what makes a nightclub good?

i was going to post this in reply to confuscius' reply to woebot's stated desire to invest clubbing w/ meaning

however, i decided to make this its own thread b/c i'm not sure if anything on this list relates to the question of "meaning" -- and b/c it'd take the discussion of the "drive to be seen" way off point

so here's a partial list of what good nightclubs do or should do . . . .

(1) shift to more intimate venues = this is a 10-year-old trend = but was made necessary by the rise of superclubs = problem w/ intimate spaces is that they don't allow enough of a platform for the stars of the night to shine, nor do they allow for much unpredictability or chaos on the dancefloor

(2) no cover or nominal cover charge ($5 max) = can't have a space potentially open to all if you charge too much on the door = plus if you charge too much on the door then you end up having all kinds of materialistic bastards in the space

(3) no door policy = if people are lining up to get in, then you're obviously not ahead of the curve! = or else you're trying to create the appearance that you're fashionable and in demand, which is even worse = and yet the place can't be dead either = very delicate balance = best scenario is the steady flow of people hop-scotching through the door

(4) exception to the no door policy = never ever let a group of guys w/o any girls into the place = guys w/o girl companions should do the honorable thing and play the neurotic loner part = neurotic loners are always welcome at any good club, but not guys who travel in packs

(5) best way to inject excitement is to have live performers = bands or burlesque or clowns (but no laptop performers, no graffiti artists and no poets!) -- and then have the dj play before, after, and in b/w the performances -- the rise of burlesque and clownish entertainment is obviously a way to compensate for the disappearance of real-deal freaks of the night = it's a second-best solution = but it at least addresses the problem

(6) crowd dynamics -- can't really choose your crowd, the crowd chooses the place -- but you have to have a good mix of people and should be leery of one constituency taking over the place, i.e., can't be too hipster, too crusty boho, too european (if in new york), too straight or cocaine yuppy, too gangsta, too grad schoolish or journalisto, etc ------ needless to say, getting the right crowd dynamics is the $10,000 question, and a lot of it comes down to luck

(7) if you run the place, you need to have serious loyalty ("love") to the people who work there -- as this directly translates into vibe -- same policy should extend to bands and djs who play there -- moreover, if you have a "revolving door" policy, then people have no reason to keep coming back, i.e., you get rootless cosmpolitanism in extremis

(8) crowd dynamics part 2 = to really take things to the next level, you need to mix in gay people & fashion people w/o it being some kind of ironic electroclash or commercial scene or more of an art than music scene = in fact one of the major reasons for the decline and fall of clubbing is the split b/w queer and hetero scenes -- back in the 80s and early 90s things were really mixed, especially in the usa -- in london there was trade and "sex" w/ jon pleased wimmin at the cafe de paris, where music wasn't all that great, but crowd dynamics were strong -- *i'd be interested in hearing theories on why nightlife became so segregated in terms of sexual orientation in late 90s*

(9) make sure all staff, djs and performers live on the same onion ring -- i.e., that they're all people who'd cross each other's path even if not working at same establishment -- which does not mean that they have to be into the same kind of music or already be acquaintances/friends -- indeed, that'd be bad as each night should have its own musical identity, and a place where everyone is everyone else's friend would be way too limiting and claustrophobic -- and yet if you don't have people from the same onion ring, you'll have a club that has no overall orientation or which falls prey to the latest trends willy nilly

(10) the physical space -- decoration and design -- in general you want to keep things a bit rough w/o it being a dive or self-consciously "squat" -- and, errrr, apart from this rule you can't conform to formula for decorating the place, so i can't state a formula as such -- and in new york you either need to be very lax about enforcing the smoking ban or else have a back room or patio w/ seating and tables

(11) provide fruit and other such refreshing freebies -- if you can afford to do this w/o having to charge too much on the door or adding to price of drinks

(12) try not to have tables and booths that a private group of people can make their own for the evening -- this kills social interaction -- although tables are okay if on the periphery of the room w/ banquette seating -- but definitely no booths or too many chairs -- and no huts a la subtonic

(13) need to have space for dancing = but can't have too big of a space, b/c then people are all too aware of how "empty" the dancefloor is -- also helps to have random depressions in the floor or a slight slant to the floor, as this will make things a bit more freaky should people actually dance

(14) try to have a bar that wraps around as much as possible -- b/c some people like to watch (just as others like to be seen)

(15) always have some kind of really cheap beer on hand -- though try to avoid pabst or anything else trendy -- and always have cheap well drinks -- w/o making this into any kind of gimmick -- so you still serve quality beer and quality alcohol as well

(16) have only one floor, w/ only one dj playing at a time, etc -- make no attempt to please different people or cater to different moods -- it's always strictly about what you're providing right here right now

luka said:

my idea of a good club night would be one loads of rich trendy people went too then got robbed and humiliated.

