Bootius Made for Dancing

There’s a potential dance club audience out there, but they’re trapped at that awkward age: too old for Gerardo, too young for Lombardo, and too lively to be doing the sun grope at this week’s Grateful Dead concert. On Saturday night, these people are usually dancing at Bootius Maximus in West Los Angeles.

Bootius Maximus is an “African Caribbean RNB Hi, Hop Funk Dance Club Thang,” according to flyers, but it’s better known as the Westside’s oldest world-beat danceteria.

“It’s for people who’d rather dance than put up with attitude,” says Jim Kotos, one of the founders. “It’s for people who don’t want to put on a gown to go down to Vertigo.”

World beat is an elastic term (just ask your favorite record executive to describe it) that encompasses a lot of pop native sounds, propped up with a user-friendly beat. It’s been on the American pop charts courtesy of Paul Simon’s “Graceland” and David Byrne’s “Rei Momo,” in which the Talking Head tried on Ricky Ricardo’s straw hat for size. In short, it’s the perfect club fodder: It’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it.

At Bootius, deejay Jimmy Hori (who has done stints at both KPFK and KCRW, two college radio stations that embrace world beat) is the man spinning all that accessible exotica. Kotos, Hori, and friends spend their vacations traveling around the United States and the world, searching out new sounds for the delectation of their dancers. Hori breaks up the mix with a little James Brown, a lot of Aretha Franklin, and the evergreen Deee-Lite, featuring that patron saint of East Village dance floors, Lady Miss Kier.

Bootius began as a six-week experiment in the summer of ’89 at Santa Monica’s Olympia Club, a cheerfully gaudy bar on a stretch of Olympic Boulevard catering to Mexican-American hangouts. The experiment was an instant success, drawing crowds of hundreds to the tiny club every Saturday night. When it closed at the Olympia last February, Bootius was homeless until it reopened on Pico Boulevard at Radio (formerly Club 88).

The atmosphere at Radio is more functional-industrial than Tijuana-authentic. (Most of the fans surveyed preferred the old location.) The music, however, is still the same, and the air conditioning is better, though the crowds are smaller.

Who heeds the call of Bootius?

“This is a good place to bring a bunch of friends and take over the joint,” said one woman. Indeed, the crowd at Bootius is full of couples and groups, rather than singles (although there’s some low-key guy-girl cruising near the bar area). But the emphasis is on dancing; often, there are more people on the dance floor than there are resting in the rest of the club.

Kotos estimates Bootius’ audience to be in the 21-45 age range, but most of the patrons seem to be in their 30s, the people who welcomed Paul Simon and David Byrne’s forays into Americanized world beat, Kotos counts among the club’s fans the former mayor of Santa Monica, Dennis Zane.

African or Caribbean-themed outfits are scarce to nonexistent. Bootius patrons prefer to come-as-they-are rather than dress-to-be-seen. T-shirts, jeans, and loose dresses are preferred, along with comfortable dancing shoes. The celebrity factor is nearly nil, which is just the way Bootius fans like it.

Name: Bootius Maximus, at Radio.

Where: At Radio, 11784 Pico Blvd., West Los Angeles (213) 392-7874.

When: Saturdays, 9 p.m. to 2 a.m.

Doormen: Ultra-low-key, Freeloaders beware: There is no “list.”

Prices: Admission, $5. Domestic beer, $4. Club soda, $3.