Former Gem of a Club Now a Plastic Fascimile

Last time I was in Carolina I thought the clubs were fine. Those where the clubs in Fayetteville and Charlotte. The clubs in Raleigh and Durham weren't terrible but weren't that good. They still aren't. What got Raleigh off the hook for being stuffy, self-important and suckville for clubs was a somewhat crummy but somewhat awesome little club in a town called Selma. That club is now called Gentlemen's Playhouse, and it still has some of what I appreciated on my last visit to make it borderline decent. Pay attention to what things cost and what is going on around you, though.

When I got there, I almost drove the car into a ditch because there is a really roundabout way to get there now. If you see the club on your right do not turn onto that little bridge thing because you can't get to the main parking lot that way. Think something used to be beside it that is no longer there and the traffic pattern changed. In another review that person said a building was demolished or something like that. Once I got the car turned around on a patch of grass and back on an actual road, I found the club after driving around the motel beside it. There were a lot of cars but still parking in the lot. Got there around 1:30 in the morning. Guessing that the town does not have much in the way of night life because the club was still crowded going on 2am. When I got up to the door, there were two people in front of the door smoking. Five minutes later they stopped talking to me long enough for me to get in the door. By the time that happened a guy with a microphone in his hand walked about and joined in the conversation. Turns out they were the door girl, door man, and the DJ.

So I'm going to give this club some extra credit. The sound system in the club was insane. It had stadium sized speakers in a club that is not a stadium, so that was the absolute sickest bass I have ever heard in any club anywhere, including Atlanta and Vegas. Crazy. If you've ever heard the song "The Hills" by the Weeknd, imagine that song with bass that feels like it is hitting you from 1000 different directions. I'm not a bass head, but that was impressive. I didn't get a lot of foot traffic past my table, but that was ok. Sitting in a Raleigh Durham club is like being a field of flowers and bees coated in fucking honey. Just let me have my fucking drink, will you? At some point a cute latina-looking dancer with some prominent tats dropped by. Think her name was Kay. The bass was so heavy by then that her voice was distorted like she had built in auto-tune. I'd been drinking a lot that night so it was actually pretty fucking cool.