- The secret to Mister Saturday Night's success starts at the door. When you roll up to one of Eamon Harkin and Justin Carter's parties, the security staff gives you a cheery welcome rather than an airport-style pat down. This attempt at creating the warmest atmosphere possible also extends to the bar staff, soundsystem, decorations and a number of other little touches that you won't find at other nights. Then there are the party's dance floor rules—displayed on posters around the perimeter and (politely) enforced by eagle-eyed spotters—that ask dancers to keep their phones in their pockets.
All of these winning elements were on display this past weekend at the last in a series of four Mister Saturday Night parties at Bushwick's Silent Barn. Harkin repped alone at the finale, though he had help from DC party-starters Beautiful Swimmers, whose combination of musical nerdiness and unbridled fun felt right at home.
Arriving just before midnight, I found a small crowd hanging back while Harkin reached into his record bag for warm, inviting house. Within 40 minutes, the dance floor was full, led by a crew of regulars. Silent Barn—a dark, unvarnished room with a disco ball as its flashiest feature—is perfect for Mister Saturday Night. It's the kind of DIY space where beers start at $3 and you'll probably strike up a chat with a stranger in the queue for the toilet. The venue's all-ages policy and 4 AM close also encourages a different kind of partygoer than other Bushwick events, many of which stretch well into Sunday. At Mister Saturday Night, you get in, sweat it out and leave on a high at a not-too-regrettable hour.
Harkin was in his element, mixing evenly between punchy tracks like Nexus 21's "Self Hypnosis" on the E&S rotary mixer. When Ari Goldman and Andrew Field-Pickering took over, the room was in just the right mood. The duo brought their upfront presence to the booth, constantly working the EQs or scrolling through the CDJs to find the next jam. Their selections stayed solidly house-y, from deep to jacking and back again, with the occasional welcome swerve into breakbeat-tinged fare. After a run of focused grooves, the party peaked with Omar S's sleazy anthem "I Wanna Know."
The atmosphere got looser and more jubilant as numbers thinned in the final hour, prompting Goldman and Field-Pickering to start channeling the UK garage flavours of their recent RA podcast. (It turns out Sunship's From Midnight Mix of Jhelisa's "Friendly Pressure" never gets old.) Then Harkin jumped in with Ladycop's "To Be Real," extending the grinning fun of the home stretch.
While Saturday didn't hit the exultant heights of some of the open-air Mister Sundays, it was a neat encapsulation of the party's philosophy. On their mailout for the Silent Barn dates, Harkin and Carter offered to help out anyone who wanted to come but couldn't afford it. As they put it, "we don't want anyone excluded because of financial constraints." On the dance floor, that sense of decency translates to a palpable spirit of community. One of my lasting memories from the party happened midway through Beautiful Swimmers' set, when a guy dancing up front randomly called out to no one in particular: "Are we all good?" The answer, as it tends to be at Mister Saturday Night events, was a resounding yes.