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Cocktail hour
By JOHN BALZ, Times Staff Writer
TAMPA PALMS -- There is a moment in the evening, it would be hard to pinpoint exactly, sometime after 2 a.m. maybe, when the mood at the Falls goes Mardi Gras. It did on this night anyway. Four women, two blonds and two brunettes, Falls employees actually, dance on a shallow stage in ways that draw poor young guys to them like guppies to a baited lure. The promoter, who's chummy with them, who's been buying their drinks all night, spurs them to go even further. Gathered close by, staring, frankly, is the short curve of testosterone, sipping bottled domestics because they are the 2-for-1 special that night. Men like Londel Smith, who is celebrating his 23rd birthday and smoking, cannot look away. Exotic is the word he uses. "Nothing makes a man feel good like seeing four women together," he says. And nothing makes him feel worse than seeing those four women break into platonic laughter and hug. When they leave the stage and one of the more smitten, albeit artless, onlookers compliments the darkest brunette, she does not even pay him the courtesy of saying thank you. She shouldn't. These are young men, after all. Their fantasies deserve to die hard. If you're thinking about dragging yourself to this place, the Falls, chances are you'll want to know the basics: the price of drinks, the markup on top-shelf liquor, cover charge, dress code, the playlist, all that Zagat's pocket guide kind of junk. There's something to be said for those details. But you'll have to call the Falls yourself if you're curious. It's in the phone book, on Amberly Drive. You see, the basics, as people call them, aren't the most important part of going out. Sure, they're necessary and all. But they're also pretty much worthless.
What is of real value is a thing the experts (and there are nightlife experts) call atmosphere, which is really just the difference between how you feel when you arrive at a club and how you feel when you leave. And it's good to be honest about it. Because despite what the naysayers say, it doesn't do any good to hate our nightlife. When the crowd at the bar is four deep and the drinks get served strong, it's a lot easier just to give in and enjoy yourself. Before you go getting your credit all in a crunch, New Tampa is not just a bunch of deed-restricted single-family boxes. The cynic asks, what nightlife? and he has a point. But he's also just being a cynic. "Laid back" is how Cedric Brown, who has been advertising hot spots on the Internet site Partybor.com in the Tampa Bay area for four years, describes New Tampa's scene. It's not Ybor City or the Blue Martini at International Plaza, but it's something. For starters, there's room to breathe and move. It's also a whole lot simpler. Basically, the week goes like this. Sunday: the Greenery. Monday: the Greenery. Tuesday: the Falls or the Tampa Brickyard. Wednesday: the Greenery, again, because it has 25 cent drafts. Thursday: Bennigans. The older crowd goes to Excalibur, the martini and cigar bar. Everyone goes somewhere else on the weekend. The Greenery is a pub, and it's way down near Fletcher Avenue. The Falls is an after-hours spot, and it's right in the middle of Tampa Palms. As a club, it's fine. There are probably better places to dance or flirt or get sloshed or whatever you like to do when you go out, but there are also better places to light up than airport smoking lounges, and you don't hear many people moaning about them. An airport smoking lounge and the Falls have more in common than you might think. Meaning there's usually only one lounge per concourse, so if you're a smoker you don't have a lot of options. And when you take away the pool hall next door and the handful of restaurants with those phony bar areas, the Falls is the only real nightlife in New Tampa. The inside is dark and tropical, with a bunch of those trippy colored fluorescent lights embedded in the ceiling that one person tells you are ruining the planet and the next one says are saving it. People can't make up their precious minds. Tuesday night is usually busy because it's college night. They should just call it University of South Florida Night. It'd be a lot less confusing. The doors don't open till 5:30, 6. The DJs, Infinite and Structure, from the radio station 93.3-WFLZ, cart in their records around 10. The crowd doesn't show up until midnight, at least. There's a giant projection screen and two televisions that normally play custom-made videos of usually benign images, like forests or eyebrows or rolling marbles, spliced together at a speed approaching sound. On this night though, the DVD player is broken and there's a James Bond movie on TBS instead. Infinite and Structure spin a cocktail of ripe, catchy hip-hop. Fat Joe. Fifty Cent. It's a lot of the same stuff that plays on the radio, only these are the explicit versions. One of the barbacks dips his fingers in 151 proof rum, then in a candle's flame and blows a giant fireball. Showoff. Some pretty smart people actually study nightlife. Hard to believe, but they do. This guy Robert Hollands published what sounded like a great book called Friday Night, Saturday Night. Then he went and ruined it with the subtitle: Youth Cultural Identification in the Post-Industrial City. Holland's a Brit so he did most of his research over there, but he comes up with a great big giant theory about going out: that the meaning of it has shifted from a simple rite of passage to adulthood to a "permanent socializing ritual." And he gets paid for this. Who could believe it? The problem with nightlife is that people expect too much from it. People expect nightlife to produce those moments you tell and tell and tell, each repetition better than the last. They expect it to get you into bed, to get you to the altar, to cover when your shrink goes on vacation, everything short of warming the milk and fluffing the pillow when you get home (although some expect that too). It's an insufferable burden. Honestly, and this is a serious question: Has anyone ever met anyone in a bar? Like met anyone? Not tonight, they aren't. What you see on college night are clumps of friends and a few solo riders, usually guys, a few years older, who sit at the bar, open a tab and admire the bodies in their presence. If you find complaints about nightlife in New Tampa, you won't find complaints about women in New Tampa. They come in shirts without backs, hips exposed, hair gussied up, every thread of denim in their jeans stretched to its physical limit. Kevin Colin, 21, admirer of New Tampa women since he was a kid growing up in Tampa Palms, says bluntly: "Rich, blond and fine." You get a gorgeous blond who arrives in a snug black shirt, two buttons undone. She could snap them together. Only at school, she says. The women are, of course, much further ahead than the guys. Especially the beautiful women. At the Falls, the best looking ones are probably the waitresses, which is the way most serious, successful clubs work. There's sort of an unwritten rule that you have to be attractive to get hired. It's not that you'll get turned down if you aren't. They'll just tell you they don't have any openings. The women who do get jobs, like the slender 23-year-old Jackie Thibault, all seem to wear the same size shirt. There are about 12 waitresses in all. Thibault says a number of them also work at the Fletcher Avenue Hooters, where the tips are, surprisingly, worse. Some have implants, others have had someone offer to buy them a pair. It's a peaceful crowd. There've been a few scattered fights in the past. On this night, a used car salesman from Florida Avenue comes in to use the bathroom after taking a punch at the pool hall next door for his wife. "I gave the guy my card and told him if he wanted to give me a call we could settle it later," he says, cleaning his lip with water from the sink. He leaves. The crowd is thinner than usual. On a good night, the promoter, after she pays the doormen and the DJs and all her other expenses, will clear $2,000. It'll have to be next Tuesday. Rotating spotlights reflect the movements of dancers as shadows on the projection screen. If you don't want to watch them, you can just watch their silhouettes. It's almost better that way. -- John Balz can be reached at (813) 269-5313 or at balz@sptimes.com
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