Do You Wanna Dance? by Steven Foster

Bars have always been vital to both Houston’s gay culture and the sense of community, with dance clubs in particular holding a power and potency all their own. From the iconic danceteria Rich’s to the splashy new South Beach, Houston once again proves that this is a gay community that has all the right moves.

Before Will & Grace and a sofa.

Before personals.

Before gay churches, softball leagues, or even mags like this one that you can find in grocery stores.

Before the Internet.

Predating all this, there was really only one meeting ground for our people.

Like it or not, AA aside, that place was a bar.

Like the Cotton Clubbers, we were a community meeting underground for a drink, a dance, and a freedom one didn’t find on the streets. The times forced us to design whispered locations, veiled addresses. But this is not really an article about secret gay speakeasies. This is a piece about glitz, glamour, putting on your-your-your boogie shoes, the economics of dancing, and mmmmm feeling good, and how those whispered locations begat aboveground, glam-worthy dance halls for a new gay-friendly millennium.

And Houston’s club scene? Well, with the old standbys still packin’ ’em in, the hip new Meteor becoming the lounge to lounge in, the upcoming Level, and not one but two serious dance clubs, Houston bar life is about as strong as Lance Armstrong’s heart–and just as beat-worthy.

It is two weeks after Allison. And, just as Charles Armstrong himself has weathered many storms and come through unscathed, both he and his new nightclub South Beach have lived through this latest summer tempest with nary a scratch or soaked sideboard. Like South Beach, Armstrong is built on higher, solid ground. Smooth, sexy features, coffee-strong brown eyes, gym-trained body, and a whip-smart mind, Armstrong possesses a verbal vibrancy that is contained only by his mostly-all-business demeanor. This is a man who both gets excited about and knows the value of High Concept. To wit: Armstrong easily admits that the South Beach mystique all starts with one thing. In a relationship, if you’ve got the power, you’ve got "hand." Armstrong goes one better.

He’s got The Palms.

"We were trying to help Jim MacInvale promote the Westside Tennis Clay Court Men’s Championship," says Armstrong, dressed in pressed, tight denim and never breaking a sweat even in the 90+ Houston heat outside his new dance club. "And he was in awe of the palms. If there’s been one person, there’ve been a thousand who’ve stopped me and given me a sincere testimonial from the depths of their soul and spirit that these are the most magnificent things they’ve ever seen."

Armstrong laughs, knowing it’s a little bit goofy, and a whole lot true. But it’s more than just glitzy Vegas glamour, though that is most certainly an artistic and business model Armstrong is more than casually aware of. He knows the value of showmanship, but he’s aware of The Show’s larger, more important implications.

"It’s a sense of pride for our community," he sums up.

"I was talking to a guy from the Houston Press," Armstrong says, "and I think he became a little agitated because I kept saying that the bar was designed for the gay and lesbian community and their friends and he said, ‘Why do you keep saying that? Why do you keep insulting me as a straight man?’ And I told him you have to understand that if someone has a fundamental problem with African Americans, perhaps they shouldn’t go to an African-American bar. If someone has a problem with Latinos, they should probably think twice about hanging out in a Latino bar. And if you’ve got a problem with the gay and lesbian community, I don’t want you in my bar."

Here, here.

Thing is, gay or straight, you’re probably dying to get into this bar, if you haven’t already. And some nights, man, it ain’t easy.

From the ashes of Heaven has risen one fine phoenix. Aspiring for the title as the premiere dance club in the Southwest, the tab for SoBe runs somewhere upwards of $2 million–and it shows. Borrowing from such varied references as Asia, Ibiza (the island, not the restaurant, although that joint is pretty cool, too), the Museum of Fine Arts, El Lay, Miami Beach, Madrid, and viva Las Vegas, Armstrong has fused a fantastic fantasy club unlike anything Houston has ever seen.

The contemporary industrialism of the poured-in-place concrete structure is romanticized by those four 22-foot-tall Canary Island date palms, each with hand-carved trunks to expose the beautiful, natural golden-tan color. The tops are also carved to an almost-pineapple shape. (Yeah, it’s phallic, get over it.) The ramrod motif is continued in the structure proper, with a 24-foot bell tower.

