Don’t worry, you will not be hearing about Rich and Kim at Brooklyn Mirage or the Butterfly Room in SoHo. My first real dance club ever was in 1979 when on my first trip to Europe for business. We had just formed the World Corporate Division and I was one of the new offices assigned to cover the world’s multinational corporations. The bank thought it important that we all get a taste of the international world , so they sent about ten of us on a tour of our European offices. While I had lived and traveled in Europe for three years in high school, most of the others on the trip had never been to Europe. That is the generational difference between then and now. Compare that to when my youngest son was in high school and said to Kim, “you haven’t been to China?!”, where he had travelled to, not once, but twice, in his youthful years. Anyway, imagine a group of eager youngish American bankers on their first trip to Europe doing the If it’s Tuesday This Must be Belgium tour. We started in London, which was pretty stuffy in those days, with pub lunches and kidney pie. But the second stop was Paris where everyone decided we absolutely had to go to the Crazy Horse Saloon on Avenue George V, where the champagne flowed like water and the Can-Can dancers showed us their body parts with abandon. Unfortunately, we got their rather late after another stuffy business diner, so everyone felt the need to go to an after-hours club where a lap dance and a tickle ended up costing us $1,600 we didn’t have and we needed to exit stage left abruptly and find our way back to the hotel on the dark streets of Paris. The next stop on the tour was Milan, where a big disco club with a pounding beat invoked the image of Saturday Night Fever, which was still fresh in our memories. The tour ended in Frankfurt where the harmless clubs of Paris an Milan turned serious with a finishing visit to the Kaiserstraße. The Kaiserstraße was synonymous with Frankfurt’s red light district after World War II, featuring many bars and many, many ladies of the evening. Today, in the Kaiserstrasse itself, there are only a few sex shops left which alone wouldn’t constitute a red light district by German standards. I understand that the current red light district in Frankfurt is mainly in the Bahnhofsviertel area, but in 1979 to a bunch of New York bankers, that kind of clubbing was pretty outrageous.
Once I had gotten through what I call my “Scotch Phase” of banking, where I thought I had to match my bosses scotch drinking (always Dewars) to be one of the guys, I just stopped drinking alcohol altogether. Without alcohol, going to a club gets pretty gritty. In fact, I suspect that alcohol is the main lubricant that makes clubbing popular and even possible since these places are about as seedy as they can be in the harsh light of day. I had a brief revisit to the scene in the mid-1990s when I ran the Global Private Banking business. At that point it was not about mimicking my bosses, but not losing face with my subordinates. My biggest encounters were in Latin America, especially Brazil. On one particular trip to Rio, the guys were determined to show me the entire Rio club scene, including a “Suruba”. “Suruba” is a Brazilian Portuguese slang term which refers to a sexual orgy or group sex. I managed to avoid the whole program by pleading executive privilege and propriety, much to their protestations. I was later told that those who did go on for the evening got quite an eyeful. My most memorable clubbing incident in my private banking days took place in Palm Beach. I was visiting Miami and all of tha Latin clients that encamped there with their offshore monies. The office was run an populated entirely by young, attractive Latino women and they were in charge of the evening. I thought that would make things safer for me than with the guys in Rio, but, as it turned out, only by a little. The big roadtrip that night was to drive the hour up to Palm Beach to catch the disco scene at some place called Mar-a-Lago. It was the hangout of that silly, almost cartoonish, New York social wannabe, Donald Trump. Our real estate department had been his lead banker during his first bankruptcy in Atlantic City, and while we in Private Banking would not touch the guy (he was known to be a very lousy credit risk and a ridiculously demanding client), we did have the connections to get into the Mar-a-Lago club for the evening. So, we went into the club at about 2am only to find Trump dancing with his infant daughter (Tiffany) while Marla and the nursemaid watched on anxiously among the stobes and pounding music. There were no Father-of-the-Year awards for DJT that night (or any other, from what I can tell).
The rest of my adult life may have included one of two visits to clubs, but without the help of excess alcohol or some other substance like cocaine, there was little attraction to that scene altogether. I’ve been retired here in San Diego for going on six years now and have never seen the inside of places like NOVA, the Onyx Room or Bloom, which I hear are the hot clubs in town. I will note that the big gay social club in town happens to be called Rich’s, but even that has avoided my attendance. On our little hilltop, the big clubbing scene consists primarily of the Hidden Meadows Garden Club, of which Kim is going on her third year as co-president. I am a member as well, which is good since I do all the gardening in the family. In fact, tomorrow, our garden will be the last of three that are toured by the club and I will be giving the tour while Kim lays on the luncheon spread. The gang usually parks on the street, which will allow them to see my new croquet pitch and walk across my wooden garden bridge to come up the drive. From there, the tour will go over to the patio with the Zen garden and all the new potted succulent plantings and both the “$43,000 rock garden that wasn’t”, the cactus knoll and the Northwest Wildflower Garden (below which sit my two new Oro Blanco grapefruit trees). The pathways of the back hillside are not new, but they are in full bloom right now with the fan aloes boasting red blossoms and all the ice plants screaming their iridescent colors. The fullness of the Palm Verdes and the proliferation of the blue Century Plant agaves is striking with all the cobalt blue pots here and there and the array of metal sculpture all around to give added interest. Those who have not seen the Hobbit House with its planted roof and the rock climbing wall with its brass bell at the top, will realize that I am a retired entertainer who needs to amuse children of all ages every chance I get.
The tour will end with a walk through the Cecil Garden with its citrus trees and bonsai trees and perhaps with a walk around the garage and the Betty Garden, so that they may pass by my newly finished butterfly boulder, adorned with succulent planters (I’m filling those with fresh specimens today) and metal butterflies. Wasn’t that the name of a great clubbing band (Oh no, it was Iron Butterfly, right)? Well In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is now A-Gadda-Da-Rich and I’m finally clubbing the way I was meant to club.