Debonair's one year

Ooo. Spooky. Check out the new photo gallery from last night's party at Debonair Social Club.


“Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.” – Lindsay Lohan, Mean Girls.


Halloween is also a night perfect for our fascination with performance and voyeurism. Debonair Social Club was proof of that this past All Hallows Eve as they celebrated their one-year anniversary with drink and music. The Wicker Park club was teeming with guests dressed in their Halloween best. Girls teetered in stilettos that would make the women down at Admiral X envious while guys’ costumes leapt from the wildly intricate to the mildly confusing (“Ok, so…you have aviator shades, a bandana, a leather vest and a cowboy hat. Urban cowboy?”).

Camera flashes went off every other minute, faces awash in an orange light, as sexy nurse after sexy nurse (but with blood!) posed. Amy Winehouse was the costume du jour for the evening; I saw more than three big black bouffants bob in the crowd. A live feed from an area separated from the main floor was projected on the walls. Revelers stumbled into the room and sat on black couches and talked amongst themselves. We in the main room couldn’t hear what they were saying, but every now and then we looked up to see what they were doing: giggling at unheard jokes, bending over in front of the camera to expose copious amounts of camel toe, kissing, hugging—basically, performing for us all.

After almost two hours of enjoying the open bar and mingling, Kill Hannah took the stage. Lead singer Matt Devine, dressed as Daniel–san from The Karate Kid pumped up the crowd. At the first strains of “Lips Like Morphine,” the crowd became a mass of flailing arms and shaking bodies. The band hurtled through their set list, ending on a cover of Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” with the audience screaming, "More, more, more!"

Lupe Fiasco was scheduled to perform that night as well after his House of Blues performance but was no where to be found when I headed out at 2 a.m. Which was the biggest trick in this night full of treats.


Though I’m no Clayton, check out the pictures I took at Debonair that night. It was truly outrageous. Truly, truly, truly outrageous. --Anthonia Akitunde