Club Smooth
Studio Cafe
Huntington Beach
Every Tuesday
Enter 10:15 p.m. after much hassle with parking. You would think there would be spots on a Tuesday night. You would be wrong. Crabby. Tired. Crabby. But Camel girl Jane is here for a spot of gossip and some free smokes. She's tired and crabby, too, but at least not at us.
10:17 p.m.-10:42 p.m. We chat with door guy Jay, a huge black man in his last year of law school who's ensuring that no one but us stands within 20 feet of the door. This is to keep the fire marshal happy. Also, the front door of the club must remain closed so that no noise escapes onto Main Street. We feel slightly like we're in Footloose.
10:43 p.m. No one is dancing yet, though DJ Danny Love is representin'. Perhaps if he played the songs we requested at 10:16 p.m., people would bust some moves. Humph.
11:28 p.m. DJ Danny Love tells us he will get to our songs. He is very nice about it, but his hip-hop is faster than the Top 40 kind we like, and it's hard to dance to when everybody else likes it so much and is hogging the floor.
11:29 p.m. The flagstones around the small, round dance floor are slicked with 12 kinds of booze. This actually makes it easier to dance, as long as you're not wearing 6-inch stripper shoes. Wes from (hed)pe is here, shaking his dreadlocks with a stunning brunette. Brunette is the way of the future. We have spoken.
Midnight: DJ Danny Love plays one of our songs. Meanwhile, a total of two girls and one boy is dancing to the techno of Swedish Egil in another room.
12:14 a.m. The coffee is McDonald's-hot. Be sure to ask for an ice cube or seven.
12:49 a.m. The boys from Anyone are here, extravagantly coifed. “Is this the place to be?” we ask.
“It's better than sitting home alone,” lead singer Riz Story sneers. “Slightly.”
God bless Riz Story.
1:07 a.m. We begin to slide into an indelible funk. Will we never get lucky?
1:30 a.m. The lights come on, revealing one remaining dancing boy doing slow tai chi, or perhaps Tai Mantis. We don't ask. We forget to close out our tab and leave without our MasterCard. What do you suppose the total will be when we finally go back and collect it? And will we never get lucky?
Club Smooth at Studio Cafe, 300 Pacific Coast Hwy., Huntington Beach, (714) 355-6900; www.savorent. com. Every Tues., 9 p.m. Free before 10 p.m.; $7 after. 21 and over.
