It’s not often you have a decent music venue near where you live and in my case, a 7 minute bike ride away through a park so when you do, don’t waste it! Last night I went their intending to see Moodyman dj and came across something unexpected.
I walked into Toko MC, past large clusters of 30 plus year old guys, dressed like music journos on a night out. At the door I was branded with a red stamp on my wrist after my name was scribbled off the guestlist and as I looked over towards the bar anticipating my 4th drink of the night, I saw about 10 people casually knitting at a table, as loud music reverberated off the walls.
I got into a conversation with Mariette, a freelance journalist who was part of this Breiwerk West knitting group.
“We meet here on the 1st Thursday evening of every month as a regular club and there’s different types of people involved in our group. We’re going for a world record; trying to knit the biggest picnic blanket and we’ve got to get over 60 pieces knitted by July the 9th!”
As the DJ [from Mahogani night], with long black Russell Grant hair, a thin mustache, red shirt with it’s arms rolled up showing his tattoos, who was dwarfed by the speakers played funk and latin house, and yet more guys showed up she told me…
“I thought it could have been a gay night tonight when we started seeing all of these men show up! We didn’t know it was kind of night it was going to be…we never really know what kind of night it will be! We just show up because it’s our local. For us knitting is craft, it’s meditative and social. So we let all of this go on around us and just enjoy it”
As I left an hour later, the first dancers to the music from the legendary Detroit house label were the knitters…It didn’t matter to them if was THE night to be at, or if it was full of Amsterdam hipsters. It was their local, and they claimed it for themselves.
