Killer Plastic O, or better known only as Plastic, is a well-known Milanese club.
It was born in December 1980 from an idea of Lucio Nisi, the patron, and Nicola Guiducci, creative and DJ.
When it opened, something more precarious could not be imagined: a black cave obtained from a small warehouse overlooking Viale Umbria, a very old one-story building with railing, destined for demolition due to the renovation projects of the Porta Vittoria station. A place called Plastic, opened by a group of twenty-year-olds returning from the management of an off-punk shop in via Lupetta, behind via Torino, with the pretense of making it the first Niuiorchese club in Milan. A little new wave, a little dark and already very gay oriented, but without flaunting the trend.
Plastic was very precarious and unstable, but it was also the den that Milan was looking for and needed. And which she continues to be unable to do without after the beauty of 38 years. Can a club-disco be registered on the list of Milanese houses of culture? Not only can it but must, considering not only its record longevity, but also the traces it has left and continues to shed. After all, this is the only Milanese dance club that deserved the Ambrogino, in 2009, for having polished the name of Milan in the world. And it is also the place that the good soul of Elio Fiorucci undertook to defend against the eviction of the old office in viale Umbria because “without Plastic Milano would lose an important part of its identity”.
Plastic packed his bags from the hole of wonders in viale Umbria in 2012, to reopen a few months later in via Gargano 15, Ripamonti area, taking over a failed swingers club, in the middle of an almost abandoned industrial area. The magic still works: there is always a queue and, like three decades ago, access is like a lottery. The buttadentro decide who can and who cannot and there is always someone who takes it badly. After all, this certainly undemocratic thing about the selection at the entrance cannot please everyone: whoever is "on the list" or who knows someone well-known enters. Plastic was the first to import the system from New York. Unpleasant but undoubtedly effective, because in the end it avoided massification, made it irresistibly desirable and, above all, protected its identity.
Because the extraordinary thing is that Plastic is still made and reproduced today by the same people who opened it in 1980: Nicola Guiducci, art director and dee-jay, and Lucio Nisi, patron, manager and lightning rod of all the messes inside and outside the venue. . Guiducci, who now travels in his sixties, is an art clubbing genius. In the black cavern of the Eighties Plastic he mixed electronic new wave and Puccini arias even before he did Malcom McLaren. He defined the look of the place by putting together old crystal teardrop chandeliers, delabré damask sofas and video windows in the walls, mosaic mirrors, pulsating light, grandmother's applique and lasers. For a couple of years, in the private room, he even placed a billiard table. Such stuff had never been seen in Milan or even in New York.
In fact, Plastic became famous because the Americans of show business and Italian stylists had elected it as a showcase of creativity. For a long season on the plastic's barbon-chic armchairs and tables, rock stars sat after concerts: from Madonna to Sting, from Springsteeen to Grace Jones to Pink Floyd; and then Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, who flirted with Guiducci; and again Oliviero Toscani in search of faces and bodies, Elio Fiorucci in search of inspiration and a good part of the elite of successful Milanese fashion, Stefano Gabbana in the lead. Guiducci, still highly sought after as the "sound designer" of the fashion superbig shows, did not detach himself from Plastic due to the symbiotic link with the other fundamental pillar of the venue, Lucio Nisi.
Which goes for the seventies, and is in turn a mythical and unrepeatable figure. He began to take care of Plastic a few months after the foundation, since his brother Lino - the one from the punk shop - the first founder, threw in the towel for health problems. Lucio, an Apulian from Villa Castelli - an agricultural village between Brindisi and Taranto known for artichokes - had a fruit and vegetable shop in the San Siro area and for more than twenty years he managed both: at 4.30 he closed the Plastic and half 'hour later he was at the Ortomercato shopping for the shop. Ortolan and disco but above all "political leader" of his nocturnal enterprise, constantly patrolling around the club to intercept, and reject, "ugly faces". And also patrols inside the Plastic den, to avoid dangerous nesting and tensions between the slopes and sofas.
Ghostwriter: Dark side of Barbie https://www.instagram.com/darksideofbarbie/
Credits images: web
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