Sweden, Swing Dancing, Strip Clubs
Brief observations from Wellington, where I watched Sweden beat Japan in the World Cup
— Wellington, New Zealand
Many years ago, I worked for a company that sent students from across the world to study and work in China. The years I spent there were interesting for many reasons, not least because I was able to visit China, and spent a non-insignificant portion of my other time driving around college towns in various forgotten portions of the United States.
It was also interesting work in that it afforded me the experience of collaborating in a network of global offices, whose reach at the time delved furthest into the US, UK, Australia, and China. A fascinating foursome, that, and one with material impact on the geopolitics of our present lives. Anecdotally, were there ever cultural collisions between offices, it didn’t tend to happen between the US and China, or China and anyone, for that matter.
Anyway one of the more amusing events sprinkled across my time there involved a bar near where some of the students lived in Shanghai. A few of the students believed, and told their university, this bar was a strip club masquerading as something perhaps nefarious. Our colleagues insisted this was not the case. And anyway, as a colleague local to Shanghai insisted to me, “Americans love strip clubs”.
We do? I wondered, into this information shared as if matter-of-fact. “They’re in all your shows”, she explained.
Whether or not Americans do in fact love strip clubs (I can hear her in my head saying this, anytime I encounter one in the USA), is up for debate. But I think about it often in terms of how we encounter other cultures; so often the very things you don’t notice domestically, stick out to you abroad.
It was to that conversation my mind went to last night as I strolled through a central part of Wellington, looking for a place to watch Sweden play Japan. For sprinkled between places like “Heartbreaker- Nashville Hot Chicken” and “El Barrio” were places named things like, “Dreamgirls F**k Yeah” and “Calendar Girls” and “The Mermaid”.
I can’t say for sure if those places were showing Sweden play Japan in the World Cup quarter-final. Though I didn’t investigate, electing instead to pop into an Irish pub next door where the football was on more clearly.
Inside, not only did the soccer-football fan out across every screen, with an array of eyes glued to them, but a live band played various kinds of Bayou tunes and swing music. A rather talented collection of remarkably-dressed swing dancers jived below.
Upon later investigation, it seems the art-form is rather prevalent here. Or, is at least prevalent enough to have multiple swing-dance schools in throwing distance from the strip clubs. The dividends were evident. For having lived in New York and been to New Orleans several times, as well as other American cities known for the music and dance-form, I think among the best swing dancers I’ve ever accidentally encountered turn out to be living in Wellington, New Zealand.
Ah, the sweet multitudes a city contains.
And so it was to the tune of “Let the Four Winds Blow” that I watched Japan fall out of the World Cup.
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