Inside South Beach, you pass through enormous cranberry-colored velvet curtains tied with beer-can-thick gold braid tassels. On a packed evening (which is every evening), the club is deceptively intimate at first, small almost, as the lounge is relatively secluded, with chic hold-court banquettes that curve out from below richly paneled tropical wood tiles that are painstakingly perfect in pattern. Across the comfy booths is a 44-foot-long bar accented with a sheet of ice to keep that cosmos as chilled as possible. Backlit marble glows romantically above and around a vicious collection of imported vodka, locked up in a specially designed freezer that keeps the liquor chilled to a bracing 10 degrees.

Kinda looks like that’s all there is, and that’s nice and all, but then you notice the second section of the double-diamond space. Pass through the next set of king-sized curtains and the real show begins.

One island bar to the left and a raised bar in the back corral a massive 50-by-30-foot white-oak dance floor. Above the floor, hanging from the 24-foot ceiling are two custom 14-inch box trusses, one 14-foot, one 19-foot, each with independent motion, housing intelligent lighting systems from High End Systems, Cyberlights, Technobeams, Studio Spots, and Studio Colors. Now, if you’re in the club biz (or you hang out with the crew of Interview magazine), you know what this means. Translation for the masses: it’s the shit. Making sure all that flash goes off as planned, the whole shebang is controlled by a Wholehog lighting console. (And, yeah, the rumors are true. The guy that designed the light show illuminated Madonna’s last three tours.)

But that’s just the glow. It’s the sound that really thrills. Armstrong spilled the real cash for Eastern Acoustic Works’ Avalon Series–a trademark that makes even the most jaded DJs’ fingers twitch to touch the board. And, speaking of DJs, they’ve got their own private lounge behind the turntable throne.

To heat things up visually, there is a coolly gorgeous crescent-shaped water wall of stainless steel, concrete, and rain-patterned glass that dribbles clear liquid–a perfect backdrop for beautifully buffed gymbots who gyrate and smile on cue. To cool things down, there is . . . drum roll, please . . . the Liquid Ice.

While you’re dancing beneath the lights, spinning from the potent cocktails, moving to the beat of your own drummer, sweating yourself senseless, you hear it. A rumbling. Sounds like a train coming. The rumble comes closer, closer, closer and then, hisssssssss! The Kryogenifex Liquid Nitrogen Special Effects Ice Jets shoot down a spray of blissfully chilling mist that not only makes the dance floor virtually disappear in a Harry Potter-esque magic of icy smoke, but drops the temp 20 degrees in a mere 30 seconds. It’s the only club in Texas that gives you a chill on the dance floor that’s not caused by that glance from across the room.

Even the bathrooms are state-of-the-art. There are video screens above the urinals (think USA Today, in motion, and a whole lot sexier). And everything from the flushing mechanisms to the faucets are infra-red. "The only thing you have to touch is yourself," smiles Armstrong. "And that’s optional."

Well, only if you’re very, very talented with a whole lotta bladder control and really good aim, but the guy’s right. The point is: From the cobalt blue submarine lights to the positioning of the tile, Armstrong has pushed and planned this place to the nines.

The sun is setting west of the palms. The barbacks and bartenders and managers are coming in, prepping for the evening’s show. Armstrong looks around the silent splendor of South Beach, knowing that, within just a few hours, the silence will be gone, replaced by hordes of dance-hungry patrons ready for this evening’s extravaganza. And, what’s more, he knows why.

"People don’t understand the development of clubs in our community," he says softly. "That they’re social clubs. They’re country clubs, if you will. To a heterosexual, a bar is a bar is a bar. You can go to a kicker bar, you can go to an icehouse, you can go anywhere. But to the gay and lesbian community, it’s a precious environment where you’re free from bigotry and hatred and persecution and intolerance. A place with like-minded individuals where you can link up for a few hours or a few minutes or whatever."

Armstrong smiles, a little bit humbled, a whole lot sincere.

"Forgive me if I speak with a sense of reverence about it, but I think it’s important to the community."

Why? Because now that we have Will & Grace, personals, our own churches, softball leagues, magazines, we need our own club, worthy enough to rival anything on either coast in any scene, gay or straight? Yes. Why?

"It’s our turn," he says.

It will be some time before South Beach has what Rich’s has. But if SoBe plays its well-shuffled cards right, it will.

And that, is history.

On July 14, 1983, the bi-level danceplex Rich’s opened its doors and, for the past 18 years, has been the gay dance club in Houston.

The closest thing to New York that Houston has had to date, Rich’s began an era that has survived, even thrived. Cavernous in space, famous for its holiday parties, nationally renowned diva venue, bold in its constant reinvention of itself, Rich’s has become the iconic club for the ages.

