The Affair

Saturdays at the Marble Arch

Ever since the city started herding clubbers onto Granville Street around the turn of the century, the strip has turned into one of those crazy nightlife districts common to large North American cities. Nowadays, strolling down Granville on a Saturday night is like going to the zoo: you're likely to witness either random acts of violence or drugged mammals in the throes of erotic embrace. With action like that on the sidewalk, it's a wonder anyone bothers going into the clubs; this Saturday, why not just brown bag it and catch the freak show outside?

But if at some point your flask runs low and you feel like dancing, you could do worse than head over to Richards Street, to a club with the highest per capita hipster rating in the city. Where Saturdays at the Marble Arch used to be almost too cool for their own good, the Affair has settled comfortably into its own, attracting a mixed clientele of white-belted indie rockers, dance-starved post-ravers, and a bunch of middle-aged Asian dudes who've stumbled in from the karaoke booths next door.

Trevor Risk presides over the night with aplomb, skipping from genre to genre by deftly highlighting the connections between them all. Take, for example, a single mix from last Saturday?-a seamless merger of Grandmaster Flash's "White Lines" into Daft Punk's "Around the World". There's nothing particularly revolutionary about playing hip-hop and house in the same set, but as mixed by Risk, the pairing took on an added dimension, the former's proto-techno leanings enriched in light of the latter's revivalist electro touches. Besides blends like those, this is the place to hear tracks by new hipster favourites like Bloc Party and M.I.A.-two U.K. acts whose energetic mashing of styles is, if not totally groundbreaking, admirable nonetheless. And so it is with the Affair.