The Washington herald., 1922-02-09
LIFEOF SUPPER
CLUBS HIGHEST
AFTER MIDNIGHT
Dances Growing More
Sensual and More Pop
ular, Says Mcintyre.
By o. o. M'INTYRE.

- ~ ~ &SA 4AN 49,
NEW YORK. Feb. Sit is . a. m.
The hour OF the sensuous solree in
the midnight supper clubs. The In
conspicuous entrances are encircled
with chinchilla- wraps and silk hats
whose wearers are trying to pass
the silken ropes. At Q q. m. the
girls who wear loin cloths and rosy
stains on soles and feet--nothing
more-do their interpretive dances.
Interpretive" in these days. In
the days of my gilded youth 'the
hootchie kootchie." For In the hard
atmosphere of the tiny supper clubs
which have killed the cabaret, the
dances are weekly growing more
sensual and more popular.
They are called clubs" but no
admission Is charged. The smaller
they are the more the appeal. One
seats fifty and II is necessary to
make reservations weeks in ad-
vance. The ceilings are hung low
with a silken canopy and the walls
draped with satin in which lights
are half hidden. These modern
Babylons represent the superlative
in decorative art.
And the performers-most Of
them young and beautiful and a
little bit abashed but smiling the
smile of the brave who die. Sudden
gold magically transmitted from the
dross! They twist and squirm ana
cast their dazzling spell realizing
that they are joyous youth cast to
a tragic part with laughter in their
throats.
All the supper clubs are pungent
with perfume-the scents of Araby
gently waited from silken folds in
the wall. On a tiny dias stand the
jazzers. moaning and sobbing their
Barbary Coast tunes sometimes soft
ly and then with a spasmodic crash.
IL is a phase of night life that
New York has never seen before.
The patrons are not bummers nor
summers but people whose wealth
and social position are historic.
Women in $1,000 gowns and pearls
and diamonds to grace a Sheba.
Men who have progressed triumph
antly in business and the arts.
They sit at tiny tables openly
drinking heady wines, all smoking
and flushed with a new thrill. A
modern age amusement mad! No
person who sees the hidden life Of
the black night in Gotham can help
leaving it without a tremor Of re-
vulsion.
The Village in silhouettei The
large studio windows reveal the
night life of the studios just as the
White Ways glare reveals its yogis
Of the flesh. The windows are broken
up into little panes behind which
lage still uses gas, domestically
and oratorically.
The windows are invariably un-
curtained. The village wants to
be free and cares not for spying
eyes. Girls with heavy earrings and
smocks from apple green to tur-
quoise blue pun and paint. Men in
black velvet coats sit, pencil poised
and lost in thought. fashioning the
great epic. The sculptors and scuip-
tresses in their long white coats
dabble in their clay long into tho
night-for night is the hour for
genius to express itself in the Viii
lage.
Along Eleventh street one may
walk for blocks and see the Village
immersed in toll. In one of the
garrets the great painting, the
great poem or the great piece of
sculpture is in the throes of birth.
1t is all arty and ponderous The
prosaic soul feels the futility of his
feeble efforts while strolling through
the Village.
A drug store on Forty-second
street has a Memory Department" +"
She Is a psycho-analyst and helps
husbands to remember what they
were sent after. I was sent after a
tooth paste and couldn't remember
the name. They referred me to the
young lady. She psyche -analyzed
me and I went home with some den-
tai floss-which wasn't a bad guess
at all.
SEES ALIEN QUOTA