NEW YORK NIGHT LIFE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17527, 2 May 1925, Page 2

NEW YORK NIGHT LIFE.

SOME INNOVATIONS. SHADY SIDE OF BROADWAY METHODS OF THE NIGHT CLUBS. (Special to the “Star.”) SAN FRANCISCO. After five years of prohibition, the night.life of New York has been reorganised on a permanent and profitable basis. 'nj£ is ajrpost entirety immune to or tße Bepartn£_it of Prohibition, neither of which, indeed, seems disposed to molest nu institution that has fought so hard and so long to live. The scheme of things as they are now ■on Broadway, which is a general term, j meaning not only the one garish alley, ; but all the side streets as well, is pati terned after a system that has been used in London for many years as an evasion of the liquor laws. The only difference is that no New York bootlegger no matter bow high his prices or his social pretensions may be, has yet had the effrontery to assess initiation and lus customers .as the proprietors of Murray’s and similar London institutions have always done. However, no London clubs ever charged the prices for drinks and modest sandwiches and table rental that arc levied on the frequenters of New York’s new night clubs. The more prominent of New Y'ork's night clubs now arc the Mirador, th© El Fay, the Lido Venice, Giro’s, ami j the Trocadero. There are also the i Silver Slipper and the Club Alabam; j but they are not to be classed with the others. The word cheap hardly ! describes them, but the frequenters ot | the Lido Venice, for instance, arc able to breathe a certain -contempt into this word and make it apply in the premises. THE “LID” CLUB. To get into a New York “lid” club in the new dispensation, one puts on evening clothes, pawns all one’s read-ily-negotiable papers. and finds a friend who knows the. steward, an officer .who in the old days would liavo been called “the bouncer.” The : bouncer now wears a dinner jacket i and, like Jack Dempsey, has had his ears and nose “unscrambled.” He speaks in a culti*ed voice, and is very careful never to lapse into the old idiom and refer to his club members as “You’se guys” unless they turn bankrupt, in which case restraint is thrown offOnce inside a night Hub. one is eligible for all rights and privileges. That is to say. one may -in fact, one must—pay 2 dollars or l dollars head tax on every member of one’s party before the» waiter brings the ash trays and so forth, in proportion. A round of drinks at El Fay for half a dozen people ■w ill be about 50 dollars. None but imported lemons aje used in the lemonade. It makes things very £*penTheiold plan of hiring dancers and singers to keep tho customers’ minds off the expense lias been abolished, and it i 3 now the custom to call on members of the audience to give away little bits off their shelves, as it were. A girl from one of the shows comes in, and is persuaded to do her part free. A great movie' lover may bo prevailed on to “love” somebody, free. - The quality of the liquor is unknown, bift is suspected of beintr terrible. However, in.this respect New Yorkers are taking no more chances of damage to their digestive organs than the people of Buenos Aires/ London. or Havana, because it is a famous fact and a cheering one to New York that most of the hard liquor of the world nowadays is very noor stuff owing to the scarcity of goed Scotch liquor even in Scotland.