Bash Compactor: The Light Stuff

Back in college, a laser light show usually involved getting stoned with a bunch of filthy hippies, then heading to an amphitheater to watch fake stars dance to the tunes of Led Zeppelin. This was something different.

Last Wednesday night, the folks from Mother NYC created a crazy 20-minute light show in the windows of 170 rooms of The Standard Hotel using LED lights and 60 dancers, putting on something that was pretty damn spectacular.

Enough summer scarf and fedora-wearing tastemakers to give an ad exec a wet dream crowded Little West 12th to catch a glimpse. Many jokes were made about the usual show that takes place in the windows of the Standard. You know, how people fuck in front of them and whatnot.

Celebrities like Penn Badgley, Mary-Louise Parker and Harvey Weinstein were there for a simultaneous fashion show that took place at a makeshift, three-story stage that featured models sporting Target’s latest budget fashions, but it’s doubtful anybody paid much attention.

Most were focused on the hypnotic light show, where dancers clad in glow-in-the-dark material writhed to Daft Punk-like music and the windows blinked all sorts of colors. Fittingly, the light show is rumored to have been done by the same team that does Daft Punk’s lights.

“I’d love to see one of the windows light up and there accidentally be a family from the Midwest watching television in their hotel living room,” said Seth Pitman, a musician, in between bouts of the surrounding crowd loudly oohing and aahing. The afterparty, held at Meatpacking club Abe and Arthur’s, proved to me the half truth that a few beautiful women capable of putting up with really awful conversation had tried to tell me before: The Meatpacking District is relatively tolerable if all your shit is paid for. Relatively.