"The thing I remember most about opening night," says Rich’s Gary Archer, thinking back to 1983, "is how overwhelming it was that all of a sudden, you’re dealing with all these people. That just hours earlier there were 20 construction workers and then, suddenly, hundreds of customers. During the night, when the video screen came down, it was just one of those situations that people did not really understand what to expect. It was very, very exciting. The video that was playing was Donna Summer’s ‘Bad Girls.’"

Archer smiles. Because the bad girls and the bad boys are packing Rich’s still.

The nightclub business is savagely competitive. Ever since Rich’s stole the mantle from Numbers (back when gay dance was really desperate–and sexily seedy), it has held the crown of the dance throne unthreatened; the bastion of the mirror ball crowd is only now facing serious competition. Sure, there’s the other-side-of-the-tracks Pacific Street, the BRB, and other minor players and glorious dives, not to mention the up-and-coming Incognito. But Rich’s has gone unchallenged for the title until recently. South Beach has had a tidal wave of traffic. The new Level is rumored to up the ante even further. And word on the street says there’s plans for construction of a new gay dance mecca less than a block from the Austin-born Continental Club–a stone’s throw from Rich’s glass blocks.

Tales of Rich’s demise, however, have been greatly exaggerated.

Rich’s strengths were always–and will no doubt continue to be–its three irresistible allures.

First: For years, Rich’s was the most wall-to-wall gorgeous of the dance world. Fridays tended to be an incredibly hot mix of fierce fags and curious straights. Holiday weekends were, more times than not, a sexy ensemble of local urbania gleefully colliding with visiting collegiates in town. It was like a frat party directed by John Hughes in his early years, scripted by Chi Chi La Rue in her early years, but lensed by Matthew Rolston circa wild-color now. It was innocent, naively dirty-sexy, and it looked great. Rich’s has the best lighting, bar none. It is made for A Scene. And the players there never disappointed. Saturdays were more gay, less mixed, and the energy was palpable. The temp always ran higher the closer it got to Monday. At Rich’s, it was feverish and so was the crowd.

But beautiful people were not just relegated to the dance floor and the sidelines. And that stage held a lot more than just Dance Fever wannabes.

Second: Rich’s is the only place that had acts. Grace Jones. Boy George. Debbie Harry. Crystal Waters. And Bette. Twice.

"The Bathhouse Bette Tour," says GM Jerry Ramsey with a laugh. He shakes his head, and Archer picks up the ball.

"For two weeks prior to the concert, we could only sell tickets on Friday and Saturday nights," remembers Archer. "Then Maxine Mesinger had in her column that she was gonna be here. After that came out, the phones would not stop ringing. It was overwhelming."

Third and lastly, Rich’s knew how to throw a party.

New Year’s Eves were infamous. Pageants were standard affairs. First foam party in town. ("The floors were ruined from that one," laughs Archer.) Post-Pride bashes were legendary. This year’s Moulin Rich’s, with a savvy, splashy ad campaign and coupla-thousand dollars worth of redecorating (lotsa velvet, tons of gold), was madness. Camel’s Rhythm tour stopped by last month and plunked down $15,000 just to jazz the place up.

But the question lingers: Can Houston support more than one dance club?

The answer is yes. The real benefit is that, like deregulation of the phone companies, or the gas companies (not the California model, though!), this increased competition is great for the dancing consumer.

Because, if Rich’s had a bad side, it was that it was the only place to dance. Fridays at midnight? Please. If you wanted a drink, you’d die of thirst first. And if someone asked you what time it was on the dance floor, you didn’t have room to lift up your arm to check out your watch. Saturdays were Fridays, only squared.

Now, Rich’s is still attracting a good-looking crowd and, yeah, don’t get it wrong, it’s still packed, but now you can breathe. You still have to wait for a drink, but you’ll get one before you go Sahara. The bathroom lines are still ghastly, but they’re friendly. (Read into that what you will.) And the dance floor is still packed, but when somebody asks you for the time, you actually have the room to give it to them. Remember, Rich’s survived when downtown became an actual destination for 9-5 a.m., not just 9-5 p.m. And as Oz and the other downtown discos disappeared, Rich’s held firm.

If South Beach keeps up the glam factor, and Rich’s proves as craftily innovative as it has been, it looks like both clubs will be assured of having their 20-year anniversaries. And that’s good news for everybody’s dancing shoes.

Coming up: Don’t miss OutSmart’s continued pub crawl, where we see what’s movin’ and shakin’ in all the other gay gin joints of our fair city.