AFTER-HOURS CLUB ATMOSPHERE MORE CORDIAL THAN AT CITY BARS

'This Is About House Music And Ecstasy,' Young Patron Says

EDMONTON - Had anyone claimed that after-hours clubs are temples of
virtue, the first comment inside the door would settle the debate.

In the entranceway to Y Afterhours at 102nd Street just south of
Jasper Avenue, a patron who has reappeared from the cold says to a
friend, "We were just going to the car to do some drugs."

But some presence of drugs has never been in contention.

The behaviour they prompt, however, has.

Two weeks ago, Mayor Bill Smith said Edmonton should look at rolling
back the all-night dance clubs' closing time from 8 a.m. to 3 a.m.,
the same time regular bars close, even though after-hours clubs don't
serve alcohol and can admit people as young as 16.

Smith said problems with noise and loitering persist despite rules the
city imposed two years ago.

Police associated the clubs with theft, vandalism and the use of
troublesome drugs, such as methamphetamine.

But at Y, as compared with any regular nightclub in the city -- the
ones driven by drink specials and the promise of sex -- the atmosphere
could hardly be more cordial.

No one is hitting anyone else and almost no one is threatening anyone
to do so.

No one is groping anyone else -- not without invitation.

There are no glares for the underdressed, the poorly dressed, the
rhythmless.

Although the average age hovers around 20, spotting a belly button is
harder than at most Edmonton shopping malls.

A girl walks past wearing a T-shirt that reads, in five-centimetre
velvet letters, SUNIA.

SUNIA is the Seminar on the United Nations and International Affairs,
a summer camp for eager high-schoolers with a passion for world politics.

If it is ever fair to presume, this girl does not choose to associate
with criminals.

In the chill-out room upstairs, the one place in the club which offers
its 380 guests some refuge from the rotation of 34 DJs behind a
constant stream of fresh electronic music, an articulate 19-year-old
named Matt is sitting on an old couch while a friend kneads his tense
back.

Sure, Matt concedes, drugs are easy to buy in after-hours clubs. But
there are essential differences between the party drugs circulating on
the dance floor and drugs, such as methamphetamine, which police blame
for rising crime in the city.

Conventional nightclubs, Matt says -- he names one of the city's
biggest over-18 hot spots, a place where liquor flows like water --
"are about house music and cocaine. This is about house music and ecstasy."

"Drinking's worse than E," Matt says.

"How many people get drunk and then beat their women, puke all over
the street, vandalize?

Y's manager, Tony Donohue, says that while the club does everything it
can to keep drugs out, some patrons can always hide pills in their
underwear and other places bouncers can't search.

Donohue says his club's accepting mood keeps violence and destruction
at bay. "Everybody knows that they can just be themselves. You're not
there to impress anybody."

Police have said homeless youth congregate at the clubs and then
loiter downtown all night, but frankly, Donohue says, homeless people
can neither afford the $30 cover charge for this party nor the $10 for
his smaller events.

He says authorities must have his patrons confused with the youths who
hang out at a park across the street. Later, back on the couch in the
chill-out room, another man spits educated distaste at the city's
hopes to doom the after-hours clubs.

"Bill Smith is going about it the wrong way," says John
Cooper.

"He's always talking about a vibrancy. What is a vibrant downtown
core? There's a market for people going to bars, for younger people
who are not into going to church or the theatre all the time. To just
close this down because they say, 'We're not into that kind of music,'
that doesn't jibe with having a vibrant downtown.

"Culture is not just plays by Shakespeare. It's not just arts and
entertainment as defined by Bill Smith."