Style on the Go
Muckraking, the Modernist Way
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As a correspondent for Vice Magazine and its online broadcast arm, VBS.tv, Trace Crutchfield gets to do things far more interesting than you or I.
He sipped "purple drank" (a.k.a. codeine syrup) in pursuit of the truth about Houston's rap scene. He exposed the garbagey, toxic waters that line the hip neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He took a working vacation to Bolivia inspired by the coca plant.
He is an unmistakable, tall, aviators-wearing, blond suit-- a worthy man to kick off the Modernist Society's new "Playboy After Dark"-inspired series, which features conversations with modern beings of eclectic tastes and bizarre travels.
The Modernist Society bashes began in Chicago in 2004 as a tie-in to the online rag TheModernist.com. But the emphasis then was on luring quasi-celebrity DJs and bands, while the "Playboy" events will instead spotlight intellectual pursuits and entertaining banter. And then, if all goes well,the event will descend into gin-fueled debauchery.
Tonight, Jason Mojica, a co-founder of the society and TheModernist.com, will spend an hour informally interviewing his old friend Crutchfield at Bourbon in Adams Morgan, with a couple of good bourbons between them to help the conversation flow. "Tongue-in-cheek pretentiousness" is the guiding principle, says Mojica.
Sure, sure. But this "society" thing is conjuring up images of Opus Dei. Just what makes a person a modernist?
"Essentially, a questioning attitude," says Mojica, who, when not throwing smarty-pants parties, is a freelance writer and student. Unlike modernist design, which "tends to want to throw away the old," he says, the group seeks what's new without "discarding what is old just because it is old."
Tonight at 8. (Free Hendrick's cocktails from 8 to 9 p.m. Interview portion from 9 to 10:15 p.m., and dance party with DJs D-Mac and Neville C till 2.) Bourbon, 2321 18th St. NW. 2nd floor. 202-332-0800.
(And if you miss this month's, catch the next event July 26, which will feature a chat with Josh Rushing, the jaw-droppingly candid Marine whose Central Command media office interviews made him a surprise star of the al-Jazeera documentary "Control Room.")
-- Lavanya Ramanathan
