BEST PLACE TO SEE SOMEONE BREAK UP

It never fails. You're at Club Freedom, and your girlfriend has exceeded her drink limit and excuses herself to throw up. You get worried about her and stand by the ladies' room. Inevitably, you'll find a girl crying in her cell phone trying to secure a ride home after a dance floor argument with a brutish boyfriend -- Victor, Tommy and Bennie seem to be names the caddish set prefer these days. Or you'll find two girls in spangly dresses with matching boobs, one consoling the other that the guy she just broke up with the month before is dancing with someone else. It's like a Dr. Philaudition. From our eavesdropping, we found one Eve complaining about her soon-to-be ex for staring at the DJ's crate of vinyl instead of marveling how wonderful she looked. Admittedly, the view from the ladies' room is terribly one-sided, but so are most breakups, and, let's face it, no one's venting anything but bravado at the men's room.

But why break up at Freedom? Maybe because its very name suggests to people it's a great place for declaring independence, whether it's from Tempe's predictable music scene or from the predictable mate they came to hear it with. Maybe it's the club's proximity to ASU andthe Holiday Inn that makes for a volatile mix of patrons. The indoor fireworks seem especially incendiary on the club's hottest night, Kind Fridays, which winds from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m., leaving plenty of time for those who haven't quite found the time to call it quits in public.