I'm going to try and do the full canonical list of party spots in my black LA starting back in the day. I probably should rank them too. That would be quite a task, but I would open that one up to the crowd. What's weird now is that I don't have any specific stories. I can tell you exactly what shade of crowd it was but now all of the specific tales are a blur. Only a few specific stories remain.
The great majority of these clubs I attended between 1982 and 1989. A good seven years of partying everywhere I could between the ages of 21 and 28. Around 1990 or so, I rather went underground and turned my back on yuppie entertainments. I suppose you could say that all that partying never led me to The One. The perfect woman was not to be found in all those clubs - and having become a master at trolling them I had rather classed myself out. Which is to say that being a spoiled, good looking, well-connected young black professional who always went to social events looking for serious babeage and never for one-night stands, I became rather jaded. To this day I ignore most women that a lot of guys drool over. It's hard to describe, but I would simply say that my impossible standards kept me out of a LOT of trouble. Which is odd considering that I have a reputation, at least as far as my wife says, as a player. I was not a player, I just danced a lot, and I styled a lot.
It was the age when black producers were able to procure clubs in upscale white neighborhoods for the first time in LA history. So there was transition and crossover, sorta. Black DJs had a little bit more breathing space and got out there. So if you haven't experienced it, imagine you coming out of a club on Thursday night and there being three brothers handing out glossy invites to a party for Friday night. That's how it went around. Or maybe you would find the invite on your snazzy auto's windshield.
For me, partying had three aspects. First off, it's just what you do. You are young and single with time on your hands, the music on the radio still compels you to dance, get out there where it's playing loud. It's about Styling, Cruising and Dancing. The troika of being cool. Second of all there is The Mission. The Mission is to get the right babe, and this of course is hard work. You need to be constantly engaged at every opportunity because volume makes the difference. Thirdly there is the adventure of clubbing itself. To find yourself in a new and strange neighborhood dancing with somebody you never saw before has an interesting kind of subliminal validation to it.
The Red Onion on Wilshire.
The Red Onion was a reliable place. It was an after work joint that was perfectly conventional. You could expect the DJ to play all the right songs. It was a bit smallish for my taste and I always wanted to catch it early right during or after happy hour. Later than that it got too crowded and the crowd was, well, conventional, which made it rather ideal for dancing in suits. The
The Bit'n Apple
I went there only a few times. Most of the time, the clientele was too old for my tastes. Meaning divorcees and people with mortgages on the DL. It wasn't that I didn't appreciate the attentions of older women, it's just that I didn't need other people to know that. Besides, I hadn't given up hope on the primary mission and this place played a little bit too much Al Green and not enough Cameo. At least that's how I remember it. I also seem to remember that a lot of the Bit'n Apple crowd were people who didn't party on a regular basis. It was a safe place to recommend to your cousin from Kansas who didn't want to get too LA'fied.
The Golden Tale
This was my joint. I had a regular table and often hung out from the moment I got off of work. I used to explain that I worked in the building, but I was never able to work that line into a visit up to my office upstairs. Or at least not with a babe I didn't already know. GT was ground zero for The Babeless Crew, my gang of engineer buppie brothers, associated friends and lovers. It was a DJ joint with good food, two dance floors and sometimes live jazz. Everytime I hear 'Housequake' I think of GT, and I'm sure it became legendary all over.
Bourbon Street Grotto
BSG was just about the classiest joint ever. Tony was the man and this was his production. It was Thursdays, if I remember correctly, at the World Trade Center in downtown LA. Plenty of space, never too crowded 10 or 12 dollar cover to keep the riff raff at bay and an occasional live jazz or comedy performance. Some of the coolest people I knew would show u.
Inglewood Playhouse
I have to mention the Inglewood Playhouse because it too became a regular hangout. Every once in a while there would be a small black theatre company that would put on a production for young black actors and actresses who hadn't quite broken into Hollywood. We would hear about them and make it a date. It was a smarter thing to bring a date to the Playhouse than to go stag, but there were those who played the odds.
The Greenhouse
The Greenhouse was in a bank building right across the street from LA County Art Museum. You know, the La Brea Tar Pits. It was a short-lived venture but it succeeded in bringing some high quality clientele into circulation. I started to get in trouble with my class warfare-minded speech when I started describing the place like that. The thing I remember about the Greenhouse was what a goober it proved me to be. I recall that one of the producers was a woman who wore long dresses and I'm thinking that she raised money for charitable causes as well. So I came there thinking I might get into some deep conversations. This was in the days before I would take my writing public, so you could find me in a jacket and tie writing in my journal over in a corner. I never did figure how to connect with people there. Eventually, I psyched myself out of dancing and fell into alien observation mode. It was a very yuppie place that turned out to be not much fun in the end.
Funky Reggae & White Trash
This was, I have to say, my favorite club of them all. There is only one or two exceptions but that was because of particular experiences on particular clubs on particular nights. Overall, Funky Reggae was it. That was because it balanced out my dancing in suits. You see, if I was on The Mission, I had to go to my regular high maintenance clubs, like BSG and the Golden Tale with occasional forays to RJs and Carlos & Charlies. You simply weren't going to meet class babes anywhere else but weddings. Unfortunately, I didn't have the good sense God gave a spider monkey and never attended weddings. Funky Reggae was the club where I let down my hair, and it was there that I got to dance with Rosie Perez - on top of a speaker. Yes. It was the club where a brother in a black tank top and fingerless gloves could let it all hang out. I know, I'll never be able to run for Senate, but that's the way it was back in the day when I drove my red BMW 2002 with the bike rack on top. There was nothing quite like the experience of seeing young punkish, reggaeish, kids from everywhere in LA crush the dance floor to Dopeman. I always went to Funky Reggae solo. Hmm.
The Crush Bar
The Crush Bar was the dirty white girl club. If you could stand the smell of beer and wait for the right danceable song, this was the joint. Of course there was a lot of standing around and drinking beer and few of the really good looking white girls were prepared, but occasionally a brother wants to be the center of attention and doesn't give a rats who's watching. And on those occassions to the beat of 80s rock there was Hollywood's own Crush Bar. Always easy to get into, always cheap, always packed to the rafters with trashy chicks who dug dancing with black dudes with high top fades.
Chamineh
Chamineh I went to just once. Hated it. Why? Because I waited for a very long time to get in, and when I did get in, it was the exact same crowd as the Carolina West, but they were acting like they were all that. See here's the part where I have to really play the class card. I'm sorry but the Chamineh was ghetto. They had the kind of bouncers that didn't say please, meaning they were accustomed to dealing with roughnecks. OK that's all I'm going to say because I know a lot of people who liked Chamineh. It wasn't my speed, sorry.
Friday's at The Marina
If there was one club that was legendary above all the rest, it was TGIFridays at the Marina. If you could distill one or two reasons why it would be Tiny Lister and Eric Dickerson. You see both Eric and Tiny spent a lot of time at Fridays and everybody in the city knew it. Friday's had the longest lines to get in and nobody even danced. It was just a regular old TGIFridays, but damn! Basically everybody started the weekend there. Friday night you went straight to Friday's and found out where all the parties were at, but first you trolled at the bar. What Friday's was perfect for were the Three Girls. You know, those three black girls who always hang around each other. One is shy, one is fat and loud and one is just foine. They are the codependent trio and they occasionally grab a cousin or coworker to round them out. They are there at Fridays getting their grub on eyeballing every whicha way. The trick is to peel the shy one away, and then their wing-power disintegrates, but that's a lesson for Masters in Babe Administration, another day.
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