Word: mecca
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...whose enthusiasm for something high-tech occupies a little more brain space than the normal person would dedicate to, say, a metal-plated canine robot. Because Japan is the source for so much of this addictive technology, it's not surprising that these fetishists view the country as the mecca of techno-cool. Fittingly, Japan is also the birthplace of the word otaku, an almost untranslatable phrase that describes a person whose fascination with something has reached, well, loopy proportions. Below, meet five American otaku and see how even the sanest of people can be transformed by a simple machine...
...Chulada is a real musician, you understand. He has paid his dues all across the American West Coast, jamming on his keyboards at smoky coffeehouses for more than a decade before cutting three albums with his band SadSadFun. Which is why when the 29-year-old Chulada deejays at Mecca, a velvet-draped club in San Francisco, he only uses Technics SL-1200 direct-drive turntables to spin his favorite vinyls. "When I used the Tech 12s, I feel like I'm playing a real musical instrument," he says, his fingers, with blue-varnished nails, keeping time to the lush...
...tried the Tech 12s, I suddenly felt like a real deejay." Today, the former hippie haven of Haight-Ashbury, where the laid-back Chulada bunks with his brother, teems with hundreds of makeshift Mobys scratching out their living. Some, including Chulada, have made it to the coolest clubs, like Mecca where a weekly knock 'em down drag show packs in gays and straights alike. Others make do by spinning at cheesy chain eateries, where deejays provide little more than background noise. O.K., so it's not always glamorous. But, says Chulada, a sly grin creasing his boyish face: "Unlike...
...deep breath and hopped on a plane to Japan to hunt out the best deals. "It was the first time I'd traveled somewhere just to fulfill my toy fetish," he says of his trips down narrow Tokyo alleyways to check out tiny toy-shops. "But Japan is a mecca for robot collectors, so I knew...
...Arabs, venerates the great prophets of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It speaks of Solomon's "great place of prayer" in Jerusalem, which the first Muslims called City of the Temple. Only after the Jews of Medina rejected Muhammad did he switch orientation and instruct his adherents to pray facing Mecca, whose ancient shrine, the Kabah, was thought by locals to have been built by Abraham and his son Ishmael, the father of the Arabs...