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to my everlasting shame i never ventured out to the jungle clubs on the periphery of london when i lived there back in 92/93

closest that i came was heading up to labyrinth a few times

however, i've since been assured that had i gone to the jungle clubs, i would have been promptly identified as an american and then stabbed, mugged, beaten

or is this merely the myth and the legend of the early jungle clubs?

Jim Daze said:

Flood the place with loads of cheap mind bending drugs, either hallucinogens or amphetamine based, mixture of both ideally. Keep the supplies at a vigourus and steady level through out night with preferably dealers of benevolent and non aggressive temeprament.

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that's slightly outside the scope of what somebody running a club can do

needless to say, there's no shortage of cocaine in any downtown nyc nightlife establishment

and mushrooms are plentiful in the summer

the trick is to watch the line on the restrooms -- b/c if the line is too long and ridiculous, then word will get out and cops will assert their authority and crack down

luka said:

nightclubs are shit anyway.

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yes -- but what are the alternatives -- listening to music on your lonesome ownsome?

or perhaps only going to loft parties? -- which amounts to being dependent upon others to tell you about it

or, should they ever return, raves? -- but by the time raves come back into fashion, you'll be partying w/ people young enough to be your children

w/ a club you need merely walk down the street several blocks, have a couple drinks, say hi to people you know, and then leave or stay to the bitter end

(also think there may be some confusion here as to what i mean by clubs -- remember, we don't have anything like pubs in america -- we have bars and small clubs -- what i call "small clubs," blissblogger might well refer to as "dj bars" -- except that i envision people dancing)

luka said:

shit music.

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this depends on the dj

and let's face it, unless you're playing the records yourself, you'll never be entirely happy w/ the music unless you count yourself a fan of the dj or something

sometimes you have to take the approach of seeing what this or that dj has on offer this evening

and sometimes it's a question of enjoying someone else's take on music even though it's not your own take -- i.e., it's still good music, and nobody can be expected to cover all the bases

luka said:

too loud to talk

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i often see this as a virtue

luka said:

drinks cost too much

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some places have cheap drinks -- i think you're thinking in terms of super clubs where they charge a small fortune -- whereas i'm thinking in terms of more intimate spaces

luka said:

sweat drips off the celing

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this can be good or bad, depending on your mood

Jim Daze said:

I never go clubbing anymore anyway, Lukes right, s'shit innit ?

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it's not as if i'm unaware that clubbing has lost its edge and is associated with the bloated over commercialization of the 90s

rather, the question is twofold

(1) is clubbing dead forever? -- i.e., i addressed this on the mods thread -- i.e., we might simply view clubbing as a phenomenon that lasted from roughly 1960 to 2000

(2) assuming that it isn't dead, what moves would you have to make to have a decent club this day and age? -- which is why i wrote this in the slightly cheesy manner of an advice guide

AND YET if clubbing is dead, done, gone forever -- is this b/c our needs have changed? have we somehow moved on or something?

also, i think that this notion of clubbing as the preserve of rich trendy people is simply inaccurate

not to pretend to school english people in UK social history -- but the mod movement was a WORKING CLASS movement, as was the rockers movement -- the middle class alternative was being hippy or listening to folk music

northern soul was a working class movement -- and the very same people were the original constituency of house music in the uk

similarly, the club scene in 1970s and 80s nyc was not some kind of exclusive preserve of wealthy folk -- i.e, they had studio 54 -- but paradise garage and the other really happenng clubs were at root black/hispanic and gay, though they had an open door policy and during early 80s peak plenty of sexually straight white people passed on through -- which is what made it so great, by all accounts

