Honey-drenched pop

It was a crowded house on March 11 that celebrated the inaugural night of White Lies, promoter Sarah Stierch’s new ’80s night Fridays at the Vault. You’d think the last thing this city needed was another ’80s night, but here it is, and astonishingly enough, it combines the best of that era’s New Wave and punk with the absolute worst excesses of honey-drenched pop to create a highly entertaining, if not a little disturbing, atmosphere.

Christie Williams, winner of the costume competition of the inaugural White Lies 1980s night at the Vault, roller-skates her way through the bar area. White Lies takes place every Friday except the first Friday of the month at the Vault.

At the night’s peak, 150 people, nearly all of them dressed in full-on 1980s gear, were on the dance floor going wild to songs from every end of the spectrum of the decade of Reaganomics and Miami Vice: Ministry, Midnight Oil, Queen, Los Lobos and every damn band in between. They even slipped out of time-sync just a little bit for a little “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which (rather alarmingly) everyone knew the words to and sang along or dramatically declaimed, complete with Stierch’s horror-inducing pantomime of the song’s themes, which I pray will never be repeated on any dance floor in human history.