International Nights
Oft-quoted George Mason University professor Richard Florida maintains that the strength of Washington's economy is due, in part, to the diversity of its population.
Economy? Oops, yeah, you're right -- who cares? Let's talk about night life.
  Juan Carlos Hector and Diana Ram salsa on the dance floor at Cecilia's Club in Arlington. (Mark Finkenstaedt for The Washington Post) |
That this town constantly attracts newcomers from around the world is certainly as much a boon to our Saturday nights as it is to our collective bottom line. Cultural traditions have been transplanted, remixed and doused with premium vodka at neighborhood bars and mega-clubs around the Beltway.
We found a few revelers willing to let us tag along to their favorites.
Marlene Ventura, who has been on her feet all day, perming and trimming and chatting about the men in her customers' lives, is tired, but not as tired as usual.
Wednesday and Thursday passed without parties -- a rare occurrence in the world of the easygoing 27-year-old who emigrated from Puerto Rico seven years ago -- so she's primed, by now, for a big night.
"Life's too short," she says, tossing her kinky, honey-brown curls away from her face. "You gotta have a good time when you're young. Then you can tell your kids all the stuff you did."
There has been a nap and some butter cookies, and at 9:20 p.m., her wild-eyed puppy is shuffled off to an extra bedroom in the condo Ventura bought a few months back with a boyfriend who is no longer a boyfriend exactly, though the cohabitation continues.
When Lisa Arango, 29, a paralegal and single mother, arrives, the friends whirl away behind closed doors for a 90-minute prepping session.
The evening's destination is Cecilia's, a nightclub in south Arlington. Situated alongside an H&R Block and a Thai restaurant on Columbia Pike, it's an unassuming-looking joint with some of the best Latin music in Washington. "Cecilia's is not a club to go drink, it's a club to go dance," Arango explains, after struggling into jeans that seem to have shrunk in the wash.
Ventura emerges transformed and smelling of lavender and hair spray. Lounging pants are traded for boot-cut jeans; contact lenses change her blue eyes to green.
"I gotta get my comfortable shoes on," she says, pulling out a pair of three-inch stilettos. Precisely at 11, after Arango's cellphone is twice misplaced and found -- "Can you write down that she's always losing her cellphone?" Ventura asks -- they declare themselves ready.
