Burning Rubber on the Sunset Strip

The Key Club will be singing a new tune beginning July 24, when the Sunset Strip venue gets a new lease on life by burning some weekly “rubber.” Rubber, which is already a successful dance club in Orange County, makes its L.A. debut at the erstwhile Billboard Live on that Friday, and the hot promotions team of John Huntington and his partner Damian Sanders, a professional snowboarder, have big plans for opening night.

Calling all connoisseurs of light fetish, Rubber specializes in creating a “super sexual circus” for its guests, combining a decor that offers a modern-day interpretation of Gothic orgies of yore, with columns adorned with black roses lighted by video screens rotating early fetish films.

The music at Rubber is house, and the usual suspects are expected on the dance floor opening night, i.e., L.A.’s top exotic dancers, adult video actresses and Dennis Rodman, naturally.

The same promoters, known as Spiritworld Productions, have also nailed a date for their annual “Pimp ‘N’ Ho” costume party, which is scheduled to take place at the mid-Wilshire area Park Plaza Hotel on Aug. 22 and should offer visual stimulation of its own. . . .

Speaking of costume parties, the Fang Club at LunaPark on Sundays is planning its second annual Victorian Masquerade Ball for July 26, and for those who plan to attend the West Hollywood nightclub, keep in mind that masks are required until midnight. . . .

Thousands of folks were masked in some form or other at the Bauhaus reunion at the Palladium over the weekend. Widows, vampires, Goths, spooks, punks, