GO TO: 2099
At Club Phobia, the only thing left to feel is fear itself.
When Phobia opened last year, this club-hopping reporter was, like so many of you, desperate for something different. LA's contentment glut had come as close as anything ever does in this town to reaching crisis proportions. People were feeling good about themselves - happier, healthier - but that came with a price: sameness sickness. The recently announced two-hour workweek set off spontaneous celebrations, but the antigrav conga dancing, sky orgies, and other ho-hum celebrations were scarcely under way when people started to ask a vexing question: Is perfect really all there is?
This streak of introspection dove-tailed with a fad for all things late-20th century. Clubland's cheeky Stay-Press Kids poured their souls into the 1970s, a weirdly distorted mirror of our own time. Enervated by the Vietnam War Incident and a corrupt presidency, Americans found release in the so-called "disco excitement," a mass phenomenon marked by garish wardrobes, spastic dance steps, and a counterintuitive truth: People "partied hard" (note the curious sense inversion - why not, as we would say, "partied soft"?) precisely because they were unhappy. Celebration was their way of releasing tension.
Phobia is about experiencing that tension again: living it, loving it, "feeling the pain" of uncertainty and unhappiness. It's a high-speed, high-flash nostalgia trip, and for the many of you who haven't yet made it past Phobia's hulking SecurityBots - a brilliant evocation of an era when, no kidding, physical size determined many social hierarchies - be forewarned: Things get pretty freaky inside these walls.
The fun starts quickly. Entry shafts powered by hydraulic pumps thrust guests from the LA Maglev hub straight up to Phobia's greeting atrium, where DNA-recognition sensors sniff souls to eject "undesirables." Meanwhile, overhead scanners debit each patron's bank account $10,000 or the foreign-currency equivalent. (This nominal cover charge includes all the smart snacks, mood-altering agents, and impairment-free mist libations you can handle.)
To begin their anxiety voyage, guests must check personal communication devices - even ear-canal phones - and submit to a back-of-the-neck installation of Phobia's transparent ID patch/panic button. (You will be billed for each registered unpleasantness. Careful! Like that other retro indulgence, sushi bars, things can add up.) Moments later, you're sucked into express tubes that descend from the ceiling. Then you're plopped, unsteady and unready, into the question-mark-shaped Blah Blah Room, a moody, anarchistic jumble of sloped concrete floors, jagged beams, laser sconces, lush velvet drapes, musty Victorian furniture, and antiquated folkways.
Here, tongue-tied "singles" can confront their inexplicable fear of face-to-face conversation, re-creating the eerie experience of "bargaining for sex." Slouching to and fro are grumpy Love Droids, complete with biofeedback sensors hooked to a voicebox that monitors and mocks your posture, handshake firmness, palm sweat, patter quality, and breath freshness. It's not all a rough ride, though: Sensual treats are served throughout the Dance Cavern - including total-immersion Stimuline fondue, which bathes bodies in warmth.
You'll need the nourishment: Phobia's not-to-be-missed Warrens of Worry lie ahead. Everything is state-of-the-art: mirrored-reality projections, floating holograms, aroma sprinklers, and versatile performances by Phobia's crack Nightmare Troupe. The most notorious simulations - Earth Quake, Sexual Dysfunction, Common Cold, H&R Block - are usually jammed, so we'd suggest piling your plate with more esoteric tensions. On a recent visit, this club hopper sampled the Proctology Exam (ouch!), the Uglorium (an expandable polymer gel is injected into your face to replicate unattractiveness), and Hard Time (oxygen deprivation induces a brief narcoleptic episode, long enough for the Nightmare Troupe to hide your bank chip and ID patch; you awake wearing the orange garb of a typical 1977 "inmate").
One quibble: The new Physical Ed room, apparently an evocation of a middle school "gym class" circa 1972. In this one, you're forced to change clothes in front of two dozen other "classmates" and a loud, deranged adult wearing shorts and waving a paddle. Then you hurl large, hard rubber balls at each other for half an hour, undress again, and take a shower while the adult watches, blows a whistle, and shrieks insanely about "athlete's foot."
C'mon, guys. Fun is fun and weird is weird, but even back in the bad ol' days, there would've been a law.
PLUS
