Night Owl: Women over 45 can shake their hips in Oakland

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, May 14, 2009 | by Angela Woodall

The hunt isn't completely over for the perfect shake-your-hips kind of place where ladies over the age of 45 can find drinks, danceable music and a mature black environment, but at least we now know there are options.

Suggestions hit my e-mail inbox last week after I described the plight of Toni Alexander, 59, and several of her girlfriends searching in vain for a place for flirting and fun. I usually don't repeat topics week after week, but this was worth following up. And don't think it doesn't affect you. Just wait until you get older and find places for the new gray-haired generation have dried up.

"Angela, this is my first time 'speaking out,'"‰" Howard Rew wrote. He said he felt compelled because he was expecting some direction or information in last week's column about the few clubs and bars in Oakland that offer exactly what the women sought.

"I can't begin to share with you the magnitude of my disappointment when there was no mention of recently opened Celestine's," he wrote.

He is referring to the dinner club whose sign in delicate cursive writing -- Celestine's Fine Dining and Entertainment -- can be seen for a good quarter-mile from the northbound direction of Interstate 880.

Celestine's opened in August across the street from the East Oakland Department of Motor Vehicles office on Edes Avenue (the club's exact address is 8475 Edes Ave.). The ranch-style building, painted a warm green on the outside and lilac inside, used to be the Hungry Hunter. It sits among the cluster of hotels on the periphery of the airport and the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.

The ladies would have had a chance at finding what they were looking for on the dark-wood dance floor just to the right of the marble-top bar. The floor fills up on weekends, bartender Connii Brown said. Happy hour is a good bet for finding a mature man with whom to drink and dance, Brown said, as is the first Thursday of every month because music follows the comedy night.

I'm thinking "KickBack Friday's -- For the Mature 21 & Up. Ladies free till 10 p.m." also would do the trick.

Celestine's attracts a 25-and-over crowd most days, said Kermuie McGee, a regular customer who made me promise to praise Brown for her personality and bartending skills. (She had prepared the apple martini he was sipping with his bountiful portion of salmon and mashed potatoes.)

McGee said the club has a "laid-back, jazzy KBLX feel," at least Wednesdays, when he usually stops by on his way home. "Weekends get a little more hip-hop," he added.

I didn't mention the club last week because I didn't know there was dancing and because I was addressing the downtown scene, where black-owned clubs seem to be drying up.

"Isn't it incredible, the turn Oakland has taken since the demise of Wine and Roses, Geoffrey's and Dock of the Bay?" Alexander wrote later in an e-mail. "Not to mention the On Broadway, where you could boogie to Tower of Power (no cover! no minimum!) 'til the lights came on.

"But later for nostalgia," she added. "I'd better check things out while I can still work a size two spandex and stiletto pumps."

She might want to follow Rew's advice and check out what he called "one of the hottest clubs in Oakland for the mature woman to come dance and flirt, "... with some of the best drinks in town." That would be the Lakeside Lounge at 338 E. 18th St. (the old New Yorker club).

If a woman is looking for a mature black man to flirt with, she will hit the jackpot there. You could say the club specializes in an over-30 scene. Dancing is on the tile dance floor mostly on weekends, when a DJ usually spins oldies but goodies. But on Sundays, live blues bands take the stage.

"Then you really get the Oakland crowd," Julian Heard, the manager, assured me.

Another suggestion came all the way from Paris. An expat recommended Pican at Broadway and Grand Avenue, which does not have dancing but definitely caters to a mixed crowd.

"Pican has gotten rave reviews and seems perfectly safe for ladies of my stature," Alexander wrote in an e-mail. "Think I'll make it number one on my freestyle sojourn."

The irony in all this, readers pointed out, is that the rock-and- roll generation of the late '60s and '70s -- the people who brought you free love, birth control, Jimi Hendrix, ethnic studies and women's liberation -- are finding that their entertainment options are channeled into the kind of things their parents did. At least their parents had places to dance.

I have to admit, this topic made me feel my age. It's only a matter of time until I will be scorned on the parquet dance floors of places like the Ruby Room and Oasis. So I decided to take waltzing lessons.

Reach Angela Woodall at 510-208-6413 or awoodall@bayareanewsgroup.com.