - half of it social, the other its own kind of fashion show. And the fashion - so many people here dress only for the heat and the humidity, which makes the well-dressed stand out and stand tall. It's clearly a city of affluence - police swarming around the street sleeper beneath the Gucci sign, strict fine notices everywhere for littering, the sum of these rules drape a dense darkness covering any hint of squalor.
We arrive to the lobby of a modern building, puzzled at how a large concert venue would be inside a modest-sized office tower. "Are you here for Ladybeard?" asked a hurried voice behind us, and the confused collective queued for the elevator to take us to the top floor. We fell into a small hallway packed tightly with ten or so others who had also arrived early (three in cat ears and maid outfits), and once door opened we realized this sold-out show was being held in a room smaller than most studio apartments. It all made perfect sense - my prior research into the counter-culture of HK led me to shallow waters, "rock" being a loose term that tended to mean Western style over personal substance, and bands trying to fit the mold of C-Rock seem to mostly end up a loose variation of J-Pop.
Ladybeard's collaboration video netted 14 MILLION views on YouTube. When the lights went down there were thirty people crowded around that small stage. THIRTY. It reminded me of subcultural scenes past, of the difficulty in convincing enough people to show up at all. I felt the same sense of privilege in that moment, of being somewhere special that few people bothered to know about. The show was everything I hoped it would be - that endlessly amusing transition from sugary sweet index-finger-twists-against-cheek-with-streamers-in-hand to full-on screaming metal vocals in Cantonese, Japanese, and the lone English song a cover of Justin Bieber's "Baby". We ate it up, this late-night dessert served up at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon.
It's pretty incredible that a single person has spent over a decade trying to create a real underground scene in HK, swimming upstream against such strong political and social currents, a real need for which appeared after the SARS epidemic basically destroyed the live music scene back in 2004. There is so much we spoiled music fans take for granted.
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