David Schneider

Carl Cox's bleeding-ear beats caromed off Crobar's walls when my girlfriend first told me she loved me.

I answered appropriately: "What?"

She yelled, "I understand techno now. I love you!" She also said she'd lost the coat-check tickets. "Do you still love me?"

This, by and large, is the essence of Crobar, the legendary Chicago dance mecca founded in 1991, once notorious for Dennis-Rodmanesque flamboyance, which registered among the world's top clubs until its closure in late 2002--a place of euphoria and confusion, where dance music is properly understood in all its disorientating manias, amidst a pulsing crowd of surprising diversity.

It was, then, with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety that I accepted an invitation to get a first look at the new Crobar, whose grand reopening on Saturday, October 25, features the sounds of David Waxman, Teri Bristol and Gernell Geronimo.

The bad news first: the warehouse-cum-club is dead. Gone are the chain-link fences, the beer-tub girls, metal staircases and the dark, seething, techno-Goth atmosphere.

The good news: arisen in its place is an ambience of postmodern theatricality and sheer drama. The main entrance, once a confusing warren of passages leading aimlessly to the bars, coat check and bathrooms, is now a wide tunnel exploding on to an enormous oblong bar, glinting in hues of metallic amber. "That," says co-owner Joey Vartanian with perceptible glee, "is shredded-up old Crobar." The main room's dance floor has been noticeably enlarged, and the staircase, now with chrome and glass banisters, rises from the right side to a balcony level that almost entirely circles the club for prime hawks' views. Skewed rectangular doorways punctuate the route to the upper-level "rock bar," which has crushed stones trapped upon the wall for a bit of gritty flair. The Mezzanine is now the Suite, which offers table service with capacious glass walls. And the DJ booth rises like a god from the back wall.

Vartanian wants to "bring the party back to Chicago" with what he calls "extreme service," with an abundance of staff to "make everyone feel like a VIP." Will it succeed? Stakes are high for nightlife these days, with a governmental war-on-fun now raging. But that's at the heart of Crobar's transformation--to raise clubbing from the underground, and return the carnival to the topnotch musical talent which inspires it.

(2003-10-23)

Also by David Schneider

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Sensuous Chicago: Taste
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