DANCE MUSIC PUMPS THROUGH CLUB WORLD
Column:   COVER STORY
Byline:   MICHAEL NORMAN  PLAIN DEALER MUSIC CRITIC
05/21/93
THE PLAIN DEALER  CLEVELAND, OHIO    (CLEV)
Edition:  FINAL / ALL
Section:  FRIDAY
Page:     19
(Copyright 1993)
   It's 11:30 p.m. on a Friday and the crowd is just beginning to
filter into the Smart Bar in the Flats. A disc jockey from
WENZ-FM/107.9, the alternative rock station, is putting the
finishing touches on his weekly live broadcast, but the hip
19-and-over set here really isn't interested in dance remixes of
Blondie's "Rapture."
   The real party at Smart Bar begins after midnight, when the
radio-friendly clang of alternative dance pop is replaced by the
thumping, hypnotic groove of underground house and techno.
   In the greet-the-dawn world of '90s nightclubbing, the drug of
choice isn't coke or acid or even a synthetic, rave-scene newcomer
like Ecstasy.
   It's the dance music itself - in this case, pure, uncut house
and techno - pumping through the tangle of bodies on the colonnaded
Smart Bar dance floor, like a megadose of adrenaline.
   It's all bass and drums and repetitive synth lines, played fast
(up to 150 beats a minute) and impossibly loud. But this hard,
sometimes grating, mix of '90s style dance music provides the
high-energy mood and wall-shaking ambiance that are the hallmark of
Smart Bar, the area's hippest dance club and the closet thing
Cleveland has to New York-style nightlife.
   There are other clubs in town that play house and techno music
- Alter House on W. 9th St. on Saturday nights and Metropolis in
The Flats on Sundays.
   But only Smart Bar - led by owner and longtime nightlife diva
Angela Ver Duyn and disc jockeys Rob Sherwood, Mike Filly and Tim
Richardson - comes close to being a scene, mixing the hip,
underground ethos of rave culture with an up-to-date fashion sense
and nightlife chic.
   "Socko" Gaitano, 24, is a photographer who makes the 90-minute
drive to Smart Bar from his home in Youngstown every Friday night.
The chance to hear new music and get a taste of hip nightlife is
the draw.
   "This scene is about the closest you'll come to New York City
without going to New York," he says, struggling to be heard over
the techno din. "This has the feel of the big New York clubs - the
Limelight or Warsaw or the Wonder Bar. If it didn't, I wouldn't be
driving in from Youngstown every week."
   Christina Heasley, 23, feels the same way about the club, even
though its only a short cab ride from her apartment in Cleveland.
   "I love the atmosphere," says Heasley, a nanny who has come to
Smart Bar this night dressed in that black Eurowear favored by Cure
fans and arts majors the world over. "It's like my second home.
It's just a really cool club. The people, everything.
   "I know everyone here, so it's real easy to come down and be
myself. This place introduced me to what is hip and what is going
on. I wouldn't be who I am today without this club."
   Part of the allure of Smart Bar is the diversity of its crowd.
There are no beefy Studio 54-style bouncers at the front door with
orders to keep out the unhip riffraff.
   The club draws everyone from artists and club kids to curious
college students and regular Flats bar-hoppers.
   Club fashion runs the gamut from jeans and T-shirts to baggy
hip-hop pants and backward ball caps. The club-kid contingent
dresses up in wild club fashions, complete with Dr. Seuss-style
rave hats and cartoonish techno clothes. But there's also plenty of
designer suits and black cocktail dresses.
   Jon Germany-Bey, 24, is a computer engineering major at the
Cleveland Institute of Technology. He's been coming to the Smart
Bar for three years.
   "I like the fact you can do what you want when you come here,"
he says. "There's a social formality in some clubs. You have to
dance with a woman - that kind of thing. Here, that's not a
requirement. You can either dress up or dress down. It's business
suits to jeans."
   It's hard to walk around Smart Bar without noticing a few
obvious parallels to the disco scene of the 1970s. The strobes and
lasers are still there, and that unique-smelling brand of nightclub
smoke still pours from the disc jockeys' booths.
   But those are surface similarities.
   "The '70s disco scene was about drugs and sex," says disc
jockey Tim Richardson, who has been working in nightclubs since the
waning days of disco in 1980. "The '90s are about energy and
release.
   "Drugs will always play a part in the club culture, but today
there's no coke in the bathroom. It's a lot less prevalent that it
used to be."
   Richardson said that during the 1980-87 heyday of drugs in
dance clubs, it was "not unusual to see people snort coke and shoot
up right on the dance floor.
   "The kids today aren't into that. They are more health
conscious. There's AIDS, there's the crackdown on drunken driving."
   AIDS or no, bars remain one of the principal playgrounds for
on-the-make singles. Smart Bar is no different, but there is a
"cautious edge" to the mating dance here, say regulars.
   "Back in the '70s, people were out for one thing," says Leaann
Atkins, a 25-year-old artist and dancer and a frequent vistor to
the Smart Bar. "Now, it's more social - a mixing of friends of all
age groups."
   Atkins, who spent four weeks on this year's Lollapalooza
alternative rock festival as one of the cyber-women dancers in the
Chicago band Ministry's industrial stage show, says the bottom line
for Smart Bar's success is its all-important air of New York
hipness.
   "Smart Bar is the longest living club in Cleveland," she said.
"Angela (Ver Duyn) has taken the same club and made it into
something by bringing in something new all the time."
   Atkins says Ver Duyn's recent decision to open a new section of
the club, called the Underground devoted exclusively to house
music, is evidence of that.
   "House is going to be the next big thing and Smart Bar is ahead
of its time again," she said. "Angela is staying ahead of the times
as usual and is bringing in the hippest music."
   Marla Kammer, a student at Case Western Reserve University and
an ardent techno and house devotee, agreed. "We're pretty much on
the leading edge around here in the Midwest thanks to clubs like
Smart Bar," says Kammer, who has her own techno/house show from 2
to 5 p.m. Tuesdays on the college radio station, WRUW-FM/91.1
   "We get a bad rap nationally, but what I like about the scene
here is that it's small enough for everyone to know each other and
big enough to have events. The club scene here is growing."
@Art: PHOTOS by PD/ROBIN LAYTON KINSLEY:    Photo 1:  Friday
night on the Smart Bar dance floor. The pulsating, electronic buzz of
house and techno music provide the adrenaline rush in the
greet-the-dawn world of '90s nightclubbing.    Photo 2:  Leaann
Atkins, a Cleveland artist and dancer, and Michael Gilberto, a
Cleveland disc jockey and underground party promoter, are regulars at
the Smart Bar and other techno-rave clubs.        COVER DESIGN by
DORA STANOFF