I have been to clubs a few times, but I don't enjoy the experience. You have to push through people to get anywhere, the bartender takes 15 minutes to get to you, the drinks are expensive, there's nowhere to sit, and they play music so loud you can't hear yourself think. And the patrons wear ridiculous shiny clothes. Not quite the Cocoanut Grove. FOCUS: Clubs: awesome nightlife activity or annoying? Best/worst club experiences?
The other reason I dislike clubs: given the volume, it is typically nearly impossible to talk to anyone of the opposite gender. It encourages the "introduce yourself by thrusting your dick in their direction" method of greeting, which I find skeevy. They're OK when you go with friends, but it's damn near impossible to actually meet anyone at a club. And I imagine for women, it can't be fun having a litany of random boners pressed up against you. Unless you're into that sort of thing.
I also don't like the noise levels in clubs. It's hard to spit game if the girl can't hear you. Although, in my case, this is probably to my advantage. Places with a large outdoor space tend to be better, since there are typically fewer speakers, and the sound of other people's conversations doesn't carry as well. Creepiest place I've ever been to is Pacha. For the most part it's pretty much the same as any other giant club, but while most go up to a second and third floor, this one when into a basement, and then a smaller subbasement. It's the first time I've really felt claustrophobic. But, my first time there the group of guys I was with (I hate to admit it, but it was the RSD NYC Crew, red dot me if you must) were all trying to pick up this same latina girl. One would strike out, then another would go to bat. It was pretty amusing to watch. After a couple hours, they'd all given up, and I ran into her in the subbasement, and after talking for a little bit, we ended up making out, I got her number, and hung out a few times but never hooked up, but several months later I visited her while she was back home in Ecuador, and she set me up with one of her very hot friends there. In general though, I find clubs to be really boring. When I go out, I want to sit down, have a drink, pick a spot on the wall, and stare at it all evening. Somehow, to me that is fun. Nnts Nnts Nnts Nnts...not so much. Sitting down, it's easy to feel comfortable not doing anything. But standing? You look fucking creepy. Btw, for anyone in NY here, if the guy with the pony tail still works the door at Gansevoort/Plunge, PM me and I'll get you the password to skip the line.
I see clubs as a great equalizer—since they're too loud to hold a conversation, they work in favor of those who can't hold conversations, and work to the detriment of those that can. I've been to clubs a dozen times or so and I've never enjoyed myself. I refuse to go back.
That's not an equalizer, it just changes what works. Nothing more "equal" about relying on non-verbal communication and other factors than relying on your talking skills.
People who enjoy going to clubs are almost invariably insufferable. Club music is shit, they smell like sweat, they are crowded, and the drinks are overpriced. Also, the women there are always excessively made up, which is a look I'm really not into. Nothing but cons and no pros...so what is the point? I think I've gone to a club like 3-4 times and always hated it so I stopped going. At this point, I don't even know anyone who enjoys going to clubs.
+1 for the "Fuck clubs" crowd. They work against me: I'm short, not real muscular, pretty intellectual and I can hold a conversation. That is, of course, if I'm not getting elbowed in the head by some Ed Hardy-wearing fuckup trying to have clothed sex with a drunk girl.
Yeah that could also read: People who don't worship spray tans and hair gel vs. People who like going to clubs. I the only reason Ill ever go to a club is either one, someone else has bought a table and paid a retarded amount for booze that I can drink for free. Or if the chick I am with wants to go and Im getting laid either way. If she wants to have fun dancing a little while, while grindin muh cock,' no sweat off of my back. I actually don't know how dudes can manage it with out getting the girl away from the music a couple of times just to get some sort of information back and forth. My cooze hound buddy is the only guy I know that can go in, not give a shit, and be making out with a hot ass girl within three or four songs. I assume it's all nonverbal, which girls have down cold by middle school. Is there something about clubs that makes girls any more willing to give it up? There has got to be a reason why they are so popular, as with anything else it usually has to do with women and fucking.
I went to clubs regularly for a year in college, since a bunch of my friends were. I enjoyed myself each time. (Otherwise I wouldn't have went) I refused to pay more than $15 to get in, and occasionally had the girls pay for me. However, I agree with you guys; clubs are generally loud as shit, and for a nerdy-looking guy like myself, who relies on speech, not very good for picking up women. Dancing like a brain-damaged Mongoloid is sometimes fun, and occasionally, some girl will have fully clothed sex with you, but on the whole, it's not nearly as good as a bar. By the way, most girls that went with me were never picked up by any of the guys there. For them, it was an ego trip to have so much male attention go their way, and be able to reject it.
Yeah but that can be done anywhere else at a fraction of the price, certainly doesn't seem to make it more special being at a club. If you would have said coke I would have totally agreed with you.
