Photos by Riccardo Slavik

October 10th, 2024, Plastic Milano; Popstarz Memorabilia is a celebration of the Popstarz party crew and family’ legacy. Though I started working at Plastic in 1990 and worked there for 14 years, I was part of the Popstarz/ Gasoline family since the second half of the 90s, as a dj but also as a regular client. I’m happy to be part of this celebrative party and I’m here to share here some thoughts and some photographic memories from a couple of crazy nights during 2008. One being the season’s opening party, the other a night with a special guest dj set by none other than Princess Superstar. I was tasked by a magazine to interview her and shoot some photos for the article, we shot them in Gasoline’s ‘offices’ which were more of a basement/ storage room with white walls than anything else.I have no idea what happened with the interview, but I kept in touch with the lovely dj/rapper and was even asked to be part of her quarantine themed video.

There’s an idea that clubs are frivolous places, useful only for forgettable hedonistic pleasures, but more and more studies, books and documentaries are showing us that clubs and bars can be strong social anchors, places where people find ways to fit in and create lasting relationships with like minded people. This is especially true for the freaks, the weirdos, the social outcasts, the shy, the queer, those who can take advantage of the tribal communion of loud dance music, of darkness, of strobing lights. Those freeing, heady colors and sounds that can make anybody feel like they’re part of a bigger, swaying, accepting body.

I was never a morning person, I was never an early night person, I guess I was constitutionally predisposed to become a night owl, and at night I’ve found my tribe, my various families, my friends, even my enemies.

R.S.