i agree that super clubs are horrible -- i went to ministry of sound ONCE in 1993 and only once and thought it utterly crap from day one -- i never even bothered w/ any large clubs in manhattan post-1994 (though i can't say i that i lived in or even visited nyc during the latter nineties)

and at same time i'm not exactly satisfied w/ small clubs -- they never "explode," they at most vibe

however, i am the sort of person who goes out several times a week (unless i'm going through an ultra depressed spell or massively broke)

and this is for the simple reason that i most enjoy music in the company of others -- which alone dictates frequenting clubs or going to raves or some such destination

so, yes, i do understand the attitude that says "today's clubs suck"

but i don't understand the "anti-club" attitude -- unless you're going to make the argument that clubbing as such is dead and now belongs to the trash heap of history

so which is it?

and i think it something of a tragedy that volume in williamsburg died a quick death

also -- i don't think that clubbing implies being a bloke

that may be the case in england

but not in new york

there's still lots of socially maladjusted loner types who haunt the clubs and bars of new york

which is why i said that good clubs always let such people in

the bad ones don't

luka said:

look, the basic problem is people. who wants to be surrounded by people all night? especally people 'having fun'

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i find it enjoyable -- even if i'm not "having fun" with them, even if i may not like what i think they're about -- i still like going out and being around people, observing people, watching them interact

plus i sometimes enjoy talking to complete strangers, especially in new york, finding out where they're from, etc -- and yeah, often times they're "rich trendy types" when compared w/ the rest of society, i.e., they're from europe and on holiday, or they're involved in film, or whatever -- but this isn't always the case

obviously it helps matters if you're friendly with at least some of the people there, o/w it can be a very alienating experience -- and yet even if i'm feeling miserable and alienated as i nurse my drink in the corner of the room, or worse, prowl the room for drinks to steal b/c i can't afford any, there's still something to be said for going out and feeling the rhythm of the night (to quote gloria esteban)

and for the record, i'm the sort of person who often goes out alone -- i'm not easily embarrassed -- i have essentially three groups of friends in new york -- (1) one friend from college (plus his circle), who i for the most part never see; (2) three or four friends from grad school (and their circle), who i also rarely see; (3) party people friends, who are much more numerous, but who i see only if i go to the places they frequent -- but if i want to check out a band or go to a grime night somewhere or go to a club that's outside my usual loop, i generally do so on my own -- i've found that i if i had to rely on others to come along with me, i'd miss out on a lot of good music and adventures

luka said:

clubs worked when people were so fucked up on drugs other people didn't seem so bad. or they didn't even notice there were other people around.

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i think that people who go out at night cannot be fucked up on drugs year in and year out

people who are always fucked on drugs become "casualties" of one sort or another -- they disappear, they move somewhere else, they become completely straight (and so stop going out at night) -- or else they reign in their use so as to continue going out

luka said:

clubbing is not the preserve of rich trendy people, its true. but the type of club you describe certainly is.

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admittedly, i did have in mind downtown clubs -- my main reference points are downtown new york and downtown st louis -- and it's true that in this day and age the kind of people who live in downtown urban areas are more financially well-heeled than at any point since 1960 -- so don't hold me responsible for the state of the world!

however, when i think of what makes a really good club, i have vague (and perhaps overly idealized) recollections of what things were like when i first began to go to clubs in 1990 -- and it seems to me that things were a lot more diverse back then

(best club i ever went to on a regular basis was a place called "riot" in hartford, connecticut back in 90/91 --and it certainly wasn't a middle-class preserve -- it really did have seriously happening social dynamics)

and so i think the riddle to be solved is how to make clubs more "democratic" again -- which is why i advocated no cover or a nominal cover, cheap drinks, and no door policy -- and yet you (luka) retort that this is something that only rich trendy people would go for