I haven't been to a club since I was in my 20s, working in NY, and wasn't married. In the mid 80s, many of the larger magazine publishers (Time, Inc., McGraw-Hill, Conde-Naste, etc.) were spending lavishly to entertain clients and ad agency folks such as myself, and it was quite common for them to stage parties at the popular clubs of the time (the one I remember most was Limelight, which was an old Episcopalian church that was converted into a club. Getting high at the altar was weird, but I got over it pretty quickly). We'd get free admission and a wrist bracelet that gave us an open bar, and this would usually last 8-10pm, and then you were paying for your own drinks (but usually around 9:30-9:45, we'd find our sales rep for whatever magazine was hosting the party so when "open bar" ended, we started to drink off of his/her expense account). Usually, such invitations were for two people. There was a gal in my department who started around the same time as me, liked to drink and drug like me, and really wasn't into the whole "club scene" either. So, if either of us got an invitation and the other didn't, we went together and just did our thing, which was drink and drug while watching people either make fools of themselves on the dance floor, or crash & burn in attempting to pick up someone at the bar. Eventually, we ended up having sex on these party nights, so I guess you could say we became FWBs.
Clubs? Clubs!? Why would I want to wait an hour in line for the privilege of paying $20 to be shoved into a crowded environment full of profoundly sad people? If I wanted that, I would have gone to that Middle Passage exhibit at the Unhappy Black Things Museum in Detroit. Then, when you get in, you have to sliver through nest after nest of striped shirted colon-hatters just to be allowed to try to futilely make eye contact with a bartender so that this "struggling actor" will mix you a watered down, overpriced, mediocre drink and then give you a dirty look when you try to pay in food stamps. This is all to work up a good enough buzz to dry hump some unsuspecting and/or drunk girl in a dress that lurches precipitously on that fine line between eye-catching and distracting. All so what? You might get her to touch your penis later? Then you'll both wake up feeling like you spent the night in a flabby-armed spanking machine? Screw that. I'd rather kick back at home and jerk off to my Selma Hayek puzzle. It's still sad, but I save $70 and there's nobody to apologize to in the morning.
Bingo. ADD- addled attention whores just looooooove going out and OMG CLUBBING IT UP WITH THEIR BESTIESS <3 I mean if you had to face legions of drunk, desparate horny dudes wouldn't you feel the same? Life peaks for girls at age 18-23. They can go out, flirt it up, get a guy to buy them a drink, then label him OMG Creepy when he tries to hit on her (Too many girls I've hung out with have complained about a guy doing this. They don't like it when I call them out about it.) It's straight annoying, and why I don't ever go to clubs. But girls love to go, just "to dance". If you're trying to get laid, why the hell would you go to clubs? Would you go to JCPenney to buy a steak? Stick to bars or hitting on girls during the day, when their egos are somewhat within check. P.S. Life gets exponentially better when men reach age 30 and above, when women become desparate, realize they aren't hot anymore, and start looking to settle down with the nice guys they ignored 10 years ago. Who suddenly, you know, have way more options than they used to. Don't get married, don't get married, don't get married. There is nothing in it for men. Ok rant off!
When I was a raver, I was all about the loud music and dancing. Once I quit doing those particular drugs, I lost interest. I was not looking for a boyfriend there, I knew enough to avoid the meat market. I absolutely had a great time with my friends, all loked out on mushrooms and X. Maybe for some vapid girls, but that is a very foolish, bitter statement.
I hate clubs so much. Paying a cover is stupid, the drinks are way over priced, the people are usually the bottom of the barrel types and I absolutely cannot stand club music. Of course that all has already been said so just put me in the "clubs suck" group. Thankfully I have a girlfriend now so I'm not pressured to go to clubs or "meat market" bars to try to pick up girls. Now I get to do exactly what I like doing which is going to the bar down the street that plays good music where I can sit at a table with friends and have beers brought to me, moving only to go to the pisser. Of course my girlfriend likes clubs, or so she says, but that's just because she "likes to dance". So far I have avoided getting pulled out to any places like that. Thank God. Edit to add: The only bad thing is that being in my late 20's, I still know some girls that love places like that, so of course on their birthday they demand that everyone go downtown to go to the latest shitty club. If you go you have a terrible night, if you don't everyone thinks you're a jerk for not showing up. Thankfully I think I'm getting to the age where that is getting phased out. My roommates girlfriends birthday is this weekend and we are going to a bar just across the turnpike where the average age is 40s-50s and they have a house band that plays classic rock all night. That place is surprisingly pretty damn fun.
I'll admit I had many more immature girls in mind when I say that, but how is it bitter? Girls have more options sexually and can manipulate men more in their youth. Shows like Desperate Housewives are stupid, as women don't still have the sexual swagger at 40 as they do at 20. To suggest otherwise is naive. Instead of labeling me bitter, try and bring some logical debate to the thread.
For us, clubs are a Two or Three Times a Year affair when my friends and I just want to dance. When we go, we don't want guys to hit on us. It isn't an ego thing...we just want to dance. And, most of the guys who go to clubs to pick up women are gross. That's why we go to gay clubs. You don't have to deal with Jersey Shore rejects.