About Rise, February and May, 2007

B: Ah, Rise.
Avoided it for years, for oh so many reasons. Besides the obvious fact that it screams NEEDY SEXDEN, it's just got an overall seedy vibe, like a fetish club after last call and the lights have all been turned on. This is one of those places where there are go-go dancers in matching bikinis acting like strippers while everyone who isn't watching them pretends they're a VIP. No one is there to dance, unless it's to jiggle their arse for the benefit of the opposite sex.

But after one long Thursday night of one disappointment after another in the dance club scene, we ended up walking by this joint. No cover, and we needed to dance, so we ventured in. The place was empty, by god. And the DJ seemed to know what he was doing. Sure, the songs were Top 40, but the Top 40 hits proved unusually danceable at that point in time, and were helped along by the odd motown hit here and there. We started to dance, and kept on going. The place didn't get much more populated, and we even earned a few free drink tickets from the DJ for "just being ourselves." Or something like that.

So it was without hesitation that one Thursday evening in the spring, with several willing friends at our disposal, that we steered the group back to Rise for a night of dancey fun. Still no cover, but this time the place was crawling with hungry kids, out on the dance floor with their drinks in hand, spilling booze all over the floor and each other, dropping glasses, standing on the dance floor, touching other people's afros and making dumb comments; basically doing everything but getting down. But that was ok, we reasoned: the DJ would pull through for us. This was the same DJ as the last time we were there, but egad, what happened? The R&B songs interspersed into the mix were poor remakes of what were once great songs (except for Celebration, which is just a bad song and for some reason was played full through as the dance floor emptied), and during about an hour period, no song played for longer than one verse. Talk about ruining any chance of flow. On top of that, it was as if catering to a heavier crowd compelled the DJ to turn down the music and sing or shout over the lyrics again and again, or try to scratch out some interlude badly, so badly. We tried to dance, but the guy was making it virtually impossible. It was an early night. And don't even ask me about the crap we encountered after Rise.

So long, Rise.