Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Aug. 24, 1981, edition 1 / Page 38
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IOCThe Daily Tar HeelMonday, August 24, 1981 Wtmke ecluMwity murks New York bam? By MARK MURRELL Associate Editor NEW YORK Are all night clubs basically the same? Though some lurk downstairs or in back alleys and others are massed behind nondescript store fronts and some are flashy and demand you atten tion while others only seek to prove that it can be chic to dance in a dump, . on the surface they are not that different. New York City's "exclusive" nightclub circuit patronized by glitterati and houn ded by the paprazzi as the columnists say is not exactly what a freshman would ex pect to find in Chapel Hill, but after hanging out in New York clubs during the wee hours all summer, I can assure you that physically, the nation's hottest spots aren't all that different from our own favorite haunts. Take any Chapel Hill club, move it to New York City, double the prices, throw in a couple of famous names, and have a couple with shaved heads dressed in plastic garbage bags and army boots to dance, and a new hot spot would be born. Soon stars and gawkers would flock to pay an outrageous cover charge for a night of oppressive heat, smoke, drink and noise. ' Really, the only thing missing from night clubs in Chapel Hill is New York's fake exclusivity and a People magazine clientele. And, of course, big name bands and huge video screens. While the buildings don't differ that much, the 111 people that inhabit them do. In New York, every body desperately tries to be Somebody. Somebody else. Everyone wants to be FA M O U S. Eager crowds line up outside and bouncers (who are on an incredible power trip) select a chosen few to enter the sacred nightclub. The front entrance is usually barricaded like Fort Knox. Many times you can't get in unless you are Somebody or at least look like Somebody and are willing to pay up to $15 cover charge and look very bored and non chalant while doing it. But if the bouncers letyouin-KAPOW!!! - you're an Instant Somebody. (At least in the eyes of the people left standing outside.) It's a system built en tirely on snob appeal. "In the future, every one will be famous for 15 minutes," Andy Warhol once said. How right he was. In New York, it's a nightly game. Case in point: me. One hot July night, I decided it was get into The Underground or be damned. My curiosity was kill ing me. That club is currently the in-place; it's located on Union Square beneath the offices of Interview Magazine. It can be a scuzzy area of town at night. And what better place for a club with snob appeal? Dumps, my friends, can be oh so chic. The outside of The Underground is painted flat black doors, windows, everything. There is no sign, only an address number. You have to know where the club is. It is a very pseudo-subtle place, frequented by people who wouldn't bend over to pick up a $5 bill, but who probably clip coupons in private. I planned my strategy to get in, carefully. I dressed normally except a green burlap shirt of the rough sack cloth variety which I accompanied with a jute tie. "No normal person would dress like this in the middle of July," I told myself. "They'll have to let me in." It was 90 degrees at 1 1 p.m. when I crawled into a garbage can of a subway car and made my way down to 14th Street. At 14th station there is always a crowd of people dressed to the hilt and scrambling up out of the subway to hail a cab to The Under ground. It gives you a semblance of being Somebody if you arrive in a cab. I got out in front of the club and walked up to the bouncer trying to exude that "Ho hum, here I am again oh God, these parties get so boring, but everybody expects to see me" attitude. It worked. What a sham. As scores of others looked on, I was handed an admission card by a pale, wan woman dressed in a paper miniskirt accented by her taxicab yellow hair that looked like it had been cut with a lawn mower. I was among the Beautiful People. Oh, the excitement. Oh, the anticipation. I thought walking into The Underground would be like Dorothy crossing into Oz when everything switches to Technicolor. I walked in and for all I knew I could have been in good ol Durham, N.C. Amid the cigarette smoke and typical din, there were neon and strobe lights to burn out the retinas of your eyes, music booming from 12-foot speakers, and furniture that almost di gests you if you sit in it. Standard night club fare. But a quick look around at the people and the prices assured me I was either in New York or on Mars. Maybe even Pluto. Drinks were $4, beer was $2.50 and if cocaine were flour there was probably enough in the place to start a bakery. Plus about