Cream Stereo lounge to hold grand opening
These days, filling a dance club can be a near-impossible feat.
Massive spaces such as Myst, Axis/Radius and Barcelona can feel cavernous unless they're packed.
But the new Cream Stereo Lounge in Old Town Scottsdale is a relatively tiny space, so even if only a few dozen people are shakin' it just past the lobby's lipstick red curtain, it still feels like a happening.
The club has been open Thursday through Saturday and Mondays since New Year's Eve, but hosts its grand opening Saturday night with DJ Earth spinning mainstream mashups, top 40 and hip-hop, along with live performances by burlesque and belly dancers.
Cream has quilted faux-leather walls, five curtain-draped VIP booths on an elevated platform and, most notably, a sleek bathtub on the corner of the VIP area.
This is where burlesque-style water shows take place a few times throughout the night on Fridays and Saturdays. Not to steal thunder from the neighboring Jackrabbit Lounge, owner and operator Marte Sevilla books all kinds of talent, ranging from elaborately costumed go-go dancers to belly dancers, some working with fire, others with snakes.
The club is looking to be a destination for two groups. On the house-music-focused "Giant Wednesdays," launching next week, Sevilla hopes to bring in those who'd normally hit up Myst's House 7340 on Friday nights. In fact, Cream is so set on reaching the house-music crowd that its Web address is myspace.com/house7340.
On the weekends, Sevilla is gunning for the cool kids at all the nearby clubs that are starting to feel stale or a little too empty right now.
Sevilla is a charming, compact man from Cancun, Mexico, with an accent that makes everything he says sound like a come-on. He's ambitious for his club, talking about "affordable" bottle prices and three-bottle minimums for the inside VIP tables, as opposed to the one-bottle buys required for exterior, patio tables along Drinkwater Boulevard.
And while a bottle of Chandon can be had for $65, the Champagne list goes up through an extra-large bottle of Veuve Clicquot Yellow for $275 to '99 Cristal for $600, and on. Bottles of vodka start at $235 for Effen, gin at $205 for Tanqueray, and tequila at $205 for Cuervo Gold. Each comes with mixers and a red-corseted hostess to do all the work.
After having my teeth, lungs and brain delightfully rattled by the concert-quality sound system, the same that's used in Rain and Moon at the Palms in Las Vegas, I hope the pretty young things of Scottsdale will take to this new space as a cool new dancing destination. That is, if they make good on their promises of bringing in world-quality DJs on Wednesdays, and of giving us something fresh to dance to on the weekends. If not, it seems like it will be hard to compete with the already established dance lounges nearby.
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