LONDON NIGHT CLUBS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 112, 14 May 1927, Page 20

LONDON NIGHT CLUBS

HAMPERED BY COMPETITION

I The closing of one well-known dance j club, the reorganisation of another, and I other signs "have raised doubts whether all is w*U with the night club 3ife of London, states a correspondent of the "San Francisco Chronicle." It is said that cabaret competition' from the hotels and lack of personality in the promoters are the main causes of this decline. But it is not yet clear that the decline bis really set in, for two other dubs after somewhat shaky careers have been revived, and a third is' coming into being. It seems mainly to be the very expensive night club that has been hit. The cost.of running clubs of this class, with expensive cabaret performers, is enormous, and the temptation to break, the licensing law is always there, for it means .enormous profits. Police supervision, however,,ig getting closer and j better, and recent cases of:'raids on: good-class night clubs deter; the 1927 I club frequenter, although to his or her prototype in 1920 they only acted as a spice of excitement. .■.■'... * ■■■• ; The- great majority of night -club members in the club mentioned do not even like to be -called Bohemian. They are ordinary. middle-class people,' often ie family groups. They object to the high charges,' and all the puffing of the press will not make them believe that there is anything "exclusive" in all but one or two small clubs. ' ■ There is hardly any club "side" even in the best of the,night clubs—a man who puts Mb night club, on his visiting-card, would be though,t a joker —and dancers go to them nowadays in unconscious obedience to the late night habit. They used to go because they. wmld f|nd something new and sparkling and expensive. The iparklo has large-