every Big record producer in New York was there. ' People there were dressed in everything: cotton, polyester, aluminum, cardboard, plastic, paper, even glass, wood and wire. The Underground is a club which bills itself as "This year's place." But people who bop a round in leopard-skin jumpers with glass shoes, sunglasses and black lipstick m limou sizes are bound to be fickle. So The Under ground will probably not be "Next year's place." Neither was it "Last year's place." That was the aptly named MUDD CLUB, which is nothing more than an abandoned ware house in lower Man hattan that has some how become glitzy. When a band plays at the MUDD CLUB there is no curtain over the stage; the management just raises a metal garage door and there they are. Some times if you get there early, films are shown in an upper room, which is actually an old storage loft that is reached by climbing a rickety spiral staircase. There are replicas of Greek statues in the basement with graffiti all over them. It's the type of place that makes you homesick for Troll's Bar. They both smell alike, but Troll's is so much more honest. CBGB's of rock music fame, is also a fun place to go provided you can get there and back alone. It's on the Bowery, which is a little bit rowdier than Rosemary Street. I was propositioned three times, had my life threatened twice and crossed the path of the mad slasher before I finally got there, only "J to find that it's a lot like Cat's Cradle. Good, loud music, lots of Budweiser, wild dancing and the ' city's best graffiti in the restrooms. New York's Peppermint Lounge, which is fa mous for inventing the Twist, is like walking into a time warp. There are pictures of the Fab Four at the Peppermint in 1964 all over the place and lots of Motown and early 1960s music. It's not unusual to see women going around in threes dressed like the Shirelles or people you would swear once sang with Martha and the Vandellas. V Club 57 is totally op posite; it's a punk hang out down near St. Mark's Place, where bottles are thrown at the band if the music is too slow, where skin heads leap off the stage head-first into dancers and where boys slam dance like a gang fight set to three chords of music while their girlfriends hangout on the stairs sport-? ing razorblades which they occasionally use on each other like rabid cats. But nothing in New York City could ever take the place of dart games at the Cave or drinking un der the stars at He's Not Here or watching peo ple shag at Crazy Zack's for that matter. There are just some night clubs that can't cross over from one city to another, and that's the most fascinating part of it. There's a universal law that governs clubs and the same types of people frequent them no 'matter" where you are. It's just that New York brings out different things in the same types of people than Chapel Hill does. n ..hi i . mm in !., Co) G) Co) G y iters Fender Yamaha Ibanez Vantage Guild Takamine Lessons Rentals Financing Repairs Accessories Amps PA's Effects Compare Prices Eastgate 968-441 1 prep From page 1 For a man who wants to fit in with the fashions of the times, Varley recommends flannel pants of various colors, a Navy blazer in dacron or wool and a crew neck sweater or a Shetland sweater in almost any color. He suggested the dirty buck shoes in plain toe and saddle shoes. "We don't have a button-down in this store. We used to have racks, but now it's gone more classic, a classier look, more stylish," said Lisa Thomlinson, the manager of The Towne Shop on Henderson Street. "Our silk pants and silk jackets are selling very well, more than the basic wool skirt and patchwork sweater," Thomlinson said. "All of my friends are trying not to be preppy; everybody's try ing to look different." The flyer announces that "The Raleigh Jaycees Proudly Present The 5th Annual North Carolina Beach Music Convention Saturday August 29, 1981, at the N.C. S ine amen in l ime From Casual to Formal ... The Style You Want ... Made to Fit You Dressmaking and Alterations 133V2 E. Franklin St. Chapel Hill, N.C. 929-4826 Tues.-Fri. 8:30-4:00 Saturday 9-12 State Fairgrounds Racetrack." The Chair men of the Board will be there, as well as Clifford Curry, The Clovers, Billy Scott and The Prophets, North Tower, Cotton wood, Bill Pinkney and The Drifters. Also, the flyer promises a shag contest and wet T-shirts an event that sounds decidedly un-beach. Beach Music has its roots in the rhythm and blues of the 1950s, which was the first black music derived from gospel to become widely popular among a white audience. Only the most hybrid white music fans appreciated it when it first came out but these early rhythm and blues somehow took hold in the colleges of the South most widely in North and South Carolina and Virginia and 'became what is now known as Beach Music. Much of the early Beach, "Fat Boy," "Under The Boardwalk," and "Charlie Brown," still retain much of their soulfulness. But Beach Music is de signed for a white audience, watered down to a polite and acceptable form so it won't outrage. This is found in the ear liest of tunes,' but , it's so calculated, so commercial in the modern Beach hits like "Myrtle Beach Days" and "I Love Beach Music" that the songs have lost all their V SMI MSZW W KHS? (Comp!cte 7 iwp ystoms I JVU . s a? i r .