Back in the Day: Former Clubhouse patrons reminisce about popular black club 

Washington Blade - May 27, 2005 
Rhonda Smith 

THE CLUBHOUSE, A black Mixed club in D.C. that once garnered a national reputation, opened 30 years ago this month. 

And though it closed 15 years ago, those fortunate enough to have attended one of the all-night house parties in the yellow-brick building at 1296 Upshur St., NW, on any given Friday or Saturday, between 1975 and 1990, might be feeling a bit nostalgic this Memorial Day weekend. 

"At the Clubhouse, it was like, get there at midnight or 1:30 and party 'til the sun came up," recalls Tonii Riley, an administrative assistant in Virginia who first went to the Clubhouse around 1976. "The music was on. It was basically where all the pretty people hung out." 

At the time, Riley, 52, was in the Navy and had recently moved here from New York. Friends told her about the place. She liked it because the late-night hours reminded her of the Garage in New York. 

And music at the Clubhouse, popular radio favorites like Van McCoy's "The Hustle" as well as R&B hits and underground precursors to house, also held appeal. 

Riley, who is straight, also enjoyed the Clubhouse because, no one was left out. She even worked there for about two years as a hostess at the door. 

"That was the highlight of party life in D.C.," she says. "The Clubhouse was it. There has never been anything like it in this area, and probably will never be anything like it again." 

THIS WAS WHAT John Eddy, Morrell Chasten, and the late Aundrea Scott probably had in mind when they began in 1974 making plans to open the Clubhouse, a nonprofit corporation that at its peak had 4,000 members worldwide. Clubhouse memberships were free, though they were so popular people probably would have paid to have one. 

"We catered to everyone," Eddy said, noting that he and his business partners did not make a big deal out of the fact that neither the Clubhouse nor Third World, an older club they owned in Northeast D.C., had predominantly black, gay clienteles. 

"We had two 90 percent gay nights," he said, "and the other nights were used as fund-raisers for straight functions." 

The Third World closed once the Clubhouse took off. Eddy, who was born in Maryland and works for the U.S. Postal Service and as a consultant, says he and his business partners modeled the Clubhouse after the Loft, David Mancuso's brainchild, born in New York City during the '70s. 

"The Third World was for-profit, and packed to the brim every weekend," Eddy said. "With the Clubhouse, we decided to do something different and let people party like they were partying in their home. The intent was to be nonprofit, to be community-oriented and individual-oriented - a place for people to use." 

He noted that the Clubhouse, which did not serve alcohol except on special occasions, was open to everyone, regardless of race, creed, color or sexual orientation. A small percentage of its members were white, Latino, Asian American and from other countries. 

The owners of the 10,000-square-foot-club, near the intersection of 13th and Upshur streets, in Northwest D.C., had Richard Long, a renowned sound engineer in New York City, install a state-of-the-art sound system. (He had done similar work for places like Studio 54 and the Garage.) 

Early in the planning process for the Clubhouse, Scott recruited Rainey Cheeks to work as one of its managers. Cheeks, who today is known as Bishop Kwabena Rainey Cheeks, pastor of Inner Light Ministries, was in charge of security at the Clubhouse from the day it opened until it closed, in May 1990. 

Eddy served as president of Clubhouse Enterprises; Chasten, who is retired and lives in North Carolina, was vice president. Aundrea Scott, who died of AIDS-related complications in the early 1990s, was treasurer and general manager and also in charge of sound and lighting, and his sister, Paulette, who also is in ministry in D.C., was board secretary and manager. 

"The beauty of the Clubhouse is that we always sat around and thought about how to create a fantasy," Cheeks said. 

"Andre was having house parties. We were gathering names and building a membership list," he explained. "Money wasn't talked about. We wanted to build this new club and create a fantasy. We wanted you to feel like you were home." 

Cheeks, 53, said people who applied to become Clubhouse members had to agree that they would act responsibly while at the club, and that their guests would do so as well. 

After it opened, on Mother's Day weekend in 1975, Fridays at the Clubhouse were geared toward parties for straight patrons, and Cheeks said they primarily attracted college crowds. These events were known as ZEI. 

Saturdays, events known as Vibrations, were geared toward a gay and lesbian clientele. Cheeks said the managers tried to make sure there was a balance of men and women at the Clubhouse on both nights. 

"But it wasn't about straight or gay night," he said. "It was about, æCan you get along and fit in?'" 

The Clubhouse also eventually added events for women and men on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights. Among the celebrities who performed there during its heyday were the late Sylvester, the Weather Girls, Jennifer Holliday, Martha Wash, Jocelyn Brown, Nona Hendryx, Colonel Abrams and the late Phyllis Hyman. 

Cheeks and the "Clubhouse Dancers" performed at events in D.C. and Baltimore. Cheeks and a female dance partner even won a contest on "Dance Fever." 

Clubhouse officials also held Mother's Day celebrations as well as theme parties for Halloween and other events, from a Pajama Party to an Anniversary Party. 

On Sept. 28, 1983, Clubhouse officials also offered their space for the first AIDS educational forum organized by the D.C. Coalition of Black Gays and Whitman-Walker Clinic, according to literature from the Rainbow History Project, an ongoing local effort to document gay history in this region, and Whitman-Walker Clinic, an AIDS service and gay health organization. 

During Memorial Day weelend, staff members at the Clubhouse also held the Children's Hour, an annual party that involved different themes. When the final Children's Hour event was held there in 1990, the following year, Black Pride was established in part to fill the void left by the dissolution of the Children's Hour, organizers said. 

"This was probably one of the most well known and highly sought after invitation parties in the nation," said James "Juicy" Coleman, co-chair of the Children's Hour for 10 years. He currently is president of the Best of Washington, a longtime black gay social group, and program manager for prevention and education at Whitman-Walker Clinic's Maryland office. 

PERHAPS THE BIGGEST reason people came back to the Clubhouse, which could comfortably hold 1,200 to 1,500 people, was the music. Tyrone "Tito" Robinson, the Clubhouse's Master DJ, primarily was responsibe for this. 

"With the Friday night and Saturday night crowds, the music was not the same," the 51-year-old said. "With the straight crowd, you had to play a bit more radio format - some funk and include some ballads. But once you got them going, I would slide a couple of Saturday night favorites in there. 

"With the Saturday night crowd, I played a lot of unknown, underground, well-produced, positive-energy music," Robinson said. "It wasn't called house at the time. The Clubhouse is the great grandfather of house." 

Robinson was the first African American to win Billboard's DJ of the Year award in the Baltimore-Washington area. He won in 1979 and 1980. 

"Playing music was my sport, my craft, my life, and I loved it," he said. 

DJs at the Clubhouse also trained their counterparts at other clubs throughout the region. 

Robinson, who today is a telecommunications specialist in Tampa, Fla., said he and other Clubhouse DJs looked for certain sounds at the time. Their initial goal was to play upbeat, contemporary jazz music that people could dance to, as well as music out of Philadelphia by groups like MFSB, the Three Degrees, the O'Jays and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. 

"Then we started getting nice underground music out of New York," he said. 

Later, he and other DJs started getting music from the West Coast and Germany and from underground favorites. "At the same time, we were exposing as much local music as we possible could from different groups in Baltimore and Washington, like Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers," he said, and music started coming from Miami, among other places. 

"People who came to the Clubhouse, it was therapeutic for them," Robinson said. "They knew there was a place in Washington they could come to dance and sweat and let off weekly frustrations within an eight- to 10-hour period." 

Its founders say the Clubhouse closed in 1990 primarily because AIDS decimated D.C.'s black gay male population, and the club's membership and staff ranks. Some said "recreational drugs" were a factor; Cheeks said crack cocaine was a factor. But everyone agrees that AIDS was the leading problem. 

"We lost Bryce. We lost Eugene. We lost Gilbert. We lost Ben. We lost Kenneth. We lost John," Cheeks said. "It was like half the staff." 

Eddy said the Clubhouse's revenue was cut by 70 percent during that period. 

"By 1989, we were no longer able to meet our financial obligations, and that was principally the reason," he said. "The opening of new clubs, like Tracks, had an impact, but it was not that great."