ManRay could return to Cambridge in October

several dozen pleasant nights there over the years. Such a lovely, wildly eclectic, all-preferences, no-judgment crowd of goths, drag kings and queens, New Romantics, rockabilly types, lightly fetishistic leather 'n latex fans, leopard-spandexed rockers, and assorted other costume-y subculture adherents.

It was heaven for my Blondie-punk, vintage-loving girlfriend for whom every day was Halloween, never the same oddball look twice. I favored a late-70s punk-rock look (not inauthentic for me) or Oscar Wilde-ish fop suit with swooshy neckware, just barely outré enough for a dull straight dude to pass.

I loved the DJs, then-rare spinners of industrial rock and underground dance music at deafening volumes. The crowd was kooky, sweet and blissful, the venue clearly filling an aching void in the scene. A handful of fine live music shows too, though damned if I can name any of the bands. Maybe some early Thalia Zadek joint like Uzi? Bleep-bloopy proto-industrial in the vein of Suicide? That's the general idea in my bedimmed brain. I'd love some reminiscences here to jog my patchy memory.

I'll be one of a few now-grizzled, formerly-svelte nostalgists visiting Man Ray v2 at least once, hoping it finds a fresh young audience of arty, proud denizens of the particolored societal fringe. I imagine it will: as crazily backward and obtuse as some Americans remain in 2021, today feels refreshingly more tolerant than in my youth, especially among Millennials and later generations. I can imagine a world where narrow-minded dullards are aging out of the populace.

Don't know if that's great for this place -- maybe it will be less crucial a refuge for folks that congenitally or self-determinedly flout antiquated social norms -- but I wish it success. In my snotty youth, our mantra was "Why be normal?" The more enlightened framing these days speaks to the original Man Ray's ethic: "We don't give a damn what square, reactionary, benighted old folks deem to be normal, and neither should you."