Lounge town

Aught 2 was the year of the upscale lounge. It seemed as if every nightspot that opened styled itself so. That meant low-riding furniture, soft lights, Naked Music loops and a theoretical possibility that you could talk while you tippled. Open and M Lounge brought the new faith to the wilds of Deep Ellum. Sense honed the experience for its VIP clientele. Minc was the buzz bar of the summer. The long-delayed Nikita capped the fall.

What else happened? Bali Bar faded. Go Lounge burned down. Main Street cooked, with the Metropolitan adding critical mass. So did West Village. Club Life gave the north country another mega-club. Voltaire died and came back as the humbler but handsome Bamboo Bamboo. Ecdysiasts favored Silver City, while newcomer Illusions got a name change. Little bars showed big results at Steel, Sevy's, Moosh and Abacus.

What's next? More lounges, more "hard doors" as clubs edit their clienteles. Expect everybody to chase Nikita. A second helping of Steel. Names like Lush and Plush. Temperance and chastity triumph. (Just kidding on that last bit.)

Published in The Dallas Morning News 12.27.02 ___________________________________

ZaZa some more

The Onion satirical Web site has a funny posting about a Kentucky convenience store clerk who spends 20 percent of his income ironically. He's quoted as saying, "I know I should really try to sock away some cash, but there's just so much funny ...[expletive] out there." The brand-new Hotel ZaZa is a great place to spend money ironically.

The 146-room boutique hotel, which opened with a fantastic, décolletage-heavy bash last Thursday, caters to people who have more money than nonsense – and are up for some nonsense. This is quote-marks-in-the-air hospitality: four floors of fevered opium-dream décor (Near Asian to South Asian to East Asian to Moonbase Alpha); 13 themed suites (from A for Art to Z for Zen); a restaurant from celebrity hash-slinger Stephan Pyles (Dragonfly); and an opportunity to spend from $195 to $1,250 for a place to lay your wryly amused head.

More drollery derives from the location, on Leonard near McKinney. The $30 million ZaZa could become known as "the hotel behind Dickey's Barbecue."

That's how people found their way to the party. About 1,200 really fabulous individuals showed up. They milled plunging neckline to mock turtleneck in the chandelier-strobed lobby, lined up for Dragonfly samples, sucked at Laurent-Perrier splits through straws and tramped the hallways to inspect one concept suite after another. It was the Dallas equivalent of that Great Gatsby image of wide-eyed partygoers flitting from one amusement to the next like moths.

Some rooms accumulated more moths than others.

The Erotica Suite was a favored destination. ("Where's the sex room?" echoed the persistent question down the halls.) Its hourly-rates aesthetic included ceiling mirror over plush bed, provocative wall prints, black shag carpet and – the real draw – a lissome blonde in a bikini, lounging beside a bubble bath. She sipped bubbly and gamely endured strained attempts at humor.

If anything, the Erotica Suite was not lurid enough. For that, better to take the Bohemian Suite, an overstuffed conclave of Victorian naughtiness, damsel-accessorized that evening by a cancan dancer, or the Shag-a-Delic, a spot-on Austin Powers habitat that produced the most authentic smiles – – it's a relative bargain at $340 per night.

Less successful: the Medusa (Versace train wreck), Out of Africa (saw the movie) and the Texas (we're there already) suites.

For foodies, ironically inclined or not, the debut of the Dragonfly next weekend will be a red-letter day. Its bar, already open to hotel guests, is tiny but hospitable, with top-shelf liquids, down-tempo grooves for background music and a flat-screen monitor showing, apropos of not much but iconic cool, Moulin Rouge and Goldfinger.

Bah, humbug

Women of acute sensibilities sometimes e-mail with this concern: How can I avoid being objectified? Why they're asking Mr. Dallas is beyond Mr. Dallas, but in this holiday season, the answer is obvious: Christmas sweaters. There is no better armor against ardor. Combined with sensible flats and a single, tasteful strand of pearls, these festive green-and-red knit creations, appliquéd with yule trees, holly and reindeer, are a surefire libido repellent.

On the seven deadly sins scale, the Hotel ZaZa opening rates five of seven (gluttony, greed, pride, lust, envy). Absent: wrath, sloth.

Published in The Dallas Morning News 12.13.02 ___________________________________

Lounging around

Scotch. Pulchritude. Trash disco. Euphoria became the center of the known universe last Wednesday for the Dewar's 12 Playboy Lounge tour. Dallas was one of seven cities being graced with this cross-marketed, brand-driven, one-night-only centrifuge of moral turpitude.

