For me it was Manray in Cambridge, MA starting back in 1994. I knew I was "home" as soon as I stepped through the doors. For years I was there most Wednesday and Friday nights. Manray was a goth/alternative club to die for and I hope they can achieve their goal of reopening it one day soon.

I feel so luck I could be a part of the legendary Manray scene. Some of the best parts of who I became are because of the people, environment, music, and fashion of this place. Dawn, Terri, Paul, DJ Chris Ewen, X-Mortis, Trent, the Delicious Dancers, and everyone else-- I miss you guys/girls!

They still have a website: http://www.manrayclub.com/

And here are pictures of this blessed place which is no more: http://www.manrayclub.com/gallery/Manra ... Album1.htm

***fogey goff alert***

My first time at a goth club was 1987, age 18, with my friend Sage. She was 21 and a community college student, which is where I met her. I was taking a music class at the local CC after school, she was in the class, we started talking and became friends. It also helped that I was good at English and could proofread her papers for school. She was going to major in medicine, and apparently you don't need to know how to spell or have good grammar to be a doctor. Sage was also the most muscular, athletic girl I'd ever met at that point; petite, but with calves like a soccer player, arms like Popeye, and short, spiky fire-engine red hair. What was I gonna say when she asked me to proof her World History paper? No?? Hardly.

Anyway, she periodically liked to go clubbing in LA and knew I was into goth music. So she invited me to come with her to Scream, back when it was still happening in Hollywood. She told me I wouldn't need a fake ID, although I was totally scared that I'd get caught. Once we got there and miraculously got in, I felt totally out of place. Everyone looked so fashionable in their corsets, chains, studded belts, etc, and I was wearing a ratty black skirt and oversized black top. About the only thing I had working for me was my hobnail boots. My mom wouldn't let me dye my hair, so that was boring, too. I felt like such an impostor.

Once I relaxed a bit, though, it was fun. Hearing all my favorite music being played by a club DJ (rather than through the headphones on my ancient Sony walkman) was a great experience. I finally got up the courage to dance, although, again, I'm sure I looked completely out of place. Sage was showing it off in a black bustier top and attracted the attention of this goofy guy who tried to hit on her at least 3 or 4 times that night. We laughed about it on the way home.

Going to Scream was the deciding factor for me. I told myself that once I was ready to leave home, I'd move to LA and reinvent myself as one of those cool goth people at Scream. I did eventually move to LA, but never exactly reinvented myself as a goth diva. Scream was gone by the time I moved here, but there were plenty of other goth clubs around. And I couldn't exactly leave behind the dorky kid I'd been in the past. Old habits die hard; once a dork, always a dork, as they say.

I prefer the term "ole coot", myself (this comes from an even older coot)

Harpy, feeling embarrassed that she hadn't found the scene years earlier

And you do NOT look like a dork.
So There

Aww, shucks. That's very kind of you. I have to admit, I've gotten less dorky over the years and relatively better at the whole goth club thing. I've made some faux pas along the way, though. The first time I went to Coven 13, one of LA's more popular goth clubs, shortly after I moved to LA in '98, I was a complete mess on the dance floor. I was actually *dancing*, attempting some burning windmills, while almost everyone else on the floor was vogueing. They'd move around, maybe half a foot, and then freeze in position for a whole minute, as if they were some agonized goth statue or something. I kept bumping into them because it was dark and I had no idea when they might strike a pose in my direction. Several people got pissed at me, but the way I saw it, it was a dance floor, not a catwalk, so they needed to go somewhere else if they just wanted to pose. Heh.

I was 14, back in 2001 a place called "The Well" which was actually a youth hang out sanctioned by a local church, not in an actual church but just a christian group. It looked kind of gothy, there was a band room full of instruments lit up by black lights, all the kids would go mosh in there. It had a pool room, gaming room with donated consoles and free (cafeteria) food. All the goth kids from middle/high school would hang out in the back room with the pool tables, where I spent most of my time besides the black light room. On the down side the church group would call us in together and try to make us listen to their preachy message, that never went over well. I know that's not really a "club" as there was no alcohol, but we went plenty of times just to goof off, I got a couple of dates there as well.

flash forward to 23, there aren't any goth clubs per se' in the city I live in, it's mostly all hip/hop mainstream crap. The closest I've been to is an Irish pub that plays mostly metal/punk where me and my friends go sometimes.

It really depends on how strict your definition is of “Goth club”. Back in the mid ‘80s I was in college, and while my friends and I were listening to what people would call Goth music, there really weren’t any Goth clubs in the area. We hung out at each others houses or dorm rooms. My best friend was a DJ with the college radio station, so he had access to all sorts of cool stuff. We were in Student Legislature, which held a session at a different college each month. A great many people there were heavily into Goth, Punk, or New Wave music. Usually on Saturday night the organization would procure a hall or large room on campus. The DJ’s in the group would bring their equipment and beg or borrow the rest from the “home” delegation. These parties were pretty infamous at that time, so a lot of people from whatever campus we were on would show up. The first session I attended was in 1984, I believe at ECU or UNC-W. The DJ’s were spinning all sorts of New Wave and Goth. My roommate looked like Billy Idol. One of the girls in our group dressed like Siouxsie, and there were Robert Smith hairdos, Mad Max-ish spikes and Mohawks all over. A few Madonna “Lucky Star” types, too. I wore black, including a black Fedora. This was stolen by some girl. All in all it was a great time. We looked forward to the monthly trips. Those were the days when people considered you a kindred soul if you just knew the bands. After working at UNC-CH for a while, in 1988 I went to Florida and friends took me to Respectables in West Palm Beach and Squeeze in Fort Lauderdale. These were the best Alternative clubs in South Florida. (At that time the much mythologized Kitchen Club was a metal club on South Beach. It wasn’t Goth until it reopened in the Grove in the early '90s.) In Squeeze particularly, you saw people from all over the Goth and Alternative spectrums. Later, in about 1990, a club called The Dungeon opened. I guess this was the first club I attended that was actually billed as a “Goth” club. Later there were places like Fire and Ice, Manray South, the Venus Room, the Saint, and other places whose names escape me at the moment.

I'm jealous of your '80s college experience. I bet the DJs were spinning some good music back then. '82 to '86 were some of my favorite years in the indie music scene - Siouxsie, Bauhaus, Joy Division, Chameleons, Echo & the Bunnymen, Cocteau Twins, etc.

The wonderful thing I remember is that is was all pretty much spontaneous. You just got together with a bunch of people who liked the same stuff. No one really thought of it as being a "scene". If you saw someone wearing a band t-shirt or a button, your automatic reaction was "hey, cool", and you immediately had something in common. People were always passing around cassettes and albums, and you would have cassette tapes that were 10th generation copies. Since these events weren't formal "clubs", there was none of the DJ/Promoter crap that I saw later. When I did actually start going to Goth clubs a few years after that, I was really taken aback by the difference. But the worst of the club experiences of the 80's/early '90s were nothing compared to how the club scene had changed by the late nineties and early 2000's. The Cult of the DJ, Cliquism, and the Promoter As God had replaced the earlier emphasis on the music and camaraderie. When we started our short-lived club event in Fort Lauderdale in 2007, we were trying to recreate the atmosphere of the mid-80s that we remembered. I was pleased to say that we largely succeeded. Everybody had fun and that's what its all about.

I meant "scene" in terms of the fact that the bands I mentioned were from the UK, shared a general dark romantic vision, and were covered by the British music press at the time. I didn't mean it in terms of the activities and gatherings that happened between like-minded people. I was in high school in the '80s and experienced a little of what you're talking about with fellow music fans. There weren't a lot of people at my high school into more obscure music, but for those of us who were, we'd periodically share mix tapes, and obsessively listen to a local radio DJ who played indie music for 3 hours on Sunday nights on the local 'classic rawk' station.

Shortly after I finished college in the '90s and moved to Los Angeles, I saw a lot of what you're talking about in the LA goth club scene - a lot of cliqueishness, cult of the Dj, promoter as god, etc. I think people in LA are finally getting sick of it, though. In the past few years, a couple of gatherings have started happening in LA that are more about the music. There's still plenty of clubs where the other stuff goes on, but I don't like to go to those any more. I prefer a more laid back atmosphere, where people are there for the music, and not necessarily to be seen in what they're wearing or to say they attended this or that event put on by this or that promoter, with this or that DJ.

I've heard stories about some of the cliquishness out there. A friend of mine told me that in the LA Psychobilly scene, there are people who won't talk to you if you don't own a vintage car! But there is some good stuff. I loved Release the Bats. When I hear people rant that "things have changed", I have to say that the success of Release the Bats is living proof that many people do like new Goth and Deathrock, and trad-inspired music, and electro-dance isn't the only game in town. Oh, and I can't forget Wake the Dead. I was unfortunately unable to attend this but a friend of mine in LA did a write up and pictorial for the ezine. And Peeling Grey is one of the best underground bands there is, IMHO.
I was very impressed when I heard that a certain promoter was pretty much told they are unwelcome in the LA area, because of how they have abused and used people everywhere they go. My webmaster calls people like this "bottom-feeders".
I agree with you about clubs. There are places I never returned to. If I want to get dissed by someone, I don't have to go to a fashion show or popularity contest masquerading as a club! One DJ used to post on local forums: "Goths, even if we don't play your kind of music, come out and support the scene. We're all one!" My reply was "If we're all one, why can't you play something for us, too? If you don't value us enough to give us something, why should we give you our money?" Never got a reply, just the sounds of the wind, whistling down darkened and lonely streets.

Yeah, Release the Bats has been going for over 10 years now, and they've had some great bands play over the years. I recall seeing 45 Grave there a few years back. The rest of LA is finally starting to catch up and some of the younger Long Beach death rockers who sometimes hang at Bats are now putting on some new clubs. When Harpy and I went to Club Eternal in downtown LA, most of the kids there were from the LB death rock scene. And, other than some Latin EBM in the side room, the DJ in the main room was spinning nothing but classic death rock and occasional early new wave. I get so tired of all the damn EBM at the more 'popular' (i.e., scenester-ish) goth clubs around LA.

When I went to Release the Bats, I spoke with Dave for an hour before I realized who he was! This would never have happened in the "mainstream" goth clubs. It was great to see so many people in trad-goth attire. And it wasn't just old fogies, but across the entire age spectrum. Hell, I think I was the oldest person there that night. In the EBM clubs, I had gotten used to being snubbed by EBM'ers if you didn't dress electro/cyber. RTB was a real joy. Outside, I ran into Lucas from Cinema Strange, and though he'd only seen me once before (in Montreal the year before) , he came over and said hello. That was great! I also went to Bar Sinister and had a good time. LA was just fun in general.

Bar Sinister is one of the clubs I can't stand. I love the venue, and in the past 10 years, they've done a lot of cool renovations to it, but it's become mostly an EBM/scenester type of place. When it first opened over 10 years ago, though, it was a fun place to hang out. They played a lot of '80s goth (Siouxsie, Bauhaus, Virgin Prunes, etc) and the crowd was less scenester-ish. It's changed a lot over the years, though, and I don't like it any more.

I went around 8 years ago, and I just saw a couple of bands there. Now that you mention it, I think I remember someone on another forum saying the same thing about Bar Sinister. I always hate it when a place that I used to enjoy goes "bad".

Do you mean "scenester" as in the offshoot of Emo or in some other context?