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Courting the A-List

At downtown nightclubs, a perilous hunt for the beautiful people.

By Rebecca Meiser 

The View on the second story of a crumbling brick building on Prospect. You must walk up subway-like stairs, where a sour, beefy bouncer looks you up and down, as if your value as a human being can be sized up by the name sewn on your jeans. If you're not wearing the right blazer or have deigned to wear tennis shoes, you'll be turned away like the dozens before you. A curt nod is your ticket in.

Inside, leather couches, crystal chandeliers, and lit candelabras give the place the feel of a penthouse suite. Mirrors sparkle like the hood on a sunbaked Humvee, as a floor-to-ceiling TV screen flashes images of the beautiful people slinking about the room. On the rooftop cabana, women in designer dresses with pink martinis watch cotton-candy sunsets descend over the city. Inside the VIP room -- available for $1,000 a night -- shaggy-haired lawyers in Hugo Boss sip $200 flutes of Dom Perignon.

But if you don't already know where The View is, then don't bother coming. The View doesn't want you.

When it opened 16 months ago, it was Cleveland's hippest spot. Execs called each other for tips on gaining access. People didn't mind the long lines or expensive cover charges. Girls with pillow lips and soulful, kohl-lined eyes would wait 20 minutes to get a Heineken. Lawyers left $20 tips for $5 beers. LeBron James and Braylon Edwards were frequent patrons.

But within six months, things started to fall apart. Customers complained about annoying lines. Ditto for the cover charges. A-listers stopped coming. In a panic, the owner imported a string of New York managers, hoping to replicate the chichi atmosphere of Manhattan. But they didn't understand the psychology of the Cleveland bar. The place started hemorrhaging.

On a recent Wednesday night, The View is as deserted as a high school on a snow day. At the lacquered bar, a bartender pours herself a beer, then sneaks a peek at her watch. A group of twentysomethings arrive, conduct a quick survey of the vacant VIP section and the empty dance floor, then head back down the stairs. The bartender returns to staring at her watch.

"If I want to go to a VIP bar, I'll go to Vegas," says one former patron. "After a while, the View started to seem really ridiculous."

Consider it more wreckage on the treacherous road to courting the A-List in Cleveland.

It's midnight, prime mating time on West Sixth. Electronic beats thunder from speakers. Disco lights flash like police cherries. Hostesses parade as rosy-cheeked pimps, promising passersby electrifying times as they hustle people inside their clubs.

A paper sign taped to the door of Traffic announces the dress code as fashionably casual. No hats. No plain T-shirts. No cutoff shirts. No tank tops. But there is a $5 cover charge.

"If I meet a girl I can hook up with, it will be well worth the $5," says one young rooster with a private-school swagger. But once inside, he immediately begins to mourn his departed fiver.

The place is a sausage fest, filled with the sort of guys you'd find at a tailgate party, not a destination bar. Ohio State sweatshirts and matching hats are the uniform. The feel is more Wal-Mart stockroom than Milan runway.

Ermira Pashaj and Anja Shehaj, two glossy-haired college students, are the only women in the room, and they're much more interested in taking pictures of themselves than men.

Private School stalks to the bar and scowls. If he wanted to hang out with meatheads, he could have gone to a mall bar in North Olmsted.

Dewey Forward, former owner of Peabody's in the Flats, finds it a prescient scene. It reminds him of the days before the fall of the Flats. Back then, Peabody's hosted the hottest local bands and rising national acts like R.E.M. The Flats were filled with rowdy men in muscle shirts and women who bought Aqua Net by the case.

"The place was kind of like a shooting star," says Forward. The Flats "blazed brightly for about 15 years, then kind of burnt out rather quickly."

In the beginning, the district attracted the downtown professionals -- lawyers, finance guys, and PR execs looking for a new scene. "Adventurers" is what Forward calls them. The polluted river and dying buildings gave it a desolate chic. It was slumming made cool.

But then the national chains arrived, bringing with them the paralegals and mechanics in search of cheap drinks and cheaper thrills. The B-listers claimed the place as their own. In the nightclub business, it's a natural devolution. Exclusivity breeds popularity, which in turn brings the crowds. If the A-listers wanted that scene, they could go to a T.G.I. Friday's.

That's when Forward fled the bar business. "I could see the writing on the wall," he says. "I knew what was coming."

That was the C-listers. Desperate to fill their rooms, bars started offering 25-cent drink specials and 18-and-over nights. They appealed to the quick-drunk-and thin-wallet crowd. The Flats soon became home to a freak show of violent bouncers, brawls, and shooting headlines. "It was over after that," says Forward.

By then, of course, the coveted A-listers had already found a new home up the hill. Spy Bar on West Sixth was so cool you needed reservations. Liquid offered $6 martinis and a chance to converse without a drunk couple from Brooklyn making out at the next table. Velvet Dog required patrons to don jackets and loafers if they held any hope of getting in. Entertainment writers touted the street as the next hottest thing. The gold rush was on.

New bars began to open like buds bursting in spring. By nightfall, the street was packed. Bartenders carried handkerchiefs to whisk away the sweat; serving hundreds a night was a cardiovascular workout. At 2 a.m., cabs clogged West Sixth to carriage away women in space-needle heels.

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