Hey Mr. DJ...
... why are you here? This isn't a dance club!
I was sitting at Nellie's the other evening, a Friday, talking with some friends. We were originally out on their roof deck, but as the crowd got denser and denser, we decided to move it in to the nearly empty downstairs area. The bar area was pretty quiet save some nameless white-label house music playing in the background. We immediately found an empty table and sat around it and resumed our conversation. Within 5 minutes of being seated, the volume of the music increased dramatically, and all of a sudden we could no longer hear each other talking across the table. The six of us had to split up into 2 or 3 smaller conversations in order to be able to lean in and actually communicate. I'm pretty sure the topic of conversation also immediately shifted to how loud and how bad the music was.
A few minutes later, I walked through the main downstairs room on the way to the bathroom and saw they had an actual live DJ spinning. They were paying for a DJ to play music at a bar that doesn't have a dance floor?
I'm not going to start up a rant about my distaste for gay dance music. That's already been covered previously. Instead, I want to pose this question: why do bars and clubs play serious house/dance music at venues where you can't dance?
Nellie's is a sports bar. It has a cozy interior with lots of wood and tile: a very classic feel. Why would they want to fill that quaint space with window-rattling BOOM-chick-BOOM-chick thumping dance music? And at volumes that a group of four can't carry a conversation around a table?
Wouldn't it be natural to think that they should play music NOT for dancing? Doesn't the management realize that perhaps, if they play loud dance music, patrons might actually leave their bar and go somewhere that they can dance? Why can't one single gay bar cater to those of us who AREN'T going to Town later?
This leads me to another tangentially related question: why are other venues (BeBar, Cobalt) trying to out-Town Town? When it comes to gay super-disco clubs, Town has the rest of DC's gay venues beat. No contest. So why are they trying to redo themselves to be more like Town? They can never steal away the Town audience because they don't have the budget, the performance space, the square footage. So why try? Why does BeBar now have boy strippers and drag shows on Friday nights? Town. Why does Cobalt smell of fresh paint? Town. Why?
Why not cater to other facets of the gay community who are at a loss for fun options on weekend nights. Why doesn't BeBar shift Be:XX to a Saturday? Why can't their hip hop night be on Fridays? There are thousands of "second class citizens" in the gay nightlife world waiting to have fun options on a weekend night. Instead of having more choices, the clubs that have lost customers to Town are now trying to reclaim the Town crowd through remodeling and expensive ad campaigns... Who would have thought that when Town opened, we'd end up with 3 of them?
So, what can be done about this? Aside from waiting for the next Taint, Solly's Party, Guerilla Queer Bar or Homo/Sonic, what can we do? No wonder I spend so much time at the Black Cat.
7 comments:
What you say makes far too much sense. You think they'd realize it.
As a gay Latino who has NO access to my culture in any of DC's gay settings, I find this too funny!
this happened to halo too. i used to like going there because it was quiet. you could talk and not have to deal with the raging dance music.
if cobalt and be bar really are turning more townish (i don't know, i haven't really been to any of the DC gay bars for most of the summer), i think it's because that's what gays in DC want. i don't think there's anything to do other than move.
this is why i always carry one of these: http://www.americanportabledancefloors.com/ in my fanny pack.
One of the best things about NYC is the option of going to gay bars with good music. And the good music attracts cool people who have brains and lives and interests beyond boy bands and Diesel jeans.
Have the NewGay gang. thought about opening a bar for the alterna-queers, who have nowhere else to go? (We're like refugees! Won't someone please help us?!)
Parker, I don't think that Cobalt and BeBar are becoming more like Town because that's the only type of club that the gayfolk in DC want to visit. It shows a bit of entrepreneurial laziness -- this is the flavor of the week, so we'll go with this, rather than creating something new and different that different people will like as well as the people who have made Town successful like Town.
Someone will wise up. Someone with the $$$.
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