Event Recap - RUSH B2B Wars @ Podlasie Club
- csima2
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
One of the city's hottest nightclubs offers partygoers a taste of that real rave energy.
My friend and I leaned against the concrete wall a few feet outside the entrance to the club, having stepped away from the dancefloor to recuperate our energy with tropical -flavored Mexican cigarettes. I inhaled, my head spinning with a mixture of nicotine, serotonin, mango bubblegum, and a Malört shot from earlier. The frigid Chicago winter air is a welcome presence on my damp skin and sweat-drenched hair. My legs were clad in chunky high-heeled boots and wrapped in leopard print fishnets.
Podlasie Club is situated by the intersection of Milwaukee and Central Park Ave. in the Avondale neighborhood on the Northwest side, an area dotted with several other bars and clubs that in recent years has established itself as an active nightlife district for young and hip Chicagoans.
Some rowdy, tipsy men walked past us, loudly conversing about their next moves for the evening. I forgot exactly what I said to them; all I remember is how they glanced at us and continued walking for just a second longer before one of them said "Yeah, we're going in here," and they all flocked into the club. As they entered, my friend advised them to "go behind the curtain".
And behind the curtain at Podlasie, past the cash-only ticketing at the door and the cheap bar and sprawling cozy lounge area, there is the dancefloor. The space is deceptively simple, far more modest than more mainstream, flashy high-budget venues like Prysm or Radius, yet in my opinion the energy and intensity at Pod blows all of them out of the water. It is a small, dark intimate room hidden behind a translucent black curtain and sparsely furnished: there is the DJ booth front and center flanked on either side with stacks of giant speakers, fake vines covering the walls and rows of strobe lights on the ceiling pulsating neon. The fog from the smoke machine combined with the heat generated from the hundreds of thrashing bodies that fill every available square inch of the floor every weekend until three in the morning makes me feel like I'm in the Korean sauna, except there's more hard techno. Even on a Thursday night, they've sold out of tickets.
Family-owned since its inception in 1986, Pod was once a simple dive bar that catered primarily to working class, middle aged Polish immigrants and their families. But due to demographic changes in the neighborhood largely caused by gentrification and rising cost of living, the local Polish population dwindled and business died with it. The owners were nearly forced to close its doors in 2021 before they were able to successfully reinvent themselves following the unexpected success of a dance party that transformed the dormant old ballroom in the back of the building to the iconic spot it is today. The venue took a complete 180 from being a total snoozefest to consistently throwing sold-out ragers bringing a rotation of selectors representing countless genres within the EDM scene. B2B Wars marks yet another innovation for Podlasie: their first time collaborating with a genuine underground rave collective like Rush.
For the uninitiated, B2B is a type of DJing where two DJs collaborate by sharing the mixer to perform together, taking turns selecting tracks in one set for a unique listening experience that combines their respective styles. Rush's chosen selectors are eight of their resident DJs who have been with the group since their first events, and while some of them, like Dysphazia and Ch4wni have spun at Pod before, others like Catvisu, DJ Culebra, and Milwaukee-based R3ALGRL, mark this night as their official nightclub debut. It warms my heart to see how much their careers have grown in the past year thanks to the endlessly supportive, chosen family formed by Rush's community, who before anything else have always prioritized cultivating a safe space of uninhibited creative self-expression and acceptance. Unfortunately, out of respect for the founders' wishes to protect this special, secretive space, I feel like I can divulge little about their activities. However, I can certainly describe what I saw and heard on the night of their club pop-up.
By the time I arrived at Pod that night, I came just in time to catch the latter half of DJ Culebra's and R3ALGRL's set, a seductive, edgy, and intensely funky high-BPM mix of deconstructed club, hard dance with additional influence of neo-perreo, hardstyle, and hyperpop that kept the dancefloor hot and heavy well past midnight. In the interim between the transition from their set to the closing acts, Apollodubz and Eros, there was a brief interlude where all the DJs and partiers gathered around to sing happy birthday over a tres leches cake to celebrate Ero's birthday that night, a wholesome moment that attests to how close-knit the group has become. The number of candles on the cake allege that the young man is turning fifty-two, just one of many inside jokes shared amongst them.
I've known Apollodubz to always be detail-oriented, but tonight he looked extra locked-in on the decks as he melded sounds of dubstep and industrial with hard techno alongside his equally focused rave brother from another mother. Their sound kept me and my friends headbanging and sweating until the lights turned on.
I think the Cronenbergian monster spitting the list of selectors out of its mouth featured on the flyer perfectly represents the gritty, grungy energy of this night's sound and the crowd. I happen to recognize Rush's resident flyer designer as my peer at UIC. He goes by Dio, or @spicevipe on Instagram, and is a graphic designer as well as an animator. When I asked him what influences inspired the flyer for B2B Wars, he told me "...gross-out, distorted, body horror art from the '90s and early 2000's, like the Garbage Pail Kids. Rave scene flyers from that time were another source of inspiration, a really good example encapsulating that style being Hardcore Overdose. And what else popped up in my head is that I just really love teeth, so I added a lot of teeth."
This upcoming weekend, Rush plans to throw again for Friday the 13th, but at a different venue. Rumor has it that there'll be another talented UIC student artist featured on the lineup to play hardcore techno for all the late-night fiends from 4:30-5:30 AM. His identity? I might reveal who in one of the next issues of RAVE101. Stay tuned!
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