Even if you have never been there, you know these people

June 25, 2013 5:15 PM

Stratus Dance Club mid-80s style - videos from a club in Spring Valley CA offer hours of dancing voyeurism.

I linked to a clip I liked but you can relive the era with the whole series:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
...and much, much more on the Stratus YouTube Channel

posted by madamjujujive (36 comments total)

I had no idea East County was such a cultural mecca.
posted by birdherder at 5:30 PM on June 25, 2013

Every one of the guys in this video were once my boyfriend.
posted by xingcat at 5:30 PM on June 25, 2013 [9 favorites]

Well, music hasn't changed.
posted by Ad hominem at 5:39 PM on June 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

Watching this, I keep thinking, "I know her. He looks familiar!" But no, these are just the doppelgangers of the people I used to see at Club X in San Jose or various other dances held at roller rinks, karate studios, and cabana clubs in the 1980s. (as well as actual dance clubs that let in teenagers.)
posted by vespabelle at 5:54 PM on June 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

you know these people

I was in 6th grade at the time, but if I were a couple years older I probably would know some of these people. They may well be my co-workers and bosses now, or older siblings of people I do know.

At the time, my friends and I were probably over at Aquarius, roller skating and playing video games, to much the same music.
posted by LionIndex at 6:01 PM on June 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

Part 7
posted by Nelson at 6:08 PM on June 25, 2013

I never went to teen dance clubs, but this looks far more like the 80s I remember than the 80s depicted on television.
posted by Bugbread at 6:17 PM on June 25, 2013

Maybe my town was weird in this but Wavos (wave-oes? Wavoes? Whatever) didn't go to clubs or do anything else remotely fun. Seeing them dancing is strange to me. Maybe they hung around the local coffeehouses and smoked cloves?
posted by fiercekitten at 6:26 PM on June 25, 2013

I remember when those blonde dudes in Part One beat up The Karate Kid.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 6:31 PM on June 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

fiercekitten: "Wavos (wave-oes? Wavoes? Whatever)"

Wavers.
posted by Bugbread at 6:44 PM on June 25, 2013

Oh, sure the year they make E illegal. I wonder if what proportion of these folks are on E...

Man, this is awesome. I was too young at the time, but... There's an earnestness to this. I mean, I suppose back then I'd be like "these people are trying too hard", but it looks so... plain.

And girl at 2:15? Call, me, okay? Let's hook up for a bit. Unless you're like a neo-Reaganite Tea Partier... But if you're still the good kind of party, let's chat.
posted by symbioid at 6:53 PM on June 25, 2013

But where, where the hell is Bill? Where, where the hell is Bill?
posted by BitterOldPunk at 6:53 PM on June 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

And what's up with this related video with goths dancing to Monster Mash. WTF?
posted by symbioid at 6:53 PM on June 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

One thing about the 80's in America was that every person wanting to get dressed up and go to a club could pretty much do their own thing- the way to get ideas about how to dress were from videos, record covers, and weird imported magazines or badly photo copied 'zines. There were very few places to buy anything interesting, unless you had a Contempo Casuals or NaNa store in your town. People were really free to dress however they wanted and as creatively as they wanted because there wasn't much set in stone. You could be a New Romantic or a Waver or Boy George or Cyndi Lauper or Pat Benatar or a Rockabilly or a Punk, or any combination thereof.


Watching this, I keep thinking, "I know her. He looks familiar!" But no, these are just the doppelgangers of the people I used to see at Club X in San Jose or various other dances held at roller rinks, karate studios, and cabana clubs in the 1980s.

Oh man, me too! I still have some Club X flyers around. Yay for all ages dance nights!
posted by oneirodynia at 6:58 PM on June 25, 2013 [5 favorites]

I used to wish I could have hair like that in the eighties. Now I have hair almost like that every morning when I wake up and I don't want it.
posted by srboisvert at 7:11 PM on June 25, 2013 [4 favorites]

Wow. the 80's as seen in Hollywood looks dated to me now, sometimes to the point where movie characters I once had crushes on might today look visually... ugh. But these people just look beautiful. It's the 80's and they are rocking it. And if it was any other time, they'd be rocking that.
posted by anonymisc at 7:29 PM on June 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

Every one of the guys in this video were once my boyfriend.