-.2nd 2 rR0re ' I ...of course! 4 .,.- HHISHlBll Jo . . f r j, 'f 'V&m. W The cjre.i's ct fcr fine 1 Discover frrrcnt scps, ; scsnted shimpocs, lovely Chapel Hill Winston-Salem Raleigh Telephone 942-8546 Telephone 768-0150 Telephone 821-5355 East Franklin Street (above Four Corners) Robinhood Road (across from Pizza Hut) NOW OPEN...Hiilsborouqh street (across from ncsu Bell Tower) ..-.IJ : ?'Y. 'J . it funk and soul. But at least you can shag to it. o College fraternities can trace their ori gins back to 1776 when Phi Beta Kappa was organized at William and Mary as a social and literary fraternity; it didn't be come the non-secret honor society it is ; today until many years later. Such early fraternities had both social and intellec tual purposes and glorified such ideals as brotherhood as well as stressing the schol- arly pursuit of knowledge and leadership. In the early fraternities ritualistic mysti-' cism and secrecy were combined with the social and academic aspects. College ad ministrators looked with suspicion on the fraternities secrecy and pranks which were considered a diversion from the proper collegiate goals. Most institutions tried to ban them and so most college fra ternities led an underground existence until after the Civil War. But with the industrial revolution and the expansion in higher education that it brought about, fraternities became more open and won recognition from college administrators because they modified the traditional liberal arts education to meet the demands for status not necessarily intellectual. When the fraternities gained credibility in the post-Civil War years, they were joined by women's fraternities, now known as sororities. ' The first fraternity at UNC was organ- r UXrYERSITY MALL 929-2C31 w ft JOTTER . . a Parker ball pen built to last! Ordinary ballpoints are expendable but not the Parker Jotter ball pen. It's precisely engineered. Tough, corrosion-resistant " stainless steel is used in the most critical areas. Large Parker refill ' promises long writing. THERE'S K0r.S AT YCUR rffemr STTO ized in 1842, but they were quickly-banned until administrators relented in 1851 and Delta Kappa Epsilon became the first national fraternity at Carolina. Today, there are 28 fraternities and 15 sororities on campus involving about 2,500 students. In mid-August, outside the Union, the sign-up tables are set up for Greek Rush. About 50 or 60 women have signed up to day at the sorority table. About 1,000 women will go through Rush and those that get in will have many benefits accord ing to the two nice, but slightly borecl women tending the Rush table. I . "Sorority members have a higher Q.P.A.. than is the average for the campus. And in a school so large it gives a smaller group with which to identify. Since sororities are so old they offer a bit of stability for fresh-i men and even sophomores and juniors' who aren't settled in," said one of the women in a tone of voice that suggested this bit was all well-rehearsed PR that left out much. The term "Preppy" originally was used to refer to those students who at t tended preparatory schools, members of the economic elite who lived in the right places, wore the right clothes, knew the right people, ate in the right places, and held the right jobs. But something happened, and what had been a minority of people in the 1960s and early 1970s seemed to have rapidly multiplied. But what has happened is that it's fashionable to look and act like a preppy (or at least what you think a prep py would look like) even if you went to a' place like Reidsville High. It's fashionable in vogue, to look preppy and the reasons for this are hard to discern. It's partially a sign of the political times and partially just something to do. And like all fads it will die off. But right now, Prepmania, the cult of the gator, is the rage. Sharp Automatic Pencil .......... .$4.00 Sliding Sleeve Pencil.. .. .$7.95 Roll'n Glue Liquid Adhesive 3$ "Slim" Rolling Writer ..I.. $5.00 Utra Fine Sharp Point ,...790 J THERE'S f:0BE AT YOUR STTQfldl'Ervlt
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Aug. 24, 1981, edition 1
38
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