city in space - locations


Trauma
New York
Bagdad




Nightclubs are transient phenomena. Like fashions, they last two or three seasons at the most - as long as the next style in music takes to arrive. Their only chance of any continuity is revival. The Trauma has all the typical features of a classic 1970s disco, and has braved and survived changes in contemporary taste four or five times already. (What a name for a nightclub! It makes you wonder what kind of injuries people inflict on each other when in the grip of disco fever...). Mirrored pillars and a shimmering ceiling open up the space: the spotlights provide rhythmic reds, blues and greens; and floor lighting flashes yellow, red and yellow again, even when the dance floor is empty and the relentless thumping has long since stopped. - Another kind of revival is being enjoyed by the large dance halls, where an elderly clientele shuffles its afternoons away to live music it has rehearsed with precision over the decades - Cha-cha, Tango, Paso Doble - while the Cibeles, the Apollo or the La Paloma now contain clubs frequented during the late hours by a young clientele. The striptease club Bagdad has been spared any kind of revival, however. Unchanged for 30 years, it continues to satisfy its customers' needs in time-honoured fashion. Even when similar establishments moved several streets farther out of the city many years ago, the club survived. The establishment's valued customers continue to point out that everything behind the oriental-style facade is real - nothing gets simulated.