In the Club
Go to Toledo, Ohio, to check out the city’s hottest new nightclub, Metropolis. A club making some bold claims of sparking a renaissance of entertainment in the city, declaring itself “a weekly experience in energy, networking and culture.”
Sounds like a Dale Carnegie-inspired Cirque du Soleil. Where do I sign up?
At 36 and a mother of two, I’m pretty much guaranteed to be in a nightgown rather than a nightclub anytime after 10 p.m. I haven’t dated since 1992, and I’ve been married since the average club-goer was in first grade.
But I do love to dance, so I recruit my friend and mom-of-three Amber as my companion and accept the assignment with enthusiasm.
Yes, we will revive the party girls within us.
First order of business, though, is to find out more about Metropolis and the brash 28-year-old, Dustin Rybka, who is fronting it for a group of investors who prefer to stay out of the spotlight.
The concept behind Metropolis is unique. Open only one night a week, Saturday, from 9 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. Miss a week and you miss out on seeing and being seen.
The place launched this spring with a cryptic marketing campaign centered on a website called ToledoDeservesBetter.com, which featured little more than the soon-to-be club’s “M” logo and a countdown clock. Überpromoter Rybka covered the city with 15,000 vague fliers hinting that something big was coming to Toledo.
Rybka is a party-boy archetype. He’s been promoting for clubs and special events since he was 23 and is Toledo’s unofficial nightlife czar. He takes that responsibility seriously.
His cell phone voice mail is always full when I call, and I surmise it’s intentional. I text and wait.
I find some YouTube videos of The Dustin Rybka Show from a few years back, and see a slender, smirky twentysomething with great hair interviewing intoxicated co-eds as some bar shuts down. Sample line: “Your show’s whack, bro. We love ya, but your show’s whack.”
I think that means they don’t like it.
Rybka calls me and we chat. He explains to me the dire straits in which young people in Toledo find themselves. They’ve been forced to drive to Ann Arbor, Detroit or even Cleveland just to enjoy a night out. They’re angry, he says, especially the young women.
“I’m sure you understand — girls are upset they’re going to the gym, taking care of themselves and then they’re standing in a puddle of beer on Saturday nights,” he says.
Tragic.
I take a nap and pack an outfit pre-approved by my kids’ teenage baby sitter. Amber and I then hit the road. Our former party-girl selves would have located the cheapest motel possible, freeing up cash for drinks later. But the me-of-today couldn’t do it. I check us into the Crowne Plaza, just across the river from Metropolis.
We grab dinner and head to the club at what seems like a reasonable time to us, 9:45 p.m. That’s the time frame Rybka told me to expect to see — ahem — “older people” at Metropolis. The place is dead. We order cosmopolitans at $6 each, a price my former party girl might have balked at but today-me is thrilled about.
With no drunken girls bumping into us, we can easily check the place out. Cool black-and-white theme with fleur-de-lis wallpaper and brilliant white VIP couches. Bouncers in crisp button-downs and black slacks. Everyone is energetic, as if this one-night-only concept means they’ve spent all week resting up just to entertain me.
It’s almost midnight before the party really starts. I switch to beer because it’s hard to dance when your cosmo’s sloshing out of the glass. The go-go dancers gyrate their black-and-white-clad bodies.
I look around for other old folks like me, but if they’re here, they’re incognito in clothes from Forever 21. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. No matter what your age, if you like to dance and people-watch, then Metropolis is your kind of place. You can even dock your boat out front. Just please invite me if you do.
I ask a few times after Rybka. I’m always told he’s not here yet.
We make friends, jumping into shots by the club photographer with random girls. It’s too loud to talk, so we never find out our new friends’ names. Or if they have boats out front we can mooch.
The songs blend one into the next, and before we know it, it’s after 2 a.m. We make it back to the hotel and collapse in exhaustion.
No more sleeping in like our former party girls may have done. Years of waking up early with kids has us wide awake by 8:30 a.m.
We do a morning-after recap. Energy? Check. Networking? Umm, not unless we count chatting with the bartender about how cute her hair looked. Culture? I’ll take a museum any day.
I must go home pretending to be well rested, because a full day of family activities awaits me. Finish planting my herb garden, hit the grocery, make a fruit salad for a family picnic.
Somewhere, the party girl I once was is, like, totally rolling her eyes.
Story:
Jennifer Keirn
July/August 2010