Beirut by Night
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Photography_Tanya Traboulsi It’s nearly 3 o’clock on a Friday morning and one of Beirut’s favourite nightclubs is just beginning to fill up. Swivelling spotlights arc through the darkness, sweeping the kidney-shaped interior and its slender, cathedral-like windows. The music, which until now has been Western house, switches abruptly to Arabic trance as a singer emerges on a small balcony in readiness to perform. Meanwhile, the men, dressed in black suits and partially unbuttoned shirts, exchange cool glances and puff on Cuban cigars. The women simply look good, with long, salon-styled locks and dressed in couture tops, snug-fit jeans and glass heels. Outside the building, the German sports cars have been carefully valet parked, facing outwards from the entrance as if on display. This is Casino, one of many upmarket after-hours spots that pulsates each weekend night until rays of sun rise from behind the mountains and spread across the Lebanese capital.
Fresh off a plane from Kuwait, Ali, 45, cannot contain his exuberance. “I like Lebanon too much!” he exclaims. Karim, 23, a PR rep, is more cautious in his enthusiasm: “Casino’s the only place that’s professional when it comes to Arabic music,” he says.
But a couple of months back, the places to be seen were the rooftop lounges of White and Skybar. Even Lebanon’s summer struggle with militant violence couldn’t dull their popularity; so much so, the only way to gain entry, reportedly, was to be in possession of a secret password. Rumour also had it that tables – and even bar stools – at Skybar had to be reserved at least one month in advance.
“Gemayze has introduced a new kind of nightlife culture,” says Dragonfly’s Hisham Hussein, leaning over a vintage marble top counter. Antique trinkets adorn the interior, while a row of old, wooden theatre seats lines one of the tables. At nearby Godot, French jazz plays and the walls are covered with chalkboard menus listing paninis, salads and baguettes; waiters sport black ties and white jackets.
“It’s a different type of people,” he says, of the super-clubs’ clientele. “They are there for the rich – the really rich.” Not that Peñas is strictly for the humble: on entering, we are warned that photography is strictly forbidden because of the presence of “political people”.
Afterwards, out in the car park, Cherifa, 40, reflects on her night: “Clubs that play Western music are definitely popular,” she says, “but they’ve got to play Arabic to really get the party started.” Her mascara-rich eyes light up: “That’s when it gets really wala’ani.” (wala’ani = “set on fire”) |
The Lebanese capital’s club scene changes at pace. This week’s hottest spot is Gemayze, but next week, says Habib Battah, who knows? 
Stood across from a bullet-riddled building, abandoned for decades, Casino is part of the Rue Monot district, an old residential neighbourhood that has evolved into a hotbed of nightlife over the past 10 years. It straddles the edge of Beirut’s old “Green Line”, which separated rival militias during the unrelenting battles of the 15-year-long civil war. Even if the current peace seems a little precarious these days, there are no worries inside Casino: no one is thinking about politics as brains are pummelled by a deep bassline that pumps shock-waves from head to toe.
In Beirut, clubs open and then go out of fashion faster that last season’s Louis Vuitton. Right now, among the cognoscenti, Friday and Saturday are reserved for Crystal, a cavernous Rue Monot club, the impenetrable door policy of which resembles that of New York’s fabled Studio 54 in its heyday.
With the advent of colder weather, the scene has moved indoors. Just down the road from Casino is Element, easily identifiable by the almost obligatory row of Porches lined up outside the front. The club is housed in an ultramodern structure that looks like a giant, wooden shoebox dropped onto a field of sharply trimmed grass. Inside, the avant-garde theme continues with massive rectangular windows and towering, tubular light fixtures. But Element is two years old and that makes it a dinosaur by Beirut standards. Kalim, 22, seems almost embarrassed to be there. “There’s no place else to go,” he says with a shrug.
The traffic jams that only begin forming at 10.30pm in the neighbourhood of Gemayze suggest otherwise. This is a part of town that has exploded over the past year, with dozens of new restaurants, live music venues and all-purpose hang-outs chipping away at the traditional dominance of Rue Monot. Unlike the grandiose hangar-like outlets of Crystal, Casino and others, Gemayze’s strongest selling point is character, not size. Its quaint, cubby-hole establishments offer only a handful of tables, with many occupying buffed-up colonial-era buildings, where the decorative attractions come in the shape of good old carved stone and tile work.
Latin America comes alive on the Gemayze strip at Joe Peñas, an appealingly cosy haunt fashioned from a refurbished home and courtyard. Its mix of salsa music, umbrella-shadowed tables and indolently rotating ceiling fans is more Havana than Hamra. Manager Pommel Braidy, a Lebanese of Irish linage, defines the difference between the apparent charm of Gemayze and some of the more boisterous, big clubs.
Around midnight, we find ourselves at Snatch, one of Gemayze’s newest and most unconventional outlets. Its crimson-painted walls and spacious stage regularly play host to home-grown music acts, who play everything from blues to hip hop. “This is the best sound I’ve heard in Beirut,” says Michel, 25, part of the audience for the night’s act, a fiftysomething guitarist crooning into a microphone.