NIGHTCLUBS

According to the latest pop sociology, if I know your zip code. I can correctly assume what kind of car you drive, what sort of job and how many kids you have, how you vote, and probably what nightclubs you go to. It’s true that there’s not a lot of crossover among clubbers-they’re faithful at least to a particular area, whether it’s Deep Ellum, lower McKinney, Addison, or Cedar Springs. (There are a few exceptions to prove the rule: the Art Bar is a conscious attempt to mix the Deep Ellum art tourists with the barflies, and the 8.0 seems to pull in an eclectic mix, depending on when you’re there.) But for a while, one club did manage to draw them all-youngsters, gays, bohemians, preppies, and yuppies all went to the Starck Club. The common denominator was cool. Starck ended in July, and a week later opened again under new ownership as Club DV8. From the look of it, the owners want things to stay just the same. Only different.

In late May, the Starck Club announced that it had been sold to Heartthrob Enterprises Inc. As principal investor Blake Woodall likes to put it, Starck “closed with Grace”-a concert by club favorite Grace Jones on July 12; the week before, Heartthrob’s full-page ads started appearing: “? coming to 703 McKinney in July.”

The question mark indicates how fast things happened-when the ads were placed, the company had yet to decide on a new name for the club. But Heartthrob is used to speed; in fact, regional manager Jeff Meinecke admits, “When the Dallas Observer described our style as ’blitzkrieg-that was about right.” Heartthrob’s first club in Dallas was the Tijuana Yacht Club; in a formerly dormant location on Greenville Avenue, furnished with a concentrated collection of garage sale beach kitsch, the club charges no cover and offers a happy-hour buffet, lots of parties and music videos, and bartenders who occasionally dance on the bar. By June, it ranked fourth in liquor sales in the state. (Dallas Alley remains number one.)

Structurally, Starck would have been hard to change. Cosmetically, changes were basic. There are some good new ideas; for instance, in the Starck Club, the bathrooms were the cool place to be. Grandly entered through double doors, the lounges were furnished with sofas and video monitors indicating which stalls were occupied; the oversized glass-brick stalls were lit by television screens playing music videos. Light projections labeled them “hommes” and “femmes” but ultimately it didn’t matter. Everyone wanted into either of them.

At DV8, it’s the kitchen that’s cool-or H.O.T., actually. The 2,000-square-foot space, never fully utilized by Starck except for an occasional party, has been dubbed the “House of Toast.” There are linen-topped tables in the gleaming, stainless-steel room, waiters are busy popping corks, and the chef is busy popping toast out of the rows of toasters. The menu consists of champagne-by the bottle or glass-for toasting, and toast, with your choice of more than a hundred toppings from caviar to grape jelly.

DV8 is like Starck, a high-powered, industrial dance club featuring national acts. What’s changed here the most is the attitude. For example, the door policy. The cover charge-once $10-is now between $4 and $7, and it doesn’t matter what you wear or “how you wear it”-if there’s room in the club and you have the money, you can come in.

Meinecke’s stated aim is to make DV8 the most visible club in town. “Whatever it takes, I want everyone from the age of eight to eighty to know the name of this club.” For his Houston club, Meinecke arranged live club broadcasts on Top 40 radio stations and convinced stations to play the club’s top five dance tunes; he’s already negotiated a similar deal here with Y-95. This is a club for Dallas in the Nineties. Heartthrob sees a million-dollar market here, and DV8 may tap it for them. It’s a far cry from “What’s good is bad.. .” What’s good is what works.