Up­per Lev­el, Co­conuts, Base, Tsuna­mi, At­tic, Lair, Celebs, Hi-RPM, Space La Nou­ba, Prive, Liv­ing Room, Zen, 51.

These are names that may evoke fond mem­o­ries for many who par­tied in the 1990s and ear­ly 2000s. How­ev­er, by the mid-2010s, most of these places were sim­ply mem­o­ries of an era of nightlife that some feared would nev­er re­turn.

How­ev­er, the op­er­a­tors of Vice Night­club and Lounge are hop­ing to re­store that feel­ing at some lev­el.

At the club’s pri­vate launch on Ju­ly 5, man­ag­er Jairz­in­ho Mo­hammed told the crowd on hand to view the rib­bon cut by Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Faris al Rawi, as proof that the own­ers were ea­ger to dis­prove the claim that the club scene in T&T was dy­ing or dead.

“COVID came and that to­tal­ly crashed the night­club in­dus­try,” said Mo­hammed, “When re­stric­tions were re­laxed, peo­ple more got in­to the what I would say was bar hop­ping or the limes and, in that case, maybe club­bing or that kind of night­club life kind of went down be­cause peo­ple didn’t see the val­ue of go­ing to a night­club.”

This was not true on­ly of T&T, as coun­tries around the world have been re­port­ing mas­sive drops in night club at­ten­dance with most point­ing to the surg­ing cost of liv­ing and the pref­er­ence of Gen Z to in­vest in trav­el and ex­pe­ri­ences over a night out on the town.

How­ev­er, Mo­hammed, and sev­er­al oth­er peo­ple in and around the in­dus­try, said T&T’s nightlife be­gan to tail off long be­fore that.

“Be­cause we didn’t have much night­clubs up to a cer­tain stan­dard as we had pre­vi­ous­ly like Zen and the 51 de­grees and maybe even The Res­i­dence,” said Mo­hammed.

Vince Charles, who was the gen­er­al man­ag­er at Zen at the height of its op­er­a­tions, said it would be dif­fi­cult for the mod­ern clubs to repli­cate the suc­cess lo­cal clubs saw in the ear­ly 2000s.

“I think that the suc­cess of Zen came from the time pe­ri­od that it was. Al­so the peo­ple in­volved, I’ll be hon­est with you, I sup­pose it comes with age that you will nev­er be able to find that feel­ing again. A lot of per­sons who would have par­tied in that era. Al­though we are 15 years old­er, we just seem un­able to find that any­where else,” said Charles.

He felt Zen and oth­er clubs did ben­e­fit from the so­cio-eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion as well, with more peo­ple feel­ing eco­nom­i­cal­ly se­cure and the econ­o­my buoy­ant.

“When it comes back to what caused the de­cline a large part of it would have been the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion. Those days the price of oil was high. A lot of for­eign­ers were in (the coun­try). A lot of peo­ple had dis­pos­able in­come and I think, af­ter time, some­things just run their course,” said Charles.

The rise of boat rides and one-off com­mit­tee par­ties was al­so seen as a po­ten­tial rea­son for the drop-off in night­clubs in the mid-2010s.

“From Wednes­day to Sat­ur­day night, we had clubs but then we had one-off events. But now you have boat rides fre­quent­ly, you have pri­vate events fre­quent­ly. Every­body is on com­mit­tees so there’s a lot of ac­tiv­i­ty gen­er­al­ly in par­ty­ing. When you con­sid­er every­thing, it is re­al­ly a cy­cle,” said the op­er­a­tor of a re­cent­ly opened bar and lounge on Ari­api­ta Av­enue, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied.

How­ev­er, he not­ed his venue had seen suc­cess­ful with its ver­sion of club events, re­in­forc­ing the re­newed de­mand night­club­bing.

But there is an­oth­er fac­tor which im­pact­ed the in­dus­try: Crime.

This, Charles felt was one of the main rea­sons the in­dus­try has strug­gled to pick back up.

“I would say to you 15 years lat­er, crime is ridicu­lous and we’re in a down­turn in the econ­o­my so I can’t see the res­ur­rec­tion hap­pen­ing to that scale,” said Charles.

How­ev­er, the bar op­er­a­tor on the Av­enue felt the crime sit­u­a­tion al­so meant pa­trons were like­ly to favour lo­ca­tions with in­creased se­cu­ri­ty, which some night­clubs can pro­vide.

“The fac­tors that would have in­flu­enced places peo­ple would go out to more now, would be one if it is their peo­ple are go­ing that’s num­ber one, and num­ber two, safe­ty and park­ing,’ said the bar own­er, who ex­plained his team search­es pa­trons on en­try every night.

“We hear it very of­ten now that crime is a ma­jor fac­tor in whether peo­ple even leave their homes and ven­ture any­where right now. That and the peo­ple they’re around with who are in the es­tab­lish­ment, will al­so dic­tate how com­fort­able peo­ple feel and stay in there for any ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of time as well,” he said.

Charles how­ev­er did be­lieve that the in­dus­try could be see­ing a post-COVID surge, as young adults are now dis­cov­er­ing the par­ty scene.

“Think about it if you were 16-17 when COVID hit, and came out when you were 20, you nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced a night­club be­fore. So there are many peo­ple for whom this is the newest thing and the great­est,” said Charles.

That hunger has seen sev­er­al spots pop up such as La Trop­i­cal while some restau­rants and lounges like Avala have be­come pop­u­lar for the club-like at­mos­phere on cer­tain nights.

No­tably, Zen is al­so host­ing a throw­back par­ty next week.

It is this hunger that the Vice team is hop­ing to cap­i­talise on.

Mo­hammed ex­plained the de­mand was clear to see.

“A lot of peo­ple say nightlife is dead, but if you dri­ve on Ari­api­ta Av­enue on a week­end and you see the amount of peo­ple out there yearn­ing to go out. Peo­ple still want to come out.”

Mo­hammed said the own­ers of Vice were di­rect­ly in­flu­enced by their friends who re­turned from Uni­ver­si­ty abroad and re­alised there was no true night­club ex­pe­ri­ence any­more.

“Some of them they came up from school and they want­ed to go to a club, but there was nowhere to go, “ said Mo­hammed, “So they say well, maybe we should try and cap­i­talise on the mar­ket now.”

The re­turn­ing stu­dents, Mo­hammed said, were part of Vice’s ini­tial tar­get mar­ket

“Ini­tial­ly for these first two months, Ju­ly, and Au­gust, we want to on­ly open on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day. That’s the plan and we are see­ing the de­mand. Just a sim­ple thing like when we were do­ing (the pri­vate open­ing) that we in­vit­ed you to. We had over 1,000 and more peo­ple who want­ed to come to the club that night,” said Mo­hammed.

“So we’ve seen the ini­tial an­tic­i­pa­tion of peo­ple want­i­ng to come to a club. They want to dress up. Peo­ple want to dress up again. Ladies want to dress up and come out. Guys want to come out and re­lax and have a good time and some mu­sic and stuff like that. So, we think that we’ve seen that”

The Vice team said they had paid at­ten­tion to the eco­nom­ic con­cerns of the pub­lic and had tried to cu­rate their ser­vices to in­clude the wider pub­lic.

Mo­hammed said, “We try to cater for every­body. Be­cause we know what the econ­o­my is, and we want peo­ple to come out and we know the same peo­ple wouldn’t come out every week.”