club, interrupted
In a nightclub scene where pretenders to the throne of hotness are tripping over themselves in order to one-up on the wow factor, new elite dance club Versus is trying a very different tactic. They’re just charging you a lot of money.
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SCENE: This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Something was terribly wrong. It was 1 a.m. on Saturday and the line outside Versus, self-proclaimed challenger to Moscow’s top tusovka, was ... well, actually, it wasn’t. Four bouncers and one manager with a rolled-up guest list in his hands versus the two of us. You rarely get such good odds in this city. The club’s press release informs that, while “versus” means “against” in Latin, there are many reasons “for” the club. On the night when we breezed through face control with only a token molestation by the security guards, Versus seemed able to provide very few of those reasons. Inside, a sparse but well dressed crowd in its mid-20s and beyond lounged on couches with hookahs or else seemed to be having a genuinely good time on the near-empty dance floor. While the club offers itself as a conceptually new project — Moscow’s answer to the end of a summer spent dancing in Europe’s finest clubs — its lack of either concerted minimalism or promised sophistication suggests that Versus is “against” having any concept. LAYOUT: The press-release calls it “glamorous underground,” but they only managed to get the second half right. More than two weeks after its grand opening, the club is still under construction. Or perhaps the unfinished wood floors and dirty glass walkway over head was part of the plan. And you can add truth in advertising to the list of things that Versus stands against: the website promised a giant pool in the center of the club, but the only water in the place comes from exposed pipes tied above the two pint-sized go-go stages, where glossy girls gyrate on unpainted plywood boards in front of plexi-glass waterfalls. Walk through the flimsy swinging doors into the second dance floor, where the bartenders, who outnumber the clientele four to one, are girls in t-shirts that say “No Silicone.” If there’s a unifying theme here, the thumbnail art-prints of Goya and Matisse hanging on the second-floor VIP level do nothing to illuminate it. GROOVE: September 21-22 was the club’s Black Panther party, a night that turned civil rights militancy into a black-beret themed event featuring DJ Todd Terry. Variations on the house music theme abound, but if you’re lucky, you’ll get to hear the live bongo players get down with the DJ. PRICES: After reading complaints on Afisha about 700-ruble rum and colas, we figured vodka shots at the Il Patio down the street would be a better way to start the night. Perhaps the management read the same reviews, as the “new” menu prices were slightly less painful. Mojitos and Long Island Ice Teas (500 rubles each) topped the list, but the Jamesons for 250 rubles and Nemirov for 150 rubles seemed uncharacteristically restrained. BATHROOMS: Black walls, red lights, and abused steel toilets evoke sex club, brothel and prison all at once; and I’m talking about the elite bathrooms on the VIP floor. In the battle of clean versus dirty, the forces of darkness have prevailed. HOURS: Friday and Saturday, 12 a.m. to the last guest. |
