It’s never fair or appropriate to judge a place by your corporate holiday party. Those nights it’s neither typical nor representative of the typical crowd, music, etc. After all, do you think this joint–what amounts to a relatively cheesy dance club–would normally be filled with a bunch of young advertising hipsters from Brooklyn (present company excluded, of course). I’ve made these same assessments in the past (see Capitale & Show) and will continue to besmirch and elevate clubs that either don’t deserve to incur my wrath, or should be praised to the heavens. I’m all about equal opportunity misinformation and libel. In any case, this place already had a strike against it the moment we entered. We waited in a line out in the cold and were summarily brought up a twisting staircase that just spelled disaster for drunken smokers later in the night. They instantly regained my love after inundating us with passed hors d’oeuvres and parmesan breadsticks at the relatively uncrowded bar. To add to my joy, and avoid some past faux pas that I’ve seen at other drunken work debacles, they actually served a buffet style dinner. Granted, there really weren’t enough little sitting things on which to squat with our china, but the stuff wasn’t half bad. All of this is probably completely irrelevant in this review, as I’m sure they don’t even normally serve a morsel of food on a regular night. Otherwise the club itself is about what you’d expect–but with lower ceilings. The place looks pretty good with its candlelight and red and black theme, but the lighting is probably dark for a reason, I think, as the decor, with its pleather benches and exposed brick might be a little worse for wear in the bright light. Or maybe it’s to camouflage the usual crowd, who look to be rather “hard”–a word some use to describe mostly woman who look remarkably older than their years, usually brought on by too many cigarettes, too many late nights and a nasty tanning habit. We did have fun dancing like idiots and spilling drinks on their floor. It still surprises me that clubs play music that I used to “spin” at my frat parties in college back in the early nineties. You would have thought things would have moved on since then, but apparently those tunes from ’92 have become classics of a sort. They did start letting in the locals (or not the locals as the case may be), and there were a few too many plaid hats, vests, platform shoes and Wonderbras. I still hate dance clubs, but this place wasn’t too bad when someone else is footing the bill, the drinks are flowing and the crowd is familiar. [MF]
532 W 27th St.
212/273-3700
