International Nights

By Ellen McCarthy
Friday, October 20, 2006

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.

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.

Two other friends are gathered along the way, making it a foursome that greets the bouncers with hugs rather than with IDs. A narrow hallway leads to an open room jammed with salsa couples dipping and twisting in perfect synchronization. Cecilia's is an art deco throwback of a place, with a raised stage and a black-and-white checkered dance floor surrounded by candlelit cocktail tables. Ricky Ricardo's orchestra would look right at home here, had things ever gone south at the Tropicana club.

One friend, Diana Ram, 21, is whisked away immediately for a dance but catches up with the others at the bar for a quick kamikaze shot. "Where's Lisa?" Ventura asks a few minutes later. "Can you write down that she's always disappearing?"

At 12:30 a.m., the DJ is replaced by Sin Miedo, a 10-piece band that has a standing Friday night gig at the club. Newcomers who arrived earlier for free salsa lessons are now making way for more seasoned dancers such as Ventura and her friends, who came without partners but won't sit out a single song for the next hour. There is no junior high awkwardness here; young dance with old, handsome with homely, graceful with clumsy.

"You should write that he made me sweat, he gave me so many turns," Ventura says, wiping her neck with a cocktail napkin after a dance with a tall, thick-muscled man named Juan Carlos Hector. "But, he gave me a Corona."

Last call chimes at 1:30, and the girls bust out digital cameras. The foursome is here most every week, but there's never a bad time for a flash of spotlight. They pose for guys enlisted as photographers and giggle as a small crowd of admirers begins to gather.

"You're pretty," a 20-something blond in a collared shirt tells Ram. "I should probably be more original. You probably get that every day."

"Thank you," she replies with a smile, before turning back to her friends.

Last sips are taken, and their dance partners are bid adios . "He wants you to write down that we are going to go on a date," Ventura says, he being Juan Carlos Hector, who nods proudly.

Ventura rolls her eyes, grabs her girls and turns toward the door.

CECILIA'S CLUB AND LOUNGE 2619 Columbia Pike, Arlington. 703-685-0790.http://www.ceciliasclub.com. Sin Miedo plays Friday nights starting about 10:30.

Amit Kapoor, A-Kap to his friends, is a 23-year-old engineer with the eyelashes of a cocker spaniel and the diction of an English professor. He is two years out of college and three semesters away from a master's degree and has spent the first part of his Saturday night at a sangeet in Potomac, toasting with Indian song and dance and food a couple who will be married two weeks hence.

"It was fun," he says. "Traditional."

It's 11:45 when Kapoor glides past a velvet rope and struts into a room where tradition has been dissolved, reassembled and set to an electronic beat. Immediately there are handshakes, hugs, a kiss on the cheek; it's old-home week, bhangra style.

"One of the reasons people come here is they know what to expect," Kapoor says. "This DJ isn't mixing with anything. It's all Bollywood music," he explains, referring to songs that originated in Indian movies. And by "here," he means Bollywood2Night, a monthly party thrown by Vinoda Basnayake and Kunal Shah, two perfectly gelled 20-somethings who intend to become South Asian music moguls. Tonight the party is at Heritage India, a Dupont Circle restaurant that has been transformed into a nightclub for the evening.

Kapoor wades through the crowd of tube-top-wearing women and men in button-downs until he finds a space where he and his friends can dance, really dance. Born in India but raised in Springfield, Kapoor says Indian culture was background noise, to some extent, until he arrived at the University of Virginia, where he began to seek it out more aggressively: downloading music from Bollywood movies, joining an Indian dance team. "For a lot of us, it was a moment where we all got in touch with our roots," he says. "And we ran with it."

Kapoor is still running, or dancing, rather, on a performance team and at parties such as this. In a circle with four friends, his shoulders pop and his chest shakes as a wailing pipe sounds against the DJ's flying rhythm.

Four songs in, he pushes his way to the bar, slaps the back of another friend from the area and glances at the paintings of 18th-century Indian warriors hanging high on the wall. In India, Kapoor says, pani puri, a hollow ball of puffed bread served with mint-infused water, is sold by street vendors. Here it is laced with vodka and served by harried bartenders. Kapoor downs one, orders a cocktail and returns to the dance floor.

"The main thing about Bollywood events is that people are thousands of miles from home, and it's their chance to enjoy the music together," promoter Shah says.

Tonight it's their chance to enjoy the music of one artist in particular. Bikram Singh -- whose Web site claims he's no less than "the embodiment of Punjabi folk music in the new millennium" -- is making an appearance.

"D.C., make some noise!" Singh bellows as he climbs onto a makeshift stage in front of a giant Buddha statue. "Do you want some bhangra? On the count of three say, 'I want bhangra!' One. Two. Three."

