Gil
Asakawa
Writing Samples
Back
to Index of Writing Samples
This article
was the cover story for the Rocky Mountain News' Weekend Spotlight
section on Oct. 26, 2001
NO ATTITUDES
At age 15, Rock Isand remains true to its motto
By Gil Asakawa
Rock Island
1514 15th St.
(303) 572-7625
http://rockislandclub.com
Cover charge: Tuesdays-Wednesdays $5, Thursday, Friday and Sundays
no cover, Saturday All Ages Rages $10
On a hot August night in 1986, the doors opened to a new nightclub
in Lower Downtown Denver - an area that was home to a mere handful
of bars but not exactly known as a Mecca for area culture or entertainment.
The club was tucked into a dark street anchored by the Wazee Supper
Club on the corner and the Terminal Annex post office at the other
end of the block, and hidden under the shadow of what was then the
15th Street Viaduct.
It was called
Rock Island, but you wouldn't know it from any outward appearances.
There were no glitzy signs, no flashing neon in the blacked-out window.
There was simply a concrete ramp studded with glass inlays lit from
below that led off the street into the building's entrance. There,
a hostess greeted curious visitors from an opened bank vault door
and waved them inside.
Inside, the club
was dark, with black paint the main color scheme. A room with a bar
was to the left, but straight ahead from the entrance was a large
room with a main dance floor. A raised bar gleamed with chrome on
one side of the room, and on the opposite side was a bare brick wall
decorated only with the club's logo, a giant cutout replica of Picasso's
1952 image, "The Acrobat," with a mirror image added to one side.
The nightclub
was an early sign of Denver's growing sophistication and big-city
aspirations. It played cutting-edge alternative rock and ear-splitting
rhythmic onslaught that would later be called industrial music, and
it became a haven for hipsters who wanted to dance but wanted to avoid
the big hair and cheesy post-disco of the day at other nightclubs.
Since that summer's
soft launch, Rock Island has celebrated its birthday every year on
Halloween.
This year marks
a landmark: Rock Island's 15th anniversary, in what is now a crowded
market full of clubs catering to night crawlers and bar-hoppers, in
a brightly-lit LoDo neighborhood that has become Denver's entertainment
destination. The club plans to celebrate with a special night of dancing
and entertainment including a touring burlesque troupe.
Rock Island was
the brainchild of one man, says David Clammage, an original investor
in the nightclub and now the owner. "The vision for the club, the
concept, was Charles Callaway's," he says. "Charles' concept was the
New York model: No sign on the door, so that just finding the place
meant you were part of the cognoscenti."
Callaway is a
developer who bought and refurbished the Oxford Hotel in the 1970s,
and saw the potential of the LoDo area long before others moved into
the neighborhood, a decade before anyone thought to build a baseball
stadium there. (Callaway still has an office in the Oxford Hotel,
but these days he spends much of his time in Mexico, where he's building
a home.)
"Charles was
the guiding force, who said 'let's put a nightclub here' and he was
the one who suggested the gothic industrial theme," Clammage recalls.
"There wasn't anything like that in Denver at the time. In LoDo at
the time, there were four liquor licenses, for the Wazee, Oxford,
Terminal Bar (now Jax Fish House) and El Chapultepec. There are now
92."
Although downtown's
yuppification had stretched to Larimer Square by the mid-1980s, the
blocks between Larimer and Union Station were still like New York's
Bowery, a dark and dingy no-man's land of bums, warehouses and lonely
old businesses such as American Seasonings and Rockmount Ranchwear.
Old-timers can hardly recognize the area now.
Rock Island quickly
caught on with Denver's burgeoning young urban crowds, and became
an alternative to the top-40 discos in Glendale and Cherry Creek,
where suburbanites went to meet and mingle at places with names like
London Haus and Bogart's. Unlike the brightly-dressed dancers elsewhere,
the audience at Rock Island matched the décor - black was the prevailing
color scheme, to match the darker music.
"We've drifted
from our original formula off and on, but we're back to our goth and
industrial roots again," Clammage says. "Our theme really is 'No Attitude.'
The other night I saw a guy in a suit and tie standing next to a kid
covered in tattoos and a nose ring, and they were talking about Randy
Johnson's fastball. That's what I love about this place."
There have been
some changes at Rock Island over the years.
When the club
first opened, one section of the basement room was blocked off and
called "The House of Toast." The reason, Clammage explains, was the
tavern license Charles Callaway had from the Oxford Hotel required
Rock Island to serve food. "So we served toast to meet our food service
requirement." The problem was, he adds, "All those toasters were a
fire hazard."
Other ideas that
didn't go over well were attempts to adjust the musical mix to keep
up with the fads: "We tried Latin jazz and salsa night, and it didn't
go over well. We tried DJ culture style and 'house' music. But people
expect us to be edgier, it's always been a more alternative crowd
here."
These days, Saturday
nights are the closest to mainstream with its MTV-style playlist for
club's popular "All-Ages Rages," but even then the music is all extended
club mixes and alternate versions, not the stuff that gets played
on cable TV and radio.
