Beat
DJ Midas at Milly's

It's before 10 p.m. on Wednesday night and about 60 people are hanging out at Milly's.

Nobody's dancing.

DJ Midas is spinning from his turntables in the loft over the main floor. His music is not the stuff you hear on the radio. He wants his music to be new, cutting edge. But the most noticeable thing is the beat-the same beat people dance to everywhere young people get together.

The people hanging around look young. The boys wear baggy baggy pants with even looser shirts and the girls wear tight tight jeans with even skimpier tops. And Midas plays music that is both loud and a little relaxing.

About 10:30, the dance floor has become this thing, like a pool at a summer barbecue, that everybody is clustered around but nobody will venture onto. People hold drinks and talk and laugh. And the brave ones, like a girl in low slung jeans or a boy in a red baseball cap, inch a little closer to the floor and look around, look at each other, like "are you going in?" On this periphery, some people jokey dance, that sort of half-hip-shaking, arm-waving thing people do when they don't want to dance but some part of them wants to dance.

And finally the boy in the red hat, the girl in the low slung jeans and another couple are dancing-alone and also with partners. The boys dance alone more often than the girls, who dance with a boy or another girl but not much by themselves. The boys dance a variation on break dancing and the girls dance an update of dirty dancing. But somehow, when the boys and the girls dance together, they synchronize.

As time goes on, by 11 and maybe a little after, more people dance.

And the more people dance, the more people who are dancing look like they're having fun. DJ Midas puts on another song and though each one is different the beat mostly stays the same and soon the beat is the only thing you hear.

And then, about 11:30 p.m. or maybe sooner, it becomes clear that-like in one of those Volkswagen ads-everybody is caught in the beat somehow.

The dancers are moving as one mass. And around them is a ring of dance-floor-adjacent people who are swaying or bobbing their heads. Not quite dancing, these people are connected to the dancing. And next to them are people, farther from the dance floor, drinking and laughing and checking each other out. And these people might tap their feet occasionally but mostly they keep the beat in the way they sip a drink or in the way they turn their heads. And next to them, the people at the bar are drumming their fingers to the beat. The girl at the bar throws her head back and laughs. The guy on the other end of the bar turns his head to look at the people in one corner of the room, pause, then the people in another corner, pause, then another.

Weaving in and out, the servers deliver drinks, pick up glasses and seem to turn and bend and stop in time.

At the door, people are still coming. Groups of two, of three, large groups that have to wait for everybody to come in from the parking lot. And the number of people who picked Milly's for their Wednesday entertainment climbs toward 200.

It's about midnight; Milly's is packed; and everybody's dancing.

-Amy Diaz

Amy Diaz can be reached at hippo@hippopress.com.