(though i'm not rich, i'm relatively privileged, and though i'm not trendy per se, i have some sense of what's going on -- so perhaps i'm blinkered when it comes to the larger question)

now obviously there's the reality today of middle-class people slumming it -- but what they slum to is rock 'n' roll and pabst blue ribbon -- and that is ROCKER culture, not CLUB or MOD culture -- the upper middle classes of america have appropriated the blue-collar rock-n-roll culture of the 70s/80s

however, club culture in america in the course of the 90s and early 00s has become increasingly materialistic -- especially at the large venues and the sorts of places that are called "lounges" -- i.e., super posh, high covers on the door, expensive drinks -- and some of these venues attract the music, publishing and fashion elite, plus lawyers, corporate execs and wall street types, and others attract what ny'ers disdainfully term bridge-and-tunnel people (and such disdain is in part classist, though not completely so)

but i'm advocating nothing of the kind -- i'm calling for cheap drinks, no cover, no door policy -- with a crowd that's largely self-selecting

in manhattan, that's nublu, rothko, subtonic, bar 169, the delancey, happy ending, lit, sapphire, good world, lotus, ruby lounge, sunburnt cow, baraza . . . . a million and one places all playing the same game, all with good intentions, but not necessarily getting things right

and then of course there's the whole of williamsburg

now it may well be the case that you have no interest in anything downtown -- which in ny is south of 14th plus williamsburg -- perhaps you'd prefer uptown -- but that's what clubbing is, the places downtown and the places uptown (125th street and thereabouts)

OBVIOUSLY i'm not too well-versed in london correlates to nyc -- i suppose old towne is london's williamsburg? and ladbroke grove is the west village? and camden town's the east village?

the alternative is neighborhood hangouts and block parties -- and maybe that's what people in the outer boroughs do -- places much more strictly defined by class and ethnicity

again, downtown club scenes are supposed to be, in theory, self-selecting -- open to all comers, a kind of democracy -- but perhaps it merely means trendy, rootless, middle-class people

(though a number of the places i mentioned above have fairly diverse crowds on any given night -- and maybe despite the diversity the people are all trendy to this degree or that -- but being trendy certainly doesn't mean being (a) rich and (b) white -- so maybe i don't understand what you mean by the term "trendy" -- clubbing insofar as it has its roots in mod culture is about being trendy, i suppose, or at least hip or knowledgeable about music -- and there's usually a high degree of black participation in the core crowd, and then there's the people who pass on through, the non-committal cultural tourist types -- again, when you say "rich trendy people" i'm not sure what you mean exactly b/c it's more of a general slur than an accurate description of what goes on)

so maybe the rootless, trendy, and middle class go to downtown clubs and loft parties

and maybe people in the outer boroughs go to neighborhood bars and block parties -- and yet this to me seems a very limited horizon (but again, maybe it's a case of my not being able to see the light as i pretty much am middle-class and rootless)

luka said:

jeez, that'll make for a fun night. people on cocaine are so fun. god clubbings so great . . . . not only are you surrounded by cunts, you're surrounded by cunts on coke, dear god...

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now you're being unfair to me -- it was jimdaze who remarked that i made no mention of drugs, and so i simply pointed out that there's no shortage of cocaine in downtown ny bars and clubs -- and i'd imagine that this is true of quite a few bars and clubs throughout the entire city, including the outer boroughs

aside from marijuana, cocaine is the most popular and readily available drug pretty much anywhere you go

this reflects not my personal preferences but the state of the world

polystyle desu said:

then you went on to detail only what YOU think makes a club 'good'

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this has got to be one of the more absurd comments i've ever come across on this forum

was i supposed to imagine what i think OTHER people think makes a club good???

that would sheer nonsense

i never purport to give any thoughts or opinions other than my own

however, if you disagree with my take on things, then why don't YOU say on which points you disagree and what YOU prefer instead

which is more or less what luka did -- though he didn't provide alternatives, at least he indicated what he doesn't like about the sort of club i described

and by providing detail, i was trying to give people something concrete to work with

also, you seem to be making the suggestion that i've somehow "exhausted" the topic

i, however, think it's very fertile ground for discussion -- e.g., grime is "street" music that people nonetheless go to "clubs" to hear -- all kinds of thorny issues

i've actually made 3 or 4 different posts on this general topic the past couple days -- i.e., it's my current preoccupation

also, if it's mainly been me talking to myself, that's probably b/c the site was down this past week and now it's the weekend

dissensus is always much busier on week days

(or perhaps you're suggesting that we're supposed to observe some kind of rule whereby we each say our very small piece and then no more until others have chance to chime in? -- except that dissensus has never operated this way -- and if you don't want to read someone's lengthy and verbose comments, then skip to the next person's comment)

(and, again, the more i say, the more others have to remark upon)