Bash Compactor: So Many Little Eggies

July 4 should start with a bang, but my fireworks began a day or two earlier. Sometimes on holiday weekends, you start partying on the Friday, but luckily you have three full days to lie in bed recuperating. All I knew was by this past Saturday, my head was pounding like firecrackers and bottle rockets had already blasted me. But when you’re stuck in town, you might as well make the most of it.

Dim Sum and Then Sum was the name of the party located in Chinatown at Red Egg. “Red eggs in the Chinese culture are for good luck,” Darren Wan, the recently opened restaurant’s owner, told me. The restaurant has been renovated and dolled up into a sleek, black-lacquered boite with low lighting and cozy tables perfect for groups. And I was there with a bunch of club kids and party people.

Our host for the evening, Cole Nahal, is a designer who’s been plying his trade throwing splashy parties since the interior decorating business started to slow down. A few others at our table were in-between jobs, which was why the bottle of vodka languishing in ice at the table was appealing. We’d all get a generous glass or three.

The DJs were Kimyon Huggins, of The Danger, and MSG from The Standard. I was glad the music was cooking, but so was the kitchen. Red Egg serves up dim sum, which I’d heard was quite tasty, so I ordered vegetarian spring rolls and shrimp dumplings. I knew some at the table were low on pocket change, starved but broke, so I told the waitress to only bring out a couple of plates. “Can I have one?” one of my underemployed pals begged when the steaming platters came out. No problem. Greed is good, I figured, but that’s what friends are for.

I didn’t want to imbibe too much more of that vodka, though, because most of us had been out the night before—that’s when my headache began.

But Red Egg was merely the first stop of this night. At 2 a.m., everyone insisted on cabbing out to Williamsburg for Kenny Scharf’s party Cosmic Cavern. Although late, things were in full swing. Scharf was all in DayGlo with a paint-spattered Egyptian headdress, cavorting with beauteous burlesque artist Amber Ray. I began wrestling with the tall lean actor Kyle Kupres, who was dancing with a girl newly arrived from a Minnesota pig farm. My weekend had just begun, but it would be days before the real pyrotechnics.