On a bright Friday evening last month, the sun shone through gaps in the blackout curtains at what used to be the Dancin’ Bare on North Interstate Avenue. In February, the former strip club began serving a different clientele. Under new ownership, it reopened as the city’s first dedicated all-ages music venue in over a decade. Now, three or four nights a week, lines of eclectically attired young people stretch into its Kenton parking lot, waiting for shows in the shadow of that big Paul Bunyan statue.
Regulars attest that The Off Beat, as the new club is called, is a total transformation, even if remnants of the venue’s past life are there if you know where to look; signs featuring sexy silhouettes remain on the front door and outside the building.
The 400-capacity club is the long-awaited venue of Friends of Noise, a nonprofit that since 2016 has staged DIY all-ages concerts around the city.
“There are a lot of teenagers who need access to a venue like this that’s not going to charge them $1,000 a night,” says FoN executive director Andre Middleton. For years, Middleton ran the organization more or less out of his Honda Element, putting on concerts wherever he could…