WHAT A NIGHT CLUB IS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 280, 4 December 1915, Page 16

WHAT A NIGHT CLUB IS.

itTEB OP THE] CLOSED DOOR,.' SOME OF THE PRICES. ; There Is the night club proper "and tM nighjt club Improper, writes "a njemDtt'* Is a London paper. The former lives by selling a person- * twopenny coffee at a price which would almost bny the bed lie ought to be in; tie second by calling whisky "ginger ale" an 4 then charging for it at the price of chain-' pagne. At both kinds, for everything yon put into your mouth yon pay through tiie nose. In the first-named, if anyone conld nobody would want to. It Is the closed I door that entices people in. If "it were wide open everyone would walk straight by. When the Garlton closes the night clnb opens its doors. Then, to such a one aa Murray's, or the Four Hundred, or Giro's . pour people of all ages. Revue girlß earning three pounds a week arrive in motor cnis; women of fashion drive up escorted by I their husbands or their sons—or somebody ' else's. Racing men, actresses, dancers, men about town—all the sort of people, in factj whom yon call by such names as "Baby" the first time you see them —emerge from mysterious nowheres and begin to dance. - THE DANCING. i A' clnb like Murray's, which is near I .Regent Street, has a supper-room worthy ot ! the Rite, end a dandify floor worthy of a palace. If you want to join, you pay three guineas as entrance fee, and ftve wore every year. For every guest yon take la you pay 5/ each night. For suppec JOtt pay Savoy prices andget Savoy food, j Then you dance. Formerly_ dancing went on practically as long as people cared. o.o* to go to bed.. Now, because of new ideas on the subject, it closes at half-past twelve. Two orchestras are usually in attendance —a string band and a sextet of niggers wVo play the eternal ragtime. Modern dances are all the rage now—such insanities as the two-step and the fox-trot. Nearly all these tilings are true of Ciro's, which, named after the famous restaurant at Monte Carlo, celebrated' some of toe blackest days of the war by opening a new I joy haunt in a narrow street just behind . the National Gallery; of the Four HuncTed, in Bond Street, which is of earlier creation;. and, to a lesser degree, of Macfarlane's, in Oxford Street, which first saw the light of night just about the time when Europe was plunged into the dismal darkness of t't» present sorrow. At Macfarlane's coffee is a ehllllng and a lemon squash with a cherry eighteenpence. Probably the 1/2 which the lemon squasti ought not to cost Is for the cherry. These clubs observe the law—such as it is. They do not sell Intoxicants after tian. o'clock, and, so far as such places can. be,they are well conducted. The objection to them is that they attract young officers who, home on leave for rest, ought to be asleep. The time of a nation's peril I* not ragtime. THE OTHER KIND. But of the other night clubs •! These use the law in order to break it. Knowing of the difficulties of police Inspection and prepared for it, they pay a registration fee of 5/, and then get it back by selling yott three whiskies .and sodas after hours. Soho Is full of them. Men pf all classes, and women of one, baunt them till daylight—drinking. Order "a light ginger aW" and you get whisky and soda; mention t0 a waiter "Dark, please," and it is brandy. But by your side they place an empty ginger ale bottle as a blind. Harpies and touts of all kinds prey there. Thieves abound. In one such place recently a man entered with ten shillings on htai his friend had £200 in notes. Right U P against the bar—and in the presence of tne proprietor—pickpockets "held up ,, the hands of one of them and "ran the rule over him." They got the wrong man: the one with tM £200 had just left the room. . N