Cherisse Moe

When it comes to lim­ing and par­ty­ing al­most noth­ing can stop a true Tri­ni-not even a state of emer­gency. De­clared by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar last week, the news caught the ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion to­tal­ly off guard. Ac­cord­ing to the gov­ern­ment, the state of emer­gency and cur­few, in ef­fect in sev­er­al ar­eas de­fined as "hot spots" had been en­forced to deal with the es­ca­lat­ing crime scourge and cap­ture the "big fish." So far, more than 1,000 per­sons have been de­tained for var­i­ous crimes and crim­i­nal of­fences.

At the time of writ­ing this ar­ti­cle we await­ed yes­ter­day's sit­ting of Par­lia­ment in which the Prime Min­is­ter was ex­pect­ed to seek to ex­tend the state of emer­gency. And while busi­ness-own­ers and cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to feel the pinch be­cause of the cur­few hours, it didn't take long for the lo­cal en­ter­tain­ment world to adapt to it. Mean­while par­ty pro­mot­ers are busy plan­ning their next event. Nowa­days, cur­few par­ties and house limes are the or­der of the day, as cit­i­zens find al­ter­na­tive ways to have fun in the midst of the trou­bling sit­u­a­tion.

Day vibes

Al­though the an­nu­al fire­works for In­de­pen­dence Day did not take place, cit­i­zens still had quite a few op­tions in which to choose, as far as en­ter­tain­ment was con­cerned, with day-time par­ties and spe­cial events in full gear. In­de­pen­dence Cur­few Par­ty, host­ed by ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty and DJ, Howie Tee, turned out to be a fun and suc­cess­ful ven­ture. Dressed in the na­tion­al colours, pa­trons had them­selves a ball with the "Hit­man" from 1 pm at 7 pm at Club Grav­i­ty, Long Cir­cu­lar Road, St James.

"It was a spur of the mo­ment thing to have this," Howie Tee told the T&T Guardian. "A lot of peo­ple were ask­ing me to do some­thing and I fig­ured that was the best way to go about it giv­en what's go­ing on right now. A kin­da In­de­pen­dence day vibes na." Mean­while, pop­u­lar spots like Au­ra Restau­rant and Bar and 51 De­grees Night­club on Cipri­ani Boule­vard in Port-of-Spain con­tin­ue to of­fer spe­cial day-time par­ties. Ra­jesh Chhi­ta, own­er of the La Ro­maine-based Plat­form 868 Priv­i­leged Nightlife, for­mer­ly known as Prive Night­club, said he too had re­sort­ed to host­ing 1 pm to 7 pm par­ties and "mem­bers-on­ly" events on pub­lic hol­i­days, Fri­days and on week­ends.

"This came in­to ef­fect last week and the feed­back has been good. I sup­pose the pub­lic is go­ing to get ac­cus­tomed to it," he said. Even the Mas Camp Pub (De Nu Pub) jumped on the band­wag­on, hold­ing its Par­ty Lime Be­fore Cur­few Hours, on Thurs­day, which start­ed at 1 pm. For an ad­mis­sion fee of $20, pa­trons were in­vit­ed to hear some good mu­sic and shake a leg at the Wood­brook venue. Own­er Mac Don­ald Ward said it was all in a bid to of­fer "some­thing dif­fer­ent." "Well there is no oth­er time to hold it," he joked. "We are giv­ing peo­ple time to go home. We try­ing any­thing be­cause we don't want to lay off peo­ple." The event end­ed prompt­ly at 7 pm, just in time for pa­trons to get to their re­spec­tive homes and hot spots.

Cur­few spe­cial

Movie the­atres have found a way around the sit­u­a­tion too by of­fer­ing "movie cur­few spe­cials." Ac­cord­ing to Movi­eTowne Di­rec­tor of Op­er­a­tions, Derek Fer­nan­des, pa­trons can now view their favourite movies for $10 less. "A two di­men­sion­al (2D) movie is now $35 and a three di­men­sion­al (3D) is $50," he ex­plained. "If some­thing changes then we will change our strat­e­gy. But right now, this is what it is."

In ad­di­tion to cheap­er movies, Fer­nan­des said that the movie sched­ule has al­so been al­tered to ac­com­mo­date the 9 pm cur­few. "The lat­est movie now starts at 6 pm in­stead of the usu­al time of 11.45 pm and we are even try­ing to get the last movie to start at 5.45 pm, so that peo­ple can get home." It's clear that even dur­ing a state of emer­gency, many cit­i­zens are still ask­ing the ques­tion: Where we lim­ing?