In person, Zak Khutoretsky radiates warmth—he smiles, he hugs, he calls his friends “brother.” But he’s also someone defined by struggle, a self-described hustler who had to fight for everything he has. His family emigrated to Minneapolis from St. Petersburg when he was a toddler, and his parents split up shortly after that. As a kid Khutoretsky had a good heart but a taste for trouble. He had a habit of getting kicked out of schools, and by the time he was 20 he was throwing illegal parties. Coming right at the peak of America’s mid-’90s rave culture, Khutoretsky’s events were legendary, and he did whatever he had to do to make them happen: forging insurance documents, lying to landlords, even selling drugs to offset costs. A run-in with the law eventually made him go legit, but he kept at it, throwing enormous raves and later opening his own club. Today he’s a regular DJ at Berghain and gets booked all over the world, but he remains a cornerstone of his home city’s scene.