Nightlife Left in the Last Century
LA’s New Downtown Megaclub Tatou is Just Another Century Club, Initially

Back in the last century, before there was Paris and Lindsay, before there was Hyde or Les Deux, TMZ or Perez, SPE or even this author lalate.com, nightlife in Los Angeles was a whole different ballgame. It generally wasn’t VIP as we know it today but general admission. If you were young, hot, and had over $12 dollar to spend on parking alone, you’d go to the Century Club located in Century City. LA didn’t have any larger scale clubs like the Highlands, Garden of Eden, or Ivar (now Fascade); they hadn’t been built. Exclusivity in nightlife was not the core of the LA latenight scene. So in earlier years Century Club was wonderful. Hot people, amazing music, superb dining (especially the fish) that would get you a balcony table before the nightlife began. Killer music of all genres. That was then.

In later years, as exclusivity rose in nightlife, Century and its image went south. Century got left in the last century, as the industry moved to upscale nightlife and anyone in the know – or at least trying to be - went to exclusive, not general admission, venues across the Southland. If you were with friends (and celebs) at White Lotus or then Spider Club or then Shelter or then Les Deux, asking those friends to join you at Century Club the next night would get an “eeew” response.

Century Club is gone. So its owner has taken the leap to revitalize a similarly large space, the expansive Vertigo turned Prince’s Glam Slam turned abandoned nightclub, and enter the nightlife arena again, now in Downtown. It’s called Tatou and it just opened off the 3rd freeway in downtown Los Angeles. Where is that? Don’t worry, you shouldn’t go your night off from Area or Sugar, because, at least on Saturdays, yep, it’s “eeew” all over.

Tatou which could be an amazing spot, and still can, is a starting on this night as mistake, a reinvention of everything that was wrong with Century Club now brought Downtown. We went last Saturday to Tatou. Correction, we got to the venue, saw what we saw outside, and left. The crowd was awful. The line operation felt like a rave. The promotional flyer for the night, which had no promotions, was worse than a highschool project. The building is hardly repainted, if at all, and upon arrival it exudes no vestige of anything upscale. The parking lot is located off a dead-end road next to the freeway and is hardly paved. Reinventing, or relocating, Century as Tatou may do well for a downtown crowd, but not for upscale clubgoers willing to fight the miserable freeway traffic to get to the spot. At least for this night, Tatou is a venue worth skipping.

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