Living: Hotpots of the Urban Night

They are classy, flashy and splashy.

They cater to singles, couples and triples, straights and gays and feys, blacks and whites, the well-shaped or the merely well-heeled—and just about anyone else who yearns to break out of 9-to-5 humdrum into a space-age world of mesmeric lighting, Neronian dècor and, of course, music, music, music. They are the new breed of discothèque, moth-gathering hotpots of the urban night. Discomania is the latest passion of faddish, fickle American city dwellers, turning daytime Jekylls and Jacquelines into nocturnal and nonma-levolent Hydes and Heidis gyrating through smoke and decibels in a Cinderella world of self-stardom.

The new discos are strobe light-years removed from the borax boîtes of the '60s—most of which died a well-deserved death. In place of the tacky, bare-wall closets wired for din, push and crush, the best new places project sensuality, exclusivity and luxury. And they are booming: there are some 15,000 discos in the U.S. today, v. 3,000 only two years ago. Many of the night places are for members only, with fees and dues ranging as high as $1,000 a year. Many have good—and expensive—restaurants and such added recreational lures as pool, pinball and backgammon rooms. In many, the furnishings can best be described as haul kitsch: kaleidoscopic lighting, silver vińyl banquettes, tented nooks, birch trees hung with twinkly Italian lights, jungles of synthetic plants, Plexiglas floors. Not a few, however, are decorated in notably good taste; and some seem to have been designed by the people who went on to make Star Wars.

The patrons too have changed. The new boogie bunch dress up for the occasion—with shoulders, backs, breasts and midriffs tending to be nearly bare. Outside of a few old-style "meat racks" —mostly homosexual hangouts—few disco freaks today turn out in jeans, shorts, T shirts or sandals. Designers like Halston make women's clothes just for dancing. "The dress becomes your dancing partner," he says, and Photographer Francesco Scavullo claims that the "young and exciting fashions in the discos are the only clothes today." Dancing styles have progressed and mellowed. The hustle and the bus stop, the rope and the roach have largely been replaced in the past year by either a languid free-form oscillation or neojitter-bug. There is even an occasional foxtrot, Lindy or waltz—to the 2001 version of the Blue Danube. However the patrons dance, the new discos are designed, says Boston Disco Manager Mark Hugo, to make "everyone feel like a star."

The music almost everywhere is "disco sound": heavy back beat, uptempo, often with Big Band effects. Favorite artists are Barry White, Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer, the Silver Convention, Maynard Ferguson, Shalamar, Marvin Gaye, the Bee Gees, the Isley Brothers, Jerry Butler—as well as Sinatra, Como and Glenn Miller. They are cunningly selected by the all-important disco jockeys who keep a hawk's eye on the floor and choreograph the dancers by changing the pace and style of the records and tapes. Says Chicago Disco Jockey Paul Weisberg: "I look around and get a feeling for the mood, the age and the dress of the people."

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