Nightclubs

The boozy white noise of a recent Saturday night crowd at the Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard confronts comedian Ari Shaffer as he starts his act. Sensing the lull, Shaffer tweaks the audience, "What's the matter with everyone, is it the recession?" That gets the laugh, and Shaffer moves on, but his riff on the current economic malaise isn't the last that evening.

Open mike nights can sometimes be their own special circle of hell -- for the performer and the audience. (It's below the heretics but above the wrathful, sullen and slothful.) But they needn't be. Within this world of two-drink minimums and three-minute showcases, you can avoid the most demoralizing open mikes and stick to the ones that are only mildly disheartening. (We kid because we love.

The Century Lounge, an LAX-area strip club that has titillated and disgusted tourists for decades with its blinking "Nude Nude Nudes" sign, will be demolished and replaced by a parking lot, officials said Thursday. The lease for the tawdry Century Boulevard landmark -- best known for its psychedelic, red-and-orange marquee -- expired at the end of August, according to John Day, general counsel for property owner L&R Group of Companies. The club will be razed next month and incorporated into L&R's adjacent WallyPark parking structure.

FOR A sizable swath of Los Angeles media types, going to a club is so 2005. The chic crowd would rather attend an event at a temporary space that feels more like a gallery. Beverage companies and lifestyle marketers have played to that audience, marrying their brands to sleek nights with slick music. And now Microsoft is upping the ante.

MOST club owners like to think of their spots as being original. The management behind Orange County's new wannabe hot spot Flight Bistro is no different. "It's unique in Huntington because of the look and ambience," assistant manager Cristina Barbatti says. The concept behind the new venue, though, is straight out of the contemporary night life handbook.

DESIGNER Christian Audigier was a few hours from opening his first nightclub last week, a swanky spread that looks out at the Las Vegas Strip from Treasure Island, but he was already moving past all that. He's got loftier plans. Much loftier. An airline, in fact. "It's going to be nice, comfortable, with nice waitresses and nice food, a cool drink and a nice movie," Audigier says, igniting one of three cigarettes laid out neatly for him by an assistant along with a yellow lighter.

The three deejays spun R&B and hip-hop, with a focus on oldies, party anthems and black artists gone mainstream -- Michael Jackson, OutKast, Gnarls Barkley. These were carefully chosen common denominators, songs that black and white club-goers might agree upon in 2008. And, in fact, the two races were here in equal measure on a Friday night, dancing shoulder to shoulder at this upscale club in the heart of the old Confederacy.

For the better part of a decade, downtown L.A. real estate agents have been enticing residents to buy or rent lofts with the promise of real night-life options "coming soon." This fall, it looks as if "soon" is "now." Though plenty of bars have sprung up in recent years downtown, a different kind of night-life experience, a three-story club called Versus, will open at 6th and Spring streets inside the old Los Angeles Stock Exchange building next week.

Preservationists hoping to save the facade of a Richard Neutra-designed building at Hollywood's most famous corner have been told they are 70 years too late to stop demolition. Workers are removing the remains of the Basque nightclub, which was gutted about six months ago by a mysterious predawn fire at the intersection of Hollywood and Vine.