Groovii Biscuit
Performer/Doorbitch/Kookster Project Editor
Inner city Sydney was once a haven for the creatives and social fringe dwellers - souls
that wither if they follow the principles of mainstream society’s survival manual. This was
a time when privacy and slipping through cracks was more possible. In the late 90’s the
culture was changing very rapidly and gentrifying fast. The gay scene was succumbing
to ‘pink dollar’ commercialisation, unique life styles that once opened minds and offered
alternate and rare ‘survival tools for the bent’ were starting to be fed back through
mainstream culture without their essential juice. This cultural shift had a terrible sense
of foreboding for me. I felt grief over the shifting of an era that I knew would be difficult
to regain, another degree of movement away from my natural rhythms. I felt like the
90’s were the final stage of a global wave moving away from privacy, silence, wildness,
space, sensuality, time and expressive choice.
Club Kooky was a gathering place for individuals who didn’t choose to live by the
mainstream moral and social code, who were expelled against their will because they
literally couldn’t. We were a social experiment saying ‘I can take personal risks with my
body, my thoughts, my actions, my morality, my spirituality, my sexuality, my earning
potential, my capacity to love. These choices may alienate me from society, they may
alienate me from a comfortable future, but I will prove un-dangerous and of value
regardless, and I will deeply know myself.’
For the first 4 years of Kooky I was one of the door bitches, an honoured role as I had
the privilege of seeing every divine and dishevelled creature come in one by one. There
were a multitude of stories that occurred around the door; the singer from a Zulu tribe
who found us somehow and would stand at the door joyously singing and clicking in
his mother tongue as everyone came in, the group of Kooksters who spent their whole
evening at the door helping me stamp and rarely went in, the careful balancing of the
platform heels as Kooksters descended, often with head-dresses offering very little
visibility, the night a pizza delivery guy arrived at about one in the morning because
someone had ordered some pizzas, AND somehow I found them, AND they sat down in
the middle of the dancefloor to eat, undisturbed.
On the door Lolli (the other door bitch) and I had to try and assess really quickly if
someone coming in already had a well-developed open mind, or were ready to expand
further and join the social experiment, or whether they were going to be frightened and
stay in a cultural safety zone sabotaging activities. It was very challenging because we
only had five minutes to decide and we didn’t want to do it based on what someone was
wearing or on clichés.
Situations that would happen down at Kooky were often very funny, and I remember for
a few weeks we had this guy come down who had an edgy intense vibe, long black hair,
seemed a bit death-metal. We weren’t too sure but we thought we’d give him a go. He
would bring an electric guitar or some bongos with him and sit against the wall near the
bathroom thrashing his instruments in a dark cloud, all out of synch with the music. One
night I was getting everyone to sit down ready for the show, an awesome part of my job
each week, like getting kids organised on the mat for story time. I was also a regular
performer so everyone was used to me being in a ‘show organiser and performer’ mode.
A few minutes into the show the death-metal dude comes onto the stage and sits up
the back bashing his bongos. Because I was at the tech run I knew this wasn’t meant
to happen so I went up there discretely to try and get him off. He was refusing to go so I
tried to pull him and he started to wrestle with me. I’m a pretty strong woman but this guy
was so strong and intense and we were wrestling on the ground, back and forth. I was
losing the battle and getting a bit worried. I was looking around for help, and I could see
that everyone was just watching the show, accepting everything, thinking ‘this wrestling
bit is a little strange but lets just go with it, they’re acting it very well’. I started to call
out ‘help, help’ and finally a couple of guys twigged that this wasn’t a planned part of
the ‘happening’ and helped me out. I still laugh at the thought of that surreal situation. I
saw ‘death-metal’ about a month later on the news getting arrested for streaking across
the Sydney Cricket Ground during a game.
For me there is a standout memory that quintessentially captured the care, generosity
and vision of the Kooky community. Kooky was like a magnet, extraordinary people
seemed to just find us, and one of those people was a guy called Peter. Peter had a wild
head of ‘guru hair’ and a massive beard that only revealed his eyes. For a long time he
never spoke, would just nod his head and shuffle into the club. He was obviously very
poor, looked a bit like he was living on the streets, and because of this we let him in for
free each week. All night he would just sit and watch the action, often nodding his head
silently as chatty Kooksters would sit beside him and deliver their monologues.
He came religiously every week from I don’t know where, someone told me he was
living out at North Rocks Psychiatric centre but I don’t really know for sure. He became
a bit of a Kooky mascot. In those days we would have a queue that would extend down
the street and around the block. People would sometimes have to line up for ages,
fabulously half-naked in the middle of winter. We had people driving up from Canberra
and not even getting in sometimes – it was a hot $5 ticket. I remember standing on the
street doing crowd control and watching Peter arrive, and everyone queuing up would be
touching his arm, calling out ‘Hi Peter’, and he would shuffle past, nodding through hair.
He’d come down the stairs and get his stamp free of charge ahead of the line, with never
any bitterness or questioning of his entitlement. It became an unspoken alternate ritual.
I loved this silent group decision to give privilege to an individual who would likely have
been rejected and invisible more times in his life than any of us could imagine.
I saw expressions of these qualities in the Kooky crowd over and over again and I love
them all for it, wherever they are. In today’s success-driven, prescriptive, faster-faster
era memories of the self-expression and courage of these people keep my heart the first
decider of my actions and my mind determinedly bent.