The club also
briefly changed its name, to "Club No-No" in the early '90s. But the
regulars said "no no" to the name and it was changed back.
Ken Hamblin III,
who plays Afrobeat and "nujazz" music for a diverse and loyal crowd
every Tuesday at Rock Island as DJ K-Nee, was one of the club's early
DJs. The secret to the club's success, he says, is its consistent
commitment to the cultural cutting edge. "In Colorado, you know, some
venues basically cater to the common person, never truly pushing the
limits of what they're doing but offering what the average guy or
Jane Doe wants."
The club's most
consistent commitment to an alternative crowd has been to support
the musical taste of the "goth" subculture, the black-clad, sad-eyed
followers of gothic fashion, literature and downbeat dance music.
The club hosts a long-running goth night every Sunday.
"The goth demo
has shrunk over the years, but the fans of the music are incredibly
loyal," Clammage says. "It's not just about the music, it's a lifestyle
choice, and they're extraordinarily well-read. It's just that their
music tastes are very specific. They have an appreciation of the darker
elements of life. They're alienated from a lot of other venues, but
we were built on that genre, and we welcome them."
Because the club
adopted an all-ages night about nine years ago, Rock Island sometimes
suffers from a reputation as an underage club. But Clammage is enthusiastic
about turning the business over every Saturday - a big night for bars
everywhere - to a non-alcoholic crowd. He sees it as market development
for future club regulars as the kids grow older. "I love it when someone
recognizes me, and comes up and says, 'Yeah, I used to come in here
all the time when I was 17.'"
Clammage maintains
the enthusiasm of a young club denizen, although he admits to being
"just an old goth." He still listens to '80s groups such as the Cure,
Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, but adds, "The kids keep me really fresh
- my music library keeps growing and growing."
Clammage, whose
primary business is corporate and government project financing, says,
"Rock Island is what I do for fun and art. It keeps me young and connected
to a class of people whose company I enjoy."
He not only owns
the club, but also the building that houses it. "We don't have the
pressure other clubs have to squeeze the nickel until the buffalo
sh-s," he chuckles.
That's a large
part of why it doesn't have to change concepts with every passing
trend.
The only time
Rock Island was seriously in trouble was in the late 1980s. "Competitively,
in 1988, 23 Parrish opened (at 23rd and Blake at the other end of
LoDo), and it was an upscale carbon copy of us," Clammage says. "Those
were some bad times."
Still, Rock Island
found ways to retaliate. When the new club began a promotion giving
away free drinks from 11 pm to midnight, Rock Island finally decided
if they couldn't beat 'em, drain 'em.
"We rented a
double decker bus and at 11 pm every night we'd get everyone from
our club and take them to 23 Parrish, and at midnight the bus would
return and collect everybody bring them back."
With 15 years
as one of Denver's best-known nightspots, Clammage wonders how long
it can last. "I've asked myself that many times since 1986. Nightclubs
have to stay as fresh as their customers-and their staff. My nephew
just turned 19 and came to work for me. I can see him keeping this
thing going for another 15 years."
He wouldn't do
it again if he had the chance, though. "Never. The magic of this place
has been so unique, I could never replicate it. Rock Island has been
incredibly fun."
Sidebar: What
else happened in 1986?
- The space shuttle
Challenger explodes after launch
- President Ferdinand
Marcos flees the Philippines, and his wife Imelda leaves behind
a mountain of shoes
- The nuclear
power plant at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union suffers a meltdown
- Illegal US
arms sales are uncovered in the Iran-Contra scandal
- The Chicago
Bears beat the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX
- The Boston
Celtics defeat the Houston Rockets in the NBA finals
- The Montreal
Canadiens take the Stanley Cup over the Calgary Flames
- Prince's "Kiss,"
"Sara" by Starship, Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" and Whitney
Houston's "Greatest Love of All" are among the top hits
- The top movies
of the year include "Aliens," "The Color of Money," The Color Purple,"
"Crocodile Dundee" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"
- The top five
TV shows are, in order, "The Cosby Show," "Family Ties," "Cheers,"
"Murder She Wrote," "The Golden Girls" and "60 Minutes."
Extra: My best
Rock Island memory
One night after a concert at Fiddler's Green by Tom Petty and the
Heartbreakers and punk band the Replacements, the members of both
groups flocked to Rock Island and kicked off the hapless local band
playing on the stage in the basement behind a chain link fence. The
room was crammed and sweaty as word got out that they had taken over
and were playing a psychotic playlist of oldies and bar-band standards.
I stood on a small round table, holding on to the ceiling to steady
myself and see over the crowd, but a tall man with a big head of curly
hair blocked my view. At one point, I yelled out "Freebird!" as a
joke request, and the guy in front of me turned in appreciation, laughing
and yelling, "Yeah, 'Freebird!" It turned out to be Heartbreakers
guitarist Mike Campbell, who clambered off his table and joined his
band mates on stage. The combined group played into the wee small
hours and left an indelible memory. They didn't play "Freebird," though.
|