Best "enjoyed in moderation," advised Dewar's in promotions of its reserve blend.

Butt out, Dewar's, was the response of 1,200 people who jammed the sprawling cheese factory on Main Street to bask in the reprocessed hepcat vibe of the old Playboy Clubs. Bunnies patrolled and posed for pictures. Dealers scarcely less obliging of cleavage ran blackjack and roulette tables from Caesars Palace. The DJ spun creaky favorites. A cholesterol-friendly, Sterno-flicked buffet lay inert and largely ignored as celebrants queued up for free whisky.

Hef was not in the house, but he might as well have been. This was old-school. Everybody was playing dress-up. Dunderheads put away their beloved Dockers and taupe golf shirts for dark suits. Open collars flowered over jacket lapels Ocean's Eleven-style. Lovelies were cinched into their Saturday-night-look-at-me best. Word was made flesh, just as Hugh Hefner intended when he introduced perpetual randy adolescence to insatiable consumerism in the 1950s.

The party began disquietingly male-centric as knuckle-draggers gawked at such gleaming imports as Stephanie Heinrich (Miss October 2001) and Stacy Fuson (Miss February 1999). But within an hour, every dancer who wasn't swinging from a silvery pole that evening had pointed her 5-inch heels downtown and was squeezing through the door. A riotous balance was achieved. Glum moralists sitting at home must have felt a shiver.

For all its prefab retro frolics, the Dewar's 12 Playboy tour grasps a point. People are looking for a new/old way to party. Here in Dallas, "lounge" is the hot concept, just as it has been on the coasts for years.

Boiled to its essence, lounge means turning down the volume – creating an environment in which people might actually be able to sit and talk while they drink. Stuffed sofas, comfy, low-slung chairs and cozy banquettes are everywhere now. (Riddle: How do you turn a bar into a lounge? Saw the legs off the furniture.) Mellow down-tempo grooves are muffling 144-beats-a-minute techno thunder. The "hard door" is making a comeback; editing the crowd, whether through dress code, guest list or heavy cover, is part of the lounge ideal.

Many of this year's debuts embrace the concept to some extent – Minc in Exposition Park, M Lounge and Open in Deep Ellum, the private club Sense on Henderson Avenue, Bamboo Bamboo in Far North Dallas. The brand-new Nikita in West Village grasps it firmly.

Nikita gets a lot right. The "Spy vs. Spy" Russian theme – bold constructivist reproductions as well as new artworks by Rolando Diaz, the TVs over the downstairs bar looping Doctor Zhivago and Thunderball, lithe waitresses dressed as Young Pioneers gone very bad – shows wit, a quality the Dallas scene sorely lacks. The small-plates menu is more than a booze sop. Downside: Cooking smells overwhelm ventilation. The refrigerated wall of vodka gives fans of potato and grain spirits something to look at besides one another. Not that they need the diversion – this is the comeliest crowd around.

The lines outside Nikita are starting earlier and growing longer every weekend. But the striking thing is how it keeps the buzz on school nights. People don't just want to go, they want to stay. That's a successful lounge.

On the seven deadly sins scale, the lounge tour at Euphoria rates a swinging five of seven: lust, pride, envy, greed and gluttony. Absent: sloth, wrath.

Published in The Dallas Morning News 11.22.02 ___________________________________

Sense and sensibility

Hello, worms. Bonjour, subcreatures. Mr. Dallas hung out at the new private club Sense last weekend. Poor dears, you missed it. Had a fabulous time. Me big. You itty-bitty.

Pardon the egomania. The vain effervescence of shallow validation has gone to somebody's head again. All it took was to slip through the tastefully anonymous entrance of a former antique shop on Henderson Avenue into the tempered-steel bosom of Dallas' sybaritic elite.

Sense is Tristan Simon's month-old attempt to market a "hard-door" nightclub of the old school – members, guests and referrals only; big chunks of dinero for the privilege of crashing in cozy corners; a daunting two-page list of rules and stipulations that reads like a cross between mortgage contract and private school handbook.

In this way, a hallowed minority can, if nothing else, be spared from rubbing elbows with the effluent of Mr. Simon's own nearby gold mine, Cuba Libre.

The document intones that the club is open only Thursday through Saturday "from nightfall to 2 a.m. Our door will open when the sun has set completely." A courtesy, one supposes, to valued customers who happen to be vampires.

Sorting through the rules and the dollar amounts gave pause. Filtering a clientele by money alone could mean disaster – a club even the people paying for the privilege of being there wouldn't want to stay at for long. Word of a shuttle service between the club and Bob's Steak and Chop House was also worrying: Feature a herd of bleary, beef-gorged plutocrats trundled over by limo to imbibe of spirits and paw at brassy, blond Dallacudas.

But one buzzy Saturday night provided reassurance. The crowd was a vibrant mix, younger than might have been expected and agonizingly attractive. The Fickle 500 – ubiquitous scenesters Eric Kimmel and Hunter Sullivan among the brood – was plumping its latest nest. Yes, Jabba the Hut bidnessmen draped themselves across reserved sofas, but generally, you couldn't throw a swizzle stick in any direction without hitting a half-dozen targets of carnal inclinations.

The narrow street-front approach is deceiving. Inside, the space is deep and generous – two rooms, two bars, a variety of seating areas, including a number of curtained nooks. One grumpy lounge lizard declared it the nicest Mi Cocina he'd ever seen. That judgment is severe. Décor is the kind of postmodern lounge that's becoming familiar – blond hardwoods, brick, clever accents. All those hard surfaces mean lots of noise. The recorded music was barely a peep over the din of iniquity.

Roadhouse blues

Even as Sense begins its bold exercise in exclusivity, the Atlantean dream Voltaire has settled beneath the waves in Addison. It's an Iron Eyes Cody tear-running-down-the-cheek moment.

The bar at Voltaire suffered by its absolute hipness. The spaciousness and icy-cool design meant that when the bar wasn't packed, it felt as inviting as a 22nd-century dentist's office. Every weekend was a crapshoot, but that made the place interesting. You never knew who'd show up. The regular crowd it finally developed debarked for Club Life as soon as that opened down Dallas Parkway.

Voltaire was either the last hurrah of the old new economy or the latest victim of the new old economy. It's expected to be resurrected as the chastened, downscaled Bamboo Bamboo.

The anti-Voltaire – Duke's Original Roadhouse, at Belt Line and Midway – is already prospering from a calculated lack of pretense. Every evening, guys from all points north of LBJ put on their khaki shorts, golf shirts and ballcaps (bills fore or aft), look in the mirror and think, "Dang, I'm hot." Then they head to Duke's, where the beer tub out front and the outside/inside patio bar reminds them of spring break in Destin.

On the seven deadly sins scale, Sense rates a glossy six of seven: pride, envy, greed, lust, sloth, gluttony. Absent: wrath.

Published in The Dallas Morning News 09.13.02 ___________________________________

Pretty in Minc

The nice thing about Exposition Park, one wise head says, is that nobody goes there who doesn't have a good reason to, as opposed to nearby Deep Ellum, where a certain bad-vibe randomness can spoil the fun.

By day, Exposition Park is a sleepy warren of bohemian enterprise - galleries, shops, video store, salon, coffeehouse. By night, it bustles with the addition of Minc, a 3-month-old lounge that's getting huge word-of-mouth. The word is that Minc "isn't like Dallas," just what many disaffected clubgoers want to hear. All those who feel geographically challenged are queuing up under the discreet red-light sign over the distressed metal door at 813 Exposition.

Inside, they find Shangri-La, almost literally, since the place is stuffed with Eastern bric-a-brac - Buddhas, Sivas, a serene fountain in the foyer that Laotzu would've been proud to get hammered next to. The overall look is plywood contemporary meets opium den traditional. Oversized illuminated slides of exotic women oversee one of the bars. Comfy cuddle cribs along the west wall and a pillow-plumped sleigh bed in the center of the main room provide an Unpainted Furniture harem for early arrivers. Against expectations, it all pretty much works.

Minc is roomy, with a 4,500-square-foot interior and a 2,500-square-foot back patio. Room it needs now. Early week is subdued. Refugees from Yahoo Broadcast, the winds of history no longer at their backs, drag over for $2 drink specials. But the crescendo builds to a Saturday peak. The crowd is multiethnic, multicultural, pansexual and darn glad about all that.

The lounge doesn't have a dance-hall permit, so the DJs tamp down the happy feet with Naked Music-type mellow grooves. Even so, the faux-finished concrete floor guarantees maximum sound reflection on weekends - there are quieter runways at D/FW - pushing folks out onto the pleasant, ramshackle patio or down the block to Parry Avenue and the also meritorious Meridian Room.

The site has a lively past. It was formerly the acid jazz club S.O.A., then Our Bar and finally the coven convention center Betwixt & Between. Shades of all those incarnations seem to drift over the proceedings at Minc.

On the seven deadly sins scale, a big night at Minc rates four of seven: pride, lust, envy and sloth. Missing: greed, wrath, gluttony.

Published in The Dallas Morning News 08.02.02