My god that's exactly what I thought!
posted by Mike Mongo at 7:45 PM on June 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

I can remember the girls chewing gum when they danced. I don't get out much and am wondering if that was strictly an 80s thing.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:17 PM on June 25, 2013

I currently have hair kind of like the black guy with purple lipstick... And I am a white hetero female.

Something went very wrong somewhere.

(Y'all have had more fun lives than me. By a longshot.)
posted by Michele in California at 8:26 PM on June 25, 2013

I can remember the girls chewing gum when they danced. I don't get out much and am wondering if that was strictly an 80s thing.

Nope. It's an ecstasy thing. You see the same thing at almost any big dance club in any major city any-danged-where.
posted by 1adam12 at 8:42 PM on June 25, 2013

If only there was a time machine to send present day clubbers back to 1987 - the atmosphere and music would be similar, yet the bar would be 1/3 the price.
posted by tservo at 8:49 PM on June 25, 2013

There are people smoking. Indoors. What universe is that?
posted by hot_monster at 8:54 PM on June 25, 2013

this guy had a mishap with the sheep shearer and tried to fix it with superglue.
posted by tservo at 8:54 PM on June 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

hot_monster: "There are people smoking. Indoors. What universe is that?"

I'm betting that it's still fairly common in most of the world. It's certainly common here in Japan.
posted by Bugbread at 8:56 PM on June 25, 2013

There's a small chance I'm in this video somewhere, although I hung out on the second floor of Medusa's, with the giant projected music videos, after I got tired of the dance music on the first floor.
posted by hydrophonic at 9:00 PM on June 25, 2013

1adam12: "Nope. It's an ecstasy thing."

It depends. There was also a definite "girls chewing gum" thing in the 80s, which came, I think, from valley girls (and probably some Molly Ringwald movie). So it's really a case-by-case thing in these videos.
posted by Bugbread at 9:01 PM on June 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

Fuck you all. THESE WERE MY PEOPLE! Hand me my leg-warmers. They're the ones that say Bad Motherfucker on them.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:02 PM on June 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

I was surprised that no one did the Daft Punk/Soul Train mashup thing to this footage, so I did it myself.
posted by elmer benson at 10:08 PM on June 25, 2013 [4 favorites]

Part 8
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:24 AM on June 26, 2013 [1 favorite]

Just don't tar all of us old folks with the same brush. The rest of us were down the street at the Neil Young concert.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 5:50 AM on June 26, 2013 [1 favorite]

.....


There is a very good chance my Mom is in these videos.

I don't know how to respond to that.
posted by The Whelk at 5:51 AM on June 26, 2013 [1 favorite]

Wait ( does maths) okay by 86 she was out of San Diego, whew.
posted by The Whelk at 5:53 AM on June 26, 2013

There is a very good chance my Mom is in these videos.

I don't know how to respond to that.

How about,"Nope, we were already back at my place.";-)
posted by Benny Andajetz at 5:54 AM on June 26, 2013

Ah.... The good old 80s. Getting old sucks.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 8:32 AM on June 26, 2013

There were very few places to buy anything interesting, unless you had a Contempo Casuals or NaNa store in your town. People were really free to dress however they wanted and as creatively as they wanted because there wasn't much set in stone.

Thrift shops and RIT dye were very popular.

My internal timeline was a little shuffled when they played The Cult song in the video #1. It doesn’t seem like that song is almost 30 years old. We are as far in time from this as they were from "Teenager in Love" and "Dream Lover".
posted by bongo_x at 9:22 AM on June 26, 2013 [1 favorite]

Stratus! It was an all ages club, had lots of new wave and new romantic and goth nights. Jane's Addiction played there in 1987. (Live shows happened, but I remember mostly DJs.) Just down the road, the Spring Valley Inn saw the creation of '80s roots rock: The Beat Farmers and Mojo Nixon played there on weekends in the early '80s. Notorious prankster and electronic musician Boyd Rice grew up in the area (I can't remember if it was Spring Valley or Lemon Grove; they were sprawling suburbs mixed in with old citrus farms east of San Diego).

Sometimes the most banal place sprouts interesting countercultures. I lived in San Diego County during the '80s—even played the Spring Valley Inn with the Beat Farmers and Mojo—and used to always think life must be so much wilder and more interesting in the big cities. And while that's true, it's also true that later in life I realized a lot of weird underground things happened in San Diego County. A surprising amount of the interviewees in the RE/Search classic PRANKS did a lot of their best work in and around San Diego.
posted by kenlayne at 11:05 AM on June 26, 2013 [2 favorites]