<font color=6b8e23 size=3>[Brian's Stuff]</font><br>The hypocrisy of slating Saturday nightclub fever

Home > >

print dictionary print

[Brian's Stuff]
The hypocrisy of slating Saturday nightclub fever

The nightclub culture has evolved but not the accompanying social stigma.

In my era - the early ’90s to the mid ’90s - there weren’t many places where people could go and trip the light fantastic. In Seoul, there were only three areas that offered such entertainment. The area around Gangnam Station and Itaewon were the main venues while there were nightclubs attached to some of the bigger hotels.

The Gangnam area was reserved for college students while those with deeper pockets chose to go to the hotel nightclubs.

Juliana in Gangnam was for many years the hip place to go. Barbarella at the New World Hotel was another venue where foreign dance music could be heard. It was a time before the whole K-pop phase erupted. Those who craved the latest dance moves ventured to Itaewon, where even high school students could get entrance.

Lee Ju-no and Yang Hyeon-seok, backup dancers to singer Hyeon Jin-young and later to become part of the band Seotaeji, learned their moves there.

But the scene was totally different. There was a curfew in place and establishments couldn’t operate beyond midnight. Many did, though. When the police decided on a show of force and screeched up at a club, sirens blaring, waiters would scrum down shoulder to shoulder, allowing customers to flee out the back.

Called “booking,” (origins unknown) dating the other sex at clubs was a fairly accepted phenomenon. For some years, female customers were brought to the booths of the male clientele. Then for some time, it was the other way around.

But nightclubbers had to endure a certain amount of social stigma. The media certainly played its part in creating the bad press. Whenever the government talked about entertainment activities that were supposed to have a bad influence on society, blurred images of clubs were shown on TV. Even when people enjoyed going to clubs, they could not really say so. It was like it was some kind of crime.

Then Hongdae came along and the government started to allow all clubs to operate 24 hours around the clock.

In the past, people gathered around 4 or 5 in the afternoon at a coffee shop and then headed to the clubs. Peak time was reckoned to be from 8 to 9 in the evening. Now, people don’t go out until after midnight.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the booking culture. That is still the same. But even with everything else changing, people still tend to hide how they met someone if it happened to be at a club.

Recently, one of my college friends got married. When you go to weddings you always hear the perennial question, “How did they meet?” It was no different. The question was asked and someone said: “At a club.”

There was an awkward silence and then everybody nodded politely. But you could tell that everyone was thinking something negative. It shows how conservative our society is. There is still too much emphasis on formality.

Here, you meet people on a blind date often arranged by a mutual friend or parents. How is that different from meeting at a club?

Well, the only difference I can find is that at a club you ask all the basic information yourself, something that you get prior to a blind date.

Like what school he/she went to, what the family does; in short, the whole enchilada. There is less room for that spontaneous feeling that you get from meeting someone at a club.

It should not be like that.

I know plenty of people who met on blind dates and their histories of fooling around are nothing to be proud of at all. Yet, they act as if they met the right way.

“Hypocrites!” I tell them.


[africanu@joongang.co.kr]
Log in to Twitter or Facebook account to connect
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
help-image Social comment?
s
lock icon

To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.

Standards Board Policy (0/250자)