Burning Up the Dance Floor at Fire House

Los Angeles club veterans April LaRue, Victor Vargas and Josh Wells have created the Fire House, a West Hollywood nightclub that’s already adding zip to the dance club scene. The predominantly gay club has been packed every night during the week it’s been open.

The owners, who have stakes in such various clubs as the Opium Den and the Men’s Room, gutted a former retail outlet and created a fiery, hell-like motif, complete with torches flanking the entrance and blood-red walls.

What sets the club apart from other area venues is its dedication to hard-core dance music seven nights a week. Rather than offer typical one-off dance club, the Fire House has created a weeklong schedule for some serious cavorting. And it’s got the dance floor to do it. At the end of a long entryway bar, stairs lead down to the brick-walled dance area, whose high ceilings and smoky mystique conjure memories of the underground warehouse spaces of yore.

On the club’s first Friday night, deejay Tony Powell, already renowned on the club circuit for the hard-edged house music cocktail he performed each Thursday at the Men’s Room (which has now relocated on the same night to the Fire House), kept extremely high-energy dance music pumping all night.

The Fire House also recruited one of L.A.’s other top house-music deejays, Victor Rodriguez, who performs classic house dance music on Mondays and mixes ‘70s and ‘80s dance music with salsa on Wednesdays. Powell returns on Saturdays to spin East Coast garage music and underground dance music, and the week concludes with a Sunday “tea dance” that begins at 5 p.m. and continues till 9:45 p.m., when ladies’ night kicks off.

* The Fire House, 696 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood. 21 and over, cover varies. (310) 289-1353.

Club Buzz: The ultra-alternative, S&M-themed; dance club Sin-A-Matic is scheduled to celebrate its five-year anniversary at Club 7969 in West Hollywood on Oct. 12 with a live show by My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult. Its survival that long in L.A.’s competitive dance club market proves the city’s fetish crowd is a dedicated bunch.

* Sin-A-Matic at Club 7969, (213) 654-0280 or (213) 654-0281.