Going Underground

Underground party promoters Daven (The Mad Hatter) and Tef have taken a gamble with their opening last month of Aerial, an underground-style nightclub.

Aerial is part of a Southern California trend: clubs with an underground feel popping up at mainstream venues.

But what makes this dance-till-dawn club unique is its size (it is held in the 4,000-capacity Hollywood Palladium) and its lofty goals--to bring the ambience of the underground to a mainstream Saturday-night crowd and attract big-name dance/music acts.

While other underground-style clubs have been operated at mainstream venues on off-nights, Aerial promoters go head to head on Saturdays with roving underground parties and big mainstream clubs, including the juvenile Florentine Gardens and the yuppified Mayan.

They’re doing it by promoting Aerial on radio and by offering admission tickets through Ticketmaster. Aerial, says Daven, aspires to be the West Coast equivalent of New York’s hip and huge Limelight nightclub.

They also call the club “a bird’s-eye view of the future.” Indeed, Aerial is unquestionably on the edge. Under the roof Saturday nights are the area’s eminent deejays, Doc Martin, Barry Weaver and Chris Flores, spinning techno music--a danceable hybrid of techno-pop and house.

The club also features dance music artists, freaky performance art, an Air-Jump ride, lasers and funky film loops that bounce off the Palladium’s walls.

Clubgoer Nicky Ramirez, 18, described the scene in brief terms.

The club?

“Fun.”

The crowd?

“Wild.”

The fashion?

“The latest.”

On a recent Saturday, with Doc Martin out on another gig, Weaver and Flores synchronized a smooth, non-threatening string of jams plucked from their collection of about 1,000 12-inch singles. Then, during the first hours of the morning, house artists Jomanda and Adeva energized the young crowd of about 2,000 with their house jams and synchronized dancing.

Daven and Tef hope to line up name acts in the next few months. (Daven said the club had scheduled prominent acts for its first few nights, but that he had trouble with a booking agent and had to announce that artists such as Boy George would not show.)

The big names, promoters say, might help the club mix the gum-chewing mainstream crowds with the cigarette-smoking underground crowds. But the risk is that the club’s hyper dance music and unusual surroundings could alienate the mainstream. Or the threat of hordes of pony-tailed, mini-skirted teen-agers could alienate the underground.

While Daven, Tef and another unnamed partner have yet to make money from Aerial, the question, as local underground magazine Censured put it, is, “Could Daven and Tef pull this off every Saturday?”

“Who knows if the time was right,” the 25-year-old Daven said. “Years from now, people might say, ‘Daven’s club was the first one.’ ”

When and Where: Saturday nights, from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., at the Hollywood Palladium, 6215 Sunset Blvd.

Cover: $15 at the door or through Ticketmaster, (213) 480-3232. The minimum age for admittance is 18 with identification; 21 with identification for drinking.

Door Policy: The weapons check is as close as you can get to a strip search with your clothes still on.

Food and Drink: A caterer laid out hot dogs for $2 and fruit sticks for $1. A draft beer is $3, a mixed drink $3.75.

Air-Jump Rules: “No flips, somersaults or cartwheels. . . . If you disobey these rules, your ride will be cut short and do not bother to return.”

For More Info: The Aerial hot line is (213) 962-7790.