Hot beats, cool treats, we treat you right – at Beatship!
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I guess you didn’t grow up in 1990s America watching regional northeast fast food ads and writing parodies of them for your subpar online column. Your loss buddy.
If you do, congratulations! You’ve won a free trip on the next instalment of Beatship*! Wait you don’t’ know what Beatship is? Let me explain.
Beatship is the Asia import of the Vegas move to combine gaming and EDM. Some links here and here.
But luckily, since in Hong Kong we’re insane, we didn’t host it in a club but instead a giant gaming ship. So I ventured out with ~600 of my closest friends one Wednesday night, leaving 9pm and returning at 8:15am the next morning just in time for me to crawl into the office. Here’s a running diary:
-8:20pm: I arrive at Ocean Terminal, lost and confused. All this time I never realised people lived in Kowloon; I just thought it was a place that shitty investment banks were forced to move to.
-8:22pm: I think I’m the oldest person here by 10 years. There are lots of people who look under 18 but dressed like they’re 18 going on super slutty. It’s ok, Ancient Greeks married at 13, I remind myself. Then I’m like, why did I remind myself of that? What is wrong with me? Am I going to jail?
-9pm: I finally board the boat. I’m in room 10689, which is a two-minute walk from the club. The room is surprisingly nice with lots of places to vomit and a balcony overlooking the water. I mean, duh, we’re on a boat (cue obligatory Lonely Island junk song).
-10pm. Beatship sets sail. I go for dinner and eat a lot of salmon, then realise you’re never supposed to eat seafood on a cruise. Again, what’s wrong with me? I’m too far from my room (vomitorium), so I order three Jaegerbombs just to be sure. My stomach thanks me. Or perhaps the opposite.
-10:30pm. At the club. It’s pretty cool since it’s outside on the back of the ship with a pool and some inflatable animals, which will be abused badly later on. I order two long islands and play two games of beer pong. I lose everything, including my sobriety.
-11pm. People are dancing but I’m laser-focused on ping pong games (not the Thailand ones, chill out, guys). I end up with one of those cool dressed groups of Canto people you see at bars who act awkward but then do a lot of clapping and cheering when they play liar’s dice. I clap and cheer and feel I’m accepted. Unfortunately the only Cantonese words I know are “lei dou”, and there is no taxi drivers at sea.
-12pm. Beatships is Beating now. The club’s divided into the ground floor for the plebs, and a second VIP bottle-service floor to the right and left of the DJ booth. Since there’s not enough space to walk across the DJ booth, the “Dom train” of models/bottles keep walking downstairs then upstairs to deliver drinks. I try to calculate the average number of stairs a model would walk in a night and subsequent calories burned. “What are you doing?” a girl asks me. “Are you 18?” I ask back.
-1am. Nap time. I have to be kind of fresh for work tomorrow. At least better than the night of the Mahalo opening where I drank everything on the menu. A 30-minute power nap.
-4am. I open my eyes. Damn it.
-4:02am. I run back to the club. It’s MADNESS. The place is jammed with head bobbers and EDM lights. Two girls who are 18, I am totally sure about that, are really going at it on the stripper poles and a lot of people are kissing each other. A guy tries to high-five me and falls down but luckily on top of an inflatable dolphin. Another guy blows cigarette smoke in my face, makes an ironic “oh no!” face, then jumps into the pool. Two girls kiss while guys cheer. While they’re distracted, I drink their Champagne like a boss.
-5am. Another DJ is on. He plays some music without the bass. The crowd is like, woah, where’s the bass? They wait for the bass. Suddenly, the bass kicks in and everyone is dancing! I’m like, wow, this is amazing! Every club should do a thing where they play a song without the bass and then the bass kicks in!
-8:15am. We’re back at TST. I can’t tell you what happened the last three hours since I don’t remember. I have texted almost everyone in my phone “BEATSHIP BEASDHTSTPIHA” but luckily cell service was spotty. That’s the good thing about international waters: nobody can read your shame the next day.
Until next time, Beatship.
*Oops, wait, no, you didn’t win.
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