Clubgoers will be bidding a fond farewell over the next few nights to the Old Town clubs, as both will hold their final DJ/dance nights before closing after this weekend. Sometime next month, Myst and Suede will taste the wrecking ball when demolition crews tear down the danceterias to make way for the new Scottsdale Beach Club.
Before all that happens, however, the DJs at both joints plan to send thing out with a bang.
Hip-hop and R&B night Dream Fridays will hold "The Last Dance" tonight at Myst featuring an appearance by Arizona Cardinals running back Chris "Beanie" Wells and other "surprise guests." DJs Phlava and Dark Vader will perform and $3 dollar drinks will be served until 11 p.m. with $5 Ciroc and Henny available until midnight if you wanna raise a toast to the soon-to-be shuttered club.It will be followed by the final edition of Seductive Saturdays tomorrow night, which features DJ M2 dropping hip-hop hits and R&B jams all evening. Ladies get in free until midnight and bros pay $5.
Meanwhile, Suede will be hosting the last-ever R3HAB Fridays with resident DJ MCB spinning club bangers and the bar will serve half-priced drinks until 11 p.m. The normal Suede Saturdays party will also stage a farewell edition tomorrow night at the Indian Plaza club.
Michael Johnson, who performs as DJ Phlava, says he'll miss performing at Myst every Friday.
"Obviously I'm sorry to see it go, but I think [the beach club] is gonna bring something new and different to that part of Scottsdale and open up some more opportunities for performers," he says. "There's definitely going to be a good look to that block with Wild Knight and El Hefe already nearby."
Dream Fridays launched at Myst back in 2009 in the midst of the recent economic nightmare that resulted in a major downturn in attendance at Scottsdale nightspots. Despite a (rumored) longstanding wariness amongst Old Town club owners to book nights devoted solely to hip-hop and R&B, many venues began running such weekly events (as well as Latin and 18-and-under dance parties) in order to improve business.
Johnson, a radio disc jockey who's worked at 101.5 Jamz, began spending his Fridays at Myst three years ago when the station ran a Top 40 night.
"They had that House 7340 night for awhile, but as the house music crowd started to diminish, they had to make a shift. And the shift was towards Top 40," Johnson says. "After all those high-end Top 40 parties that took place during the Super Bowl and NBA All-Star Weekend back then, they realized they have a high-end hip-hop night."
Johnson is grateful that the club's management was willing to gamble on a Dream Fridays to bring in the crowds.
"It seems like when a club is tanking in Scottsdale, they do a hip-hop night," Johnson joked. "But Myst was different. It was probably one the first clubs in Old Town to fully embrace hip-hop. It was the first club to say, 'There's no difference in who's coming to our club.'"
The gamble paid off, Johnson says, since Dream Fridays brought in 800 people its first night and was at capacity every week thereafter.
Johnson, who's awaiting word from another Scottsdale nightspot about whether or not they'll host Dream Fridays, hopes that other Old Town clubs will also embrace a more diverse crowd and musical selection, instead of running nights where DJs spin the same overplayed tracks each weekend.
"When I moved out here years ago from Baltimore, everyone partied together. And I think there's going to be a shift back to that and I hope that every club will follow that will go back to that shift. I hope things open up a lot more, clubs got to diversify, whether its musically or the crowds."