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Of course you have noticed what has been happening to the night life of New York during the last few months? I mean the introduction of a new social element, the small club, which has taken the place of the elaborate cabarets of last year [most of whose illicit liquor cellars had been shut down]. When the regular patrons of these joyous locations sought them ... they found, pendant from the entrance door, a great padlock supplemented by a stern placard which announced that the place had been closed for violating the Eighteenth Amendment.
[In this way,] the small, private clubs came into existence. They are the thing. Everyone who isn’t tucked in his crib right after his nine o’clock bottle now belongs to one or two of these clubs. I am the proud possessor of membership cards in six.
The club rooms do not seek the spotlight of Broadway but glow discreetly in the adjacent side streets. Entrance to them is a matter of punctilious procedure. The door is rigidly barred against the individual who cannot show his membership card. Merely to be dressed and pleasantly intoxicated will not suffice. The Bee Hive for instance is a very swanky and exclusive establishment."
Not long ago, at the Bee Hive, just after the row short cabaret performance by Miss Klark's Kiddies, one of the young ladies at the table next to mine—a stranger, of course—spent the entire balance of the evening in my lap. She simply wouldn't take no for an answer. Her basic idea was to make me feel as if I were among friends. She broke quite a number of things on the table and occasioned a real outburst of laughter when she stuck a fork into the leg of a total stranger whom she mistook for a friend. Such a madcap I have never seen!
And so it went all evening. The closing hour was a little confused because someone, who obviously could not have been a member, shot one of the guests in the thigh, but it proved to be only a flesh wound and the incident was laughed off with great good nature by all. But I could not help asking myself where, in the old days, could one have had such a joyous, care-free time without interference?
We have our reformers and legislators to thank. The bluer the laws, the redder the lights." Doctor T. Thorndyke Westerly, “Broadway's Charming Little Supper Clubs,” December 1924
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