The number one song in New York City for the past 20 years.

Another dip in the bubbly waters of flossy clublife last night at the De La afterparty. Guest list and gangsta-grips with the party promoter and a headlock-based hug thing before he introduced us around and bought us drinks. Handshakes with the guy who does Beyonce's house remixes. Afro maintenence tips and anecdotes with a girl named Betty and I thought for a minute that I should go out with her, mostly because we would be, you know, Miles and Betty, which is the type of music-writer shit that I always feel ashamed of whenever it pops in my head, which is basically all the time.
I keep thinking of the club or whatever it was that I hung out at in Kalamazoo, 1998. There was a warehouse north of downtown where all the raves were, and being halfway between the Chi and the D on the I-94 drug corridor everyone came from out of town and packed the place with more people than should have been at a rave in Kalamazoo dancing to better DJs than we deserved. On the ground floor and around the corner there was an office that had been used by a shipping company or something; drywall halls, cheap woodgrain office doors, a big garage. The garage was the dancefloor, all dim-to-nonexistant lighting, old oil slicks and newer water puddles on the floor, some kid from Western Michigan Univ. spinning some shitty soulful house. There was always about a third of the crowd that showed up there that didn't give a fuck about the DJ or the dancing. They broke into the offices to do coke or backrub circles. The socializing happened in the halls and the bathrooms, where people did more drugs and had more random sex. Candy ravers and punks hung out with Australian soccer teams carrying half a liquor store. Around then the tv news was running stories about the dangers and decadance of raves, and pretty much every sin and crime they listed in their items happened at the office every weekend. I pissed next to a drag queen for the first time there. When I finally heard Lifter Puller the next year it was like I had been waiting for years for them to happen.