2006-01-03 - 12:28 p.m.
When I was in like eighth grade I heard rumors that the greatest basketball center who ever lived was behind the Iron Curtain. Scouts had seen him play and he was incredible. If only he could be pitted against worthy opponents in the NBA. But barring some great escape worthy of James Bond, the Cold War meant he�d be stuck in the Soviet Union forever.
After the USSR fell apart, it turned out to all be true. Arvydas Sabonis was the player and went on to a career with the Portland Trail Blazers. (Actually, he was from Lithuania and played in Europe after the Baltic states became independent in 1989, but I didn�t know this at the time.) The Blazers were in the NBA playoffs throughout the late �90s and Sabonis was in full effect. Certainly he was amazing while I saw him (and intimidating; he�s huge at like 7�3� and almost 300 lbs.).
But here�s the thing: he was past his prime. Officially, he was born in 1964, but Soviet record-keeping is dubious at best. Maybe he was 40-ish? On top of this, his knees and Achilles tendon were shot. He�d become sort of an old-school player with a great ground game and sweeping hook shot (and in 1996-97, he sank 3 times as many 3-pointers as anyone else). And of course he could still hustle and bumrush the opposition, like all great centers.
So was he really the greatest center ever? When he was younger and spryer. When he could still jump and bounce around. When he could dunk. Guys who played with him in the 1980s, back in the Soviet Union, have said he would have made the NBA All-Star team every year. Watching him play, Magic Johnson pointed out �He can do what most big men can�t� shoot outside, score inside, and make passes� you can�t teach that.�
We�ll never know for sure. Sure, we can speculate and hypothesize. Maybe. Maybe. But we can�t actually go back in time to 1985 and transplant him to the West. Maybe he would have folded against real competition. But maybe he would have stepped up and shined. We can only imagine. We�ll never really know.
In tenth grade, the Berlin Wall came down and there were misty tales of the overjoyed revelry in Berlin. Parties everywhere. Dance clubs popping up out of the blue, like in unused buildings and stuff. This one place opened up in an old bank vault and spun some crazy techno all night. It�s right between East and West Berlin, on the edge man. Wild, huh.
Well, that also all turned out to be true. In the summer of 2000, Alithea was studying in Berlin. I went there to visit her for a week or so and late one night we took a bus all the way from her dorm on the outer edge of the city to Mitte, the area between the former East and West halves of Berlin. We went to Tresor, the club in the former bank vault. It was a real place.
It was much more than real. It was awesome. You went downstairs and behind an incredibly thick door to the vault space. There was a relatively small, dark and intimate dance floor (not the corny and glittery caverns you find at some played-out places). Behind the building was an outdoor beer garden (with a stand selling wurst sausages like everyplace else I went in Germany) to chill out in after you�d thrown down inside.
The music was great. I�m not a big fan of techno or dance music generally, but this was so spare and stripped down to the basics of a danceable beat that it bordered on not being music. It was almost like listening to a Geiger counter. I guess some people wouldn�t find this appealing, but I thought it was fantastic. (They apparently also had a record label which may have produced these kind of releases.)
As I danced away in there, having such a terrific time, it occurred to me that maybe the place had been even more fun when it opened in 1989. The vitality of a whole type of music freshly created. The thrill of reusing formerly wasted space to throw a party. The excitement of an entire region on the brink of a massive political shift. It was unbelievably great now, but if only the spirit of that time could be recaptured, maybe it would be even greater. Then it occurred to me: I was in the Arvydas Sabonis of dance clubs.
After more than sixteen years of awesomeness, Tresor finally closed a few weeks ago. The area has apparently finally been slated for redevelopment. I hope the developers a lot some space for the vibrant dance/music scene that was already there, but I unfortunately doubt they will. My sister recently went to a farewell party in Tresor�s honor at another club in New York. Of course, good times may be ephemeral. But was Tresor at the end of 1989 the best time ever?
Nah, but it�s still a bummer that it�s gone.
� 2006 Geoff Gladstone
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