"I want bhangra!" his audience responds, pushing toward the singer and holding up camera phones as the smell of sweat begins to overtake the room.

Even after Singh leaves the stage and the DJ returns, the crowd of 20-somethings stays packed on the dance floor, some dripping like marathon runners.

"You need to take a shower when you go home," Kapoor's friend Priya Pandya says.

And at 2:30 a.m., home starts to hold some appeal. Kapoor shakes a dozen more hands as he heads toward the door, shirt soaked and smile fixed.

BOLLYWOOD2NIGHThttp://www.bollywood2night.com. Hosted monthly by Blazin-Beats Entertainment at various sites.

Thirty-some years ago, Sumiko Abe met a shy but dashing man at a karaoke bar on Wisconsin Avenue.

New to Washington and the United States, the two -- both recent transplants from Japan -- married, moved to Woodbridge and fell into a habit of picking up the old microphones once or twice a year.

Fitting then, that at 10 on a Saturday night, two hours before his 60th birthday, Koichi Abe is being serenaded in a karaoke club in Annandale.

"I'm just a woman falling in loooove," croons Sumiko Abe, 57, as a campy, '70s-style music video featuring beach scenes and gauzy cinematography plays on a giant TV behind her.

Gray-haired Koichi Abe beams.

He thought tonight was going to be a quiet one, but earlier when the couple arrived at a Korean restaurant down the street, their two sons appeared, along with 10 colleagues from the travel agency where he works.

Now the whole group is crowded into a private room at Cafe Muse, pouring over a three-ring binder of song titles and filling a center coffee table with Heineken cans. It's just them and the door is closed, which is how it works at Cafe Muse, a place a passerby might mistake for a typical strip-mall sub shop.

Inside, though, past the fluorescent dining area, is a line of darkened rooms, each outfitted with a big-screen television and a pair of microphones that sit ready for the magic (and torment) to happen. If not for the waiters delivering beers, each alcove could double as the basement of someone's parents' house circa 1983: low-slung leather couches, linoleum floors, a wall of mirrors and a disco ball rigged up to flash in time with the music.

Annandale isn't nicknamed "Little Korea" for nothing. The owners of Cafe Muse are Korean, as are many of their clients, but the songbooks come in five languages, including English, Vietnamese and Chinese.

Two rooms down from the Abes, Bobby Caudill, who's also celebrating a birthday tonight -- the goateed Sterling resident is 45 years young -- can be heard belting out an impassioned rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody" as his friends howl in delight. "We've got third-graders at home, so it's not like we're gonna go out to clubs anymore. We thought this would be something different," Caudill's buddy Rick Davis explains of their karaoke adventure.

Sumiko Abe, who owns a sushi restaurant on New York Avenue NW and wears a Redskins kimono the Friday before every game, also prefers to sing American songs. But her husband's young co-workers, most of whom emigrated from Japan within the past few years, pick Japanese pop songs and perform with an outsized verve that makes most "American Idol" contestants look comatose by comparison.

Koichi Abe continues to beam. If there is a world record for beaming, he might be on track to challenge it. A king in his court, he is the first with applause for entertainers both tin-eared and talented.

There are tambourines and air guitars and triumphant duets by a pair of sweat-drenched brothers. And when it comes time for the guest of honor to take center stage, he does so without a glimmer of embarrassment.

Sumiko snaps a picture of her singing husband, and then, just after midnight, she pushes her wire-rimmed glasses on top of her head and reclaims the mike for one more ballad, this one soft and slow, and in Japanese.

"It's so sweet it makes me cry," whispers one 20-something guest. "It's a song about how much she loves her husband."

CAFE MUSE 7356 Little River Tpk., Annandale. 703-658-9351.

The importance of a proper pregame can never be underestimated. Miriam Noori and her girlfriends know as much. You've got to slip slowly into an evening, rev up with a little gossip, a little sustenance, a little speculation about what -- and who -- is on the agenda.

"Oh, we have to go, you guys. My dad is waiting," breaks in Natasha Yousuf, looking bookish and sophisticated in a pair of designer eyeglasses.

Actually, both of her parents are waiting, so Noori, Yousuf and Malvika Mathur down the last of their Fuddruckers fries and file into the back seat of the dad-driven SUV with a handmade "Student Driver" sign in the rear window.

A year from now, when the McLean High School seniors are off at college, their Friday nights will play out a little differently. Parental escorts won't be a factor. Neither will SAT stress or debates about whether to apply to nine schools or 10.

Anyway, it's cool. Yousuf's dad will play their Arash CD during the ride to Fur nightclub, and it's not like her parents will actually go in or anything. And this is waaay better than wandering around the mall, which is what they end up doing most Friday nights.

This evening has been in the works for a while now, since Noori heard that Arash, a Persian pop singer, was making a stop in Washington. "I personally like the Black Eyed Peas and Justin Timberlake," explains the 17-year-old, whose parents emigrated from Iran. "But I've been exposed to Persian music since I was born. The TV, whenever my parents watch it, is on Persian satellite."

Yousuf, for the record, is really into old-school '90s boy bands -- "And I heard the Spice Girls are coming back," she says -- but all three have come to love Arash (just Arash, thanks) in recent years. The Iranian-born heartthrob has a couple of European chart-toppers to his name, and for a month the bulletin boards of DCPersian.com have lit up with messages from fans who "CAN'T WAIT FOR THE ARASH CONCERT!!" and haters who think he's overrated.

Thirty-five minutes and three wrong turns after leaving Tysons Corner, the dad-mobile rolls up to the club. It's only 7:30, but a line has formed, snaking its way around the side of the building in Northeast Washington.

"There's so many people wearing black," says Yousuf, 17, who chose a banana-colored tank top and aqua coverup for the occasion. "I'm like the Ukrainian flag."

The three are branded too-young-to-drink with an unsightly hand stamp. They fork over $40 tickets they purchased online and trudge down a sticky staircase into the cavernous center of the club.

Once she has staked a claim on a patch of territory two feet from the stage, Noori throws back her head to sing along with the Farsi lyrics of Persian dance hits reverberating through the room. In the wings, near the bars, an older crowd mingles with nonchalance, while the teenagers around Noori chant incessantly for Arash to take the stage.

"Ar-ash! Ar-ash! Ar-ash!" And on and on for 30 minutes, 40, 90.

Finally the singer bounds into view, smiling like a pageant contestant, and impatience is wiped away with a collective scream. Pictures of Arash -- Arash with some ladies, Arash with the Iranian soccer team, Arash with more ladies -- flash overhead as the pop star bounces and girls reach out to touch his hand.

Ninety minutes and a dozen songs later, the lights come on, and the crowd heads for the exits. But it's only 11, and the chance to continue partying lies through a set of glass doors. Noori makes it through and waves for her friends to follow.

"Gotta be 18. Gotta be 18," a mountainous bouncer bellows, planting himself directly in front of Yousuf and Mathur, 16. Heads low, the three backtrack in defeat, wondering what to do next.

A ring on Yousuf's cellphone presents the answer. "We gotta go," she says. "My parents are outside."

Persian parties, events and concerts are held regularly at various clubs in Washington. For more information, visithttp://www.dcpersian.com.

The door to Fabio Oliveira's townhouse, tucked in the middle of a verdant Bowie subdivision, is already open.

"Come on in," he yells. "Make yourself at home."

The buzz of a beard trimmer floats down from the second floor to hum over the seductive slow jams of "Quiet Storm" on 96.3 FM (WHUR). The white-walled living room is immaculate and sparingly decorated, a rack of CDs on one side, a tropical painting on the other.

Ten minutes pass before Oliveira springs down the stairs in loose jeans, gleaming white tennis shoes and a T-shirt that looks as if it has been ironed. "I'm gonna go fire up the car," he pronounces and promptly vanishes for another few minutes.

Thirty-two and single, Oliveira is a loan officer and part-time student who was born in Brazil and whose outgoing voice-mail message encourages callers to "Do it! Just do it!" His Friday night routine, he explains, is this: "Come home, watch a little TV and, around this time, start getting ready." The time is 10:45, and the itinerary is just one stop, a Bladensburg club called Crossroads, known for spinning Caribbean music and attracting reggae stars.

"It's kind of a quaint little spot," Oliveira says, standing with his arms crossed, biceps protruding. "I took a liking to the culture. . . . Reminds me a little of home, too. Real laid-back. Nice people."

Oliveira locks up the house and heads to "the weekend car," a yellow 1976 Triumph idling as it infuses the neighborhood with a gaseous odor. As per usual, there are no friends to pick up or meetings to arrange. "I ride solo," he says. "I'll know people there."

Which is true, because he is there most every Friday, and when he rolls up this night, the parking attendant waves him into a choice spot near the door. "This is Lieutenant Greene," Oliveira declares, arm draped around the old man's shoulders. "Gotta know Lieutenant Greene. He'll take care of you."

The club is a box in the middle of concrete and warehouses. A dark railroad track looms to one side while imported palm trees sprinkled around the building fruitlessly attempt to evoke island breezes on a cold October night.

Hand slaps delivered to three more workers, Oliveira enters the building as a song by Damian (son of Bob) Marley comes on, which means there's no time to waste. He strides purposefully to the rear of the club, stops just before the DJ booth and begins to dance. No one stands within a 10-foot radius of Oliveira, and no one else is dancing, save a few tightly enveloped couples on the other side of the room.

Earlier in the night, the club had a live band and Caribbean buffet, but now the lights are turned down, and the music -- soca and reggae and a little R&B -- steps up to a faster, louder beat. Oliveira dips forward, shoulders going lower than his knees, then rotates up, forearms pumping, as a line of cocktail-sipping women looks on. Eventually he is joined by another guy, then two more. Sometimes people call them the Crossroads dancers, one DJ explains on a break, because they're always here and they never leave the floor.

"It's the Caribbean locked in a box and shipped to Bladensburg, Maryland, where they unwrapped it," says Alvarado Martinez, who grew up in Trinidad and now goes by the name DJ Super Slice. "You always feel at home."

Slowly the dance floor fills, but Oliveira and his boys remain in front of the DJ, where there's room to move. Seemingly at random, they break into choreographed steps for 10 seconds, then turn away and carry on on their own.

The line of lady admirers grows, but Oliveira never turns to bring them into the fold. The pickup game isn't what brings him out, he insists. "Me, personally, I'm just there to get my mind off of work and school and unwind," he says.

The unwinding continues until 3:30 a.m., when, as the club's lights blink on, he returns to the Triumph. He could have kept going, but it doesn't matter. Another Friday night is only six days away.

CROSSROADS ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX 4103 Baltimore Ave., Bladensburg. 301-927-1056.http://www.crossroadsclub.com.

At 10:10 on a Saturday night, every seat in the dining room of Dukem Restaurant is taken. Waitresses in long white skirts scurry among tables of bohemian students and hand-holding couples, delivering miniature bottles of chardonnay and extra bowls of injera to customers who need a little more of the Ethiopian flatbread to sop the last drops of peppery sauce from their plates.

"How spicy is spicy?" asks a middle-aged man in black leather, leaning in close so the distracted bartender can hear him loud and clear. "I mean, is it very, very spicy?"

It is, so a milder option is chosen, and the man relaxes into the warmth and noise of the wood-paneled room. The faces filling the place at this hour are mostly white, and the focus is food. But in 90 minutes that will change, as the lights dim, the shades are drawn and a keyboard that stood idle is lit up by a man in a showman's vest and purple shirt.

"Everything is cool here. The music, the singers, I like them all," says Yonas Abera, a smiling 22-year-old with bright eyes and a thin gold chain tucked into his long-sleeve T-shirt. The part-time student moved to the United States from Ethiopia less than a year ago, and though Dukem has a sister restaurant in Baltimore, where he lives, the U Street original has the scene he prefers.

"The Washington Dukem has more music, more fun," he says.

From a table near the bar, Abera watches with bemusement as his friend Minale Cherenet, 22, is pulled to the center of the restaurant by a 20-something hippie whose blond hair is wrapped in Princess Leia buns. The tables have been pushed away, and she's in the mood to dance.

The band, crowded on a tiny stage just a foot off the ground, is four people strong now, including a soprano at the mike. The woman flails about, legs kicking into the air, as Cherenet stands opposite her, hands on hips, shoulders and knees bouncing subtly and in time with the swinging rhythm.

She gives up after a few songs, and the dance floor is left to Cherenet, who is joined by Abera and a half-dozen other men who form a tight circle in a room that's now as dark and loud as any bar in Washington.

The contemporary music is watery and buoyant, and Cherenet and Abera dance as if there's a drama unfolding between them -- moving toward each other, then away, faces registering false anger and surprise, joy that might be authentic.

"See these two guys, just dancing together by themselves? They're just friends and nothing else," says Natnael Berhane, who has been overlooking the scene while his buddies sip Heinekens. "A few years ago I brought some friends here, and they thought I brought them to a gay bar."

Eventually a few women join the fold, and others look on from low tables as they chat over tea and honey wine. At the bar it's mostly men, laughing and passing cigarettes.

When the band breaks, Abera and Cherenet take their seats and order another round of cocktails, as the sound system pipes in pop hits from the late '80s. ( "It's electric! Boogie woogie, woogie!") Dukem is as busy now, at 1:30 a.m., as it was three hours ago, but there is no food in sight.

After 20 minutes, the band -- called, appropriately, the Dukem Band -- returns to its instruments, and the dance floor is flooded with a boisterous wedding party and guests in tuxedos and sparkling strapless dresses. Friends of the owner, someone says.

Abera and Cherenet just watch as if they're happily hypnotized, saying not a word for long minutes at a time. Precisely at 2 a.m., they stand to leave. It proves hard to look away, though, so the walk to the door is taken in slow motion.

DUKEM RESTAURANT 1114 U St. NW. 202-667-8735.http://www.dukemrestaurant.com.

The Dukem Band plays Friday and Saturday nights starting about 11:30.

Ellen McCarthy is a Weekend staff writer.