You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Club M.
It’s a San Diego Night Spot that is one part Star Wars Bar and one part Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus.
“Step right up and look at the Moth Faced Man,” the door man should shout.
“Step into the Club M and witness a woman with more piercings than teeth,” the parking lot attendant can retort.
Club M is a freak show set to a disco beat.
Club M is a moving violation of humanity.
Club M is a run on sentence of excess.
It’s old women trying to look young. I’t’s douchey men trying to seem cool. It’s nobodies trying to act like they are somebody. It’s tight dresses stretching across big stomachs. It’s bad comb overs and Russian Mafia scam artists gone awry.
Club M reminds me of long-line fishing where miles of cable with thousands of hooks will catch anything that floats by.
This night spot is set in a posh neighborhood in the windy hills of Del Mar, an affluent beach city, North of San Diego.
To get to Club M you drive past a guard gate in a ritzy neighborhood lined by mansions and a golf course.
As we drive through this country club zip code with its idyllic opulence and pristine front lawns, I am puzzled.
I wonder who got paid under the table in a plain brown bag to grant this permit.
Who in their right mind puts a dance club, Star Wars, Wild West cantina in the middle of this slice of suburban paradise.
It just seems wrong, like a stripper pole in the oval office.
We pull up to Club M. The front is elegant, suggesting something different. Audi’s and Mercedes and Porsches infer something memorable is within.
The exterior says upper crust, that a special moment is attainable.
You walk up the stairs and the decor leaves you wanting. I am immediately struck by the irregular lay out.
The 1st room is pedestrian. It reminds me of a conference hall that had a face lift. There are a few tables and a bar. There is a plasma on the wall, and the lighting is harsh.
Beyond the bar, through a narrow passageway, there is a dance area where a DJ is playing the latest sound tracks.
Continue past the dance floor and you exit through sliding glass doors. You are suddenly on a patio with heat lamps and wicker furniture. As I gaze at the dark night sky and serene setting beyond, I wonder how this can exist here.
The music is blaring, so loud, I have to shout to talk to a friend standing almost on my toes. The unmistakable squeal of Pour Some Sugar On Me is cranking into the night, rolling across the solitude of a dark golf course, filling the quiet void with a strident bang.
I can’t help but wonder where the loudness is going? Is the golf course absorbing the sound like foam insulation? Are the notes of Back in Black somehow not blasting into the mansion windows of Mr. and Mrs. Del Mar on the other side of the fairway?
If the venue is set in an odd location, the clientele that is arriving is even more bizarre.
This place truly is the Star Wars bar. I do a double take.
Is that a wookie in the corner or a woman who is recovering from a sex change operation.
The only thing missing is a light saber and Jedi mind tricks.
When it comes to people watching, few places beat the airport.
Club M is the airport after it has dropped acid.
We are seated at the 1st table by the door.
The maiter’d wanted us to sit by the dance floor. We politely declined not feeling like paying $300 for bottle service for a bottle of Jack Daniels.
“What, do they think they’re Vegas? ” My friend says.
So we order a round of Makers Mark and watch the show.
It’s unusual like a parade of twitching midgets, juggling chain saws with Botox lip.
It’s Venice beach without the roller skates.
It’s a mardis gras carnival on qualudes.
People enter the bar sporting crazy colors, suggestive designer cuts and aggressive tattoos.
3 Women in their late 50’s saunter in. They are wearing sparkly mini dresses that highlight a lot of loose skin that seems to sway with the pulsating beat in the next room.
These grandmas are out on the town with a purpose.
They look solemn and determined as they scan the room. Are they looking for a AARP discount or a sugar daddy to latch on to?
The women survey the room through eyes decorated with mascara from the Salvador Dali collection.
As these center-ring freaks dissolve into this kaleidoscope of unusual, they are supplanted by a man with a white linen jacket revealing a shiny shirt opened almost to his naval.
If chest hair was currency, this man could buy the bar a round. He is short, and has a form of scoliosis. He is hunched when he walks like a bridge troll with a metal detector.
There’s something wrong with him in an Edgar Winter, albino sort of way.
His hair is straight and stiff like fiber optic glass. It’s gray, the color of soiled newspaper that has been run through the clothes washer.
The bar is filling rapidly. Is that Michael Jackson’s beat it, or is that a light saber battle within?
Just then the Asian girls with super short dresses arrive. Their ensemble is the color of a flourescent rainbow. Their skirts are tight spray painted onto their skin.
Is that ass cheek I see?
One of the girls is wearing a sash that says Happy Birthday.
Suddenly a white guy with curly long hair sits at our table. He is in his mid 2o’s.
A slender black girl also sits down. She will later say she is 24.
We will quickly come to learn they are husband and wife from Connecticut and they left the cold and dreary existence to be in Sunny San Diego.
Good for you.
There’s something seriously wrong with this couple.
They don’t belong here. They are trying too hard. What do they want?
The white guy with the curly hair comes off as a huxter trying to con us. He says he wants to go into real estate and be a finance guy. He’s too aggressive, kind of slimy in a hand grenade going off kind of way.
And then there’s his wife. A skinny black girl stuffed into a pair of pink jeans.
What is she selling? What’s her angle? I will never quite figure her out.
She has all the sophistication of a clown car that has gone off the rails and caught on fire.
Nothing entertains like burning clown, right?
This 24-year-old self ordained fashion Goddess will proceed to tell members of our group that they are dressed inappropriately for the setting, perhaps for life.
She tells me I have the wrong hair cut, the wrong pants and a bad watch. I listen to her, fascinated by her audacity, by her strident over zealous need to correct our life choices.
Her critique’s about as welcome as cock roach flavored dental floss.
A group of us walk to the dance floor and stand by the DJ.
The crowd of silicone implants, collagen injections and hair implants is pulsing as one gigantic mistake.
That’s when I notice dancing queen.
She is in her 60’s wearing a dress that is part smock, part potato sack. Her eyes are closed and she is spinning like a top. She reminds me of an acid flash back at a Grateful Dead show. The bouncers keep their eye on her as she twirls and lunges.
She is a dradel spinning awkwardly and gravity is pulling at her wobbling form.
I laugh and move on.
Dancing queen disappears, replaced by ascots and big hair and fake boobs and men with lift shoes.
What a scene. It’s a gas.
At the end of the night, the lights come on and the bouncers move everyone to the door.
You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.
The lively little Star Wars bar by the golf course has called it a night.
Life’s Crazy™