I Saved a Girl in the Disco Yurt at Station to Station's New York Debut

Photo by Ben Gottesman

I have a laminated pass with my named Sharpie’d on it. For some reason, people thinks this makes me important. Crowds part and let me through. Everyone is sure I have somewhere important to go. Really, I’m just wandering around Riverfront Studios in Brooklyn, checking out the New York debut of Station to Station: a public art project made possible by Levi’s®. The event is packed, but people see my pass and the camera slung over my shoulder and they make room for me.

I stand in line for the bathroom until a security guard whispers that there’s a bathroom in the back.

“Not open to the public,” he tells me. “No need to wait.”

“Can the pass help me cut the bar line, too?” I ask.

“Pass don’t make you God.”

There are limits to my power.

Riverfront Studios is right on the bank of the East River, under the Williamsburg Bridge, and Station to Station took over the studio’s indoor warehouse as well as the asphalt lot overlooking the river and lower Manhattan. The crowd flows between the inside—with the stage and the bar—and the outside, where you can explore brightly-colored yurts and spit into the East River.

I get into the party a few minutes late and I miss Olaf Breuning’s multicolored smoke bomb performance. But it doesn’t take long for something else to erupt. The Kansas City Marching Cobras bursts through the lingering wisps of Olaf’s smoke show, decked out in matching uniforms and led by a conductor that moved like a seizing Joe Cocker. He herks and jerks and blows a whistle and the band follows along. Maybe the most interesting part of the whole thing is the way the marching band segues into No Age’s set. I’ve seen No Age a few times before. This is the first time they’ve collaborated with a marching band from Kansas City.

Photo by Ben Gottesman

In the back of the warehouse space are a few yurts. One yurt looks normal, but the other is open—just the skeleton of the yurt structure. No fabric covering it. Inside there are a team of people on sewing machines, embroidering text and logos onto the backs of denim jackets. Their workspace is lit up by a bunch of bare lightbulbs, suspended from the ceiling. Levi’s sells the one-of-a-kind jackets in the second yurt.

The yurts outside are larger than the first two, and painted bright, primary colors. A sign at the door of one asks me to remove my shoes. I add mine to the pile and step inside. The room is lined with mirrors and saturated with fog. In the center is a queen- or king-sized bed. A disco ball is hanging from the ceiling. I sit down.

It’s all very cool. Except for the crying girl.

She’s sitting on the carpeted floor, back against the raised bed. I didn’t see her when I came in. I remember the pass around my neck and I feel some sort of obligation to help her out. With great power comes great responsibility or whatever. I poke my head over the side of the bed and ask her what’s wrong. She looks up at me.

“It’s so beautiful in here, this whole place is beautiful,” she says. “And No Age is playing and Ariel Pink is playing and that band Suicide, who I thought were dead, are playing—and I came to New York from Boston with my friends but now they’re lost and I don’t know where they are—and this disco ball is so pretty and the fog is so thick that I feel like I’m in a cloud and I don’t know what to do. Who are you, even?”

Photo by Ben Gottesman

“I’m River, I’m supposed to be writing about this party.”

That isn’t really enough for her.

“But, like, for real.”

“I grew up in Oregon,” I tell her. “Now I live in Brooklyn. I write stuff and play music sometimes. Who are you?”

She blinks. There is a burden that comes with my new power. I can feel the symbolic weight of the pass around my neck. The strain of it is heavy on my shoulder. Actually, that’s just the weight of my camera.

“Want to help me shoot pictures while we look for your friends?”

She wipes her nose. “I’m pretty good at photography. I’ve got a Tumblr.”

This is how a crying girl from the Disco Yurt ended up taking pictures for my article.

The girl and I—her name is Allie—ride my pass to the front of the stage to see YOSHIMIO + Hisham Akira and Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti play.

There are videos projected on three screens behind the bands during their sets. No Age and YOSHIMIO’s videos are train-heavy and indebted to movies like Koyannisquatsi, but the videos get a little more colorful and lysergic when Ariel Pink’s set starts.

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti is Allie’s favorite band. She disappears pretty quickly into the crowd with my camera bouncing around her neck. I try to keep track of her, so she doesn’t run off with my DSLR, but the crowd is too busy to care about how I am important and wearing a laminated pass. I lose her. Pass don’t make me God.

Allie reappears after the show is over. She’s sweaty and grinning and wild eyed.

“Get good shots?” I ask.

“The music was so good, and the videos were so good. I forgot all about taking pictures.”

Between the music sets Station to Station there are short pieces of video art. Allie gets completely engrossed in a film by Kelly Sears called The Joy of Sex that looks like a series of rotoscoped porn gifs. She tries to take a bunch of pictures of the video as it’s playing. None of them turn out.

Right before Suicide takes the stage, there’s a performance in the center of the warehouse. A woman standsen pointe as two men on roller skates dance around her. I am pretty into it, but Allie says it gives her too many feelings so we go outside.

Photo by Ben Gottesman

Suicide starts up. We watch the show standing half inside the warehouse and half out.

“Where do you think your friends went?”

“Somewhere,” she says.

I start to worry about what I’ll do if her friends don’t turn up. But I have plans after the show that don’t involve figuring out how to get a stranger back to her house in Boston.

“Who are you again?” Allie asks.

“I’m traveling on the Station to Station train for a while and writing about it,” I say. She nods, like she’d forgotten and is remembering again. “And I’m supposed to take pictures, too, when I don’t have someone to help me.”

“Got you lots of good ones,” she says.

Somebody shouts from inside the warehouse and I turn to see a group of kids run up. They all have the same sweaty, wild-eyed look as Allie.

“What happened to you?” One of them asks Allie. “We were all together in the cloud yurt and then you weren’t with us anymore.”

“I was sitting in the disco room and then got a photo assignment and then I saw a cute girl play drums and then Ariel Pink was amazing and then someone stood on her tip-toes and other people roller skated. Did you see the sex video?”

“I loved the sex video! Who are you?” Allie’s friend asks, looking at me.

“This is—” Allie says, turning me. “What was your name again?”

“I’m River. I’m a writer—.”

“Yeah, whatever, I see the pass,” the friend says. “Ready to go?”

Allie hands me my camera. I turn it on and flip through the photos. There are only about three of them, and they’re all terrible.

“Thanks for helping me out tonight,” I say. “I owe you one.”

“There’s a beautiful denim jacket with a buffalo in the Levi’s tent. Grab me that and we’ll be even.” She points at the pass dangling around my neck.

“Pass don’t make me God,” I tell her.

Over the course of three weeks in September 2013, a train will travel from New York City to San Francisco, making nine stops at train stations across the country. Organized by artist Doug Aitken, Station to Station will connect leading figures and underground creators from the worlds of art, music, food, literature, and film for a series of cultural interventions and site-specific happenings. The train, designed as a moving, kinetic light sculpture, will broadcast unique content and experiences to a global audience. A public art project made possible by the Levi’s® brand, Station to Station will raise funds through ticket sales and donations to support non-traditional programming at nine partner museums around the country. Join the project at Levi.com/makeourmark