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THeMaCHinE
New member
Made it to XO's in Westport -- had relatively high expectations as this is supposed to be "the" club in KC. Guess after seeing the crowd photos on the Web site, I kinda had an inkling that the place was gonna have a typical, straightlaced midwestern crowd. Hell, after seeing the same photos, my wife abandoned her original going out clothes in favor of something more conservative, which was already a notch against it...
We went on Saturday, which is supposed to be about as wild as it gets. (with perhaps the exception of Thursday GLBT night) Contrary to e-mail from XO's CEO assuring me that it was anything goes dress and crowd, was greeted by a crowd of mostly barely 21 types dressed in blue jeans, abercrombie Ts and ballcaps. Uh-oh. At least it was busy.
Proceeded to hang out for an hour or so and drink weak, expensive drinks to take the club in. I was a little dissappointed by how small it was after it boasted being a 3-level NYC-style club, blah, blah, blah -- but structurally, it was actually pretty cool -- nice lounge, small but acceptable dance floor, good lighting -- I think with the right crowd the place could be pretty cool...
Throughout, the music was so-so, even in the Oxygen Club, another small "progressive" club inside XOs where they had a DJ (where we hung out for a couple minutes and watched kids do their best imitations of the Mitsubishi girl pop-locking mixed with some lame floor moves).
Maybe I hit it on a bad night, but this definitely wasn't the place to go, get a groove on and get free.
Moved onto Balanca's, hoping to hit the Pyro room, which was also supposed to have a live DJ; the downstairs dance club had closed by the time we got there, so we hung out in the upstairs lounge with a very small group of people.
As Balanca's is predominately a gay bar that also has straight people, swingers, cross-dressers, etc... you have to be a little tolerant. The staff was nice, and the owner, Lori, somehow managed to get my shirt off and, much to the amusement of my wife, smacked my nipple with a riding crop (ouch) (which she made up for with a free shot).
The bartender was cool and was able to give us the low-down on KC nightlife, which is to say, very little... Seems there are a lot of hip-hop clubs, but that's not really my thing...
The biggest problem I had with Balanca's was the lack of eye-candy in general (and a bi? overweight chick that kept interrupting our conversation). But I guess I can't be too hard on it since it was such a small crowd and close to close. We may give it a try next time we're in KC earlier and when the Pyro Room is open and we can actually dance there. However, due to it's nature, there would to a more attractive crowd in general to be really appealling.
Even though our going out experience was sub-par from a clubbin perspective, we still had a great time in general. Perhaps there are some great clubs we didn't find -- we were on a pretty limited timeframe so I just shot for the ones that were talked about most, had good reviews and postings and had the potential to fit the type of format we like... I suspect that KC is still just too Midwest for what we're looking for, but we'll give it another chance sometime... The show we were in town for was good, it was nice to get away and the hotel was fun (lol)...
We went on Saturday, which is supposed to be about as wild as it gets. (with perhaps the exception of Thursday GLBT night) Contrary to e-mail from XO's CEO assuring me that it was anything goes dress and crowd, was greeted by a crowd of mostly barely 21 types dressed in blue jeans, abercrombie Ts and ballcaps. Uh-oh. At least it was busy.
Proceeded to hang out for an hour or so and drink weak, expensive drinks to take the club in. I was a little dissappointed by how small it was after it boasted being a 3-level NYC-style club, blah, blah, blah -- but structurally, it was actually pretty cool -- nice lounge, small but acceptable dance floor, good lighting -- I think with the right crowd the place could be pretty cool...
Throughout, the music was so-so, even in the Oxygen Club, another small "progressive" club inside XOs where they had a DJ (where we hung out for a couple minutes and watched kids do their best imitations of the Mitsubishi girl pop-locking mixed with some lame floor moves).
Maybe I hit it on a bad night, but this definitely wasn't the place to go, get a groove on and get free.
Moved onto Balanca's, hoping to hit the Pyro room, which was also supposed to have a live DJ; the downstairs dance club had closed by the time we got there, so we hung out in the upstairs lounge with a very small group of people.
As Balanca's is predominately a gay bar that also has straight people, swingers, cross-dressers, etc... you have to be a little tolerant. The staff was nice, and the owner, Lori, somehow managed to get my shirt off and, much to the amusement of my wife, smacked my nipple with a riding crop (ouch) (which she made up for with a free shot).
The bartender was cool and was able to give us the low-down on KC nightlife, which is to say, very little... Seems there are a lot of hip-hop clubs, but that's not really my thing...
The biggest problem I had with Balanca's was the lack of eye-candy in general (and a bi? overweight chick that kept interrupting our conversation). But I guess I can't be too hard on it since it was such a small crowd and close to close. We may give it a try next time we're in KC earlier and when the Pyro Room is open and we can actually dance there. However, due to it's nature, there would to a more attractive crowd in general to be really appealling.
Even though our going out experience was sub-par from a clubbin perspective, we still had a great time in general. Perhaps there are some great clubs we didn't find -- we were on a pretty limited timeframe so I just shot for the ones that were talked about most, had good reviews and postings and had the potential to fit the type of format we like... I suspect that KC is still just too Midwest for what we're looking for, but we'll give it another chance sometime... The show we were in town for was good, it was nice to get away and the hotel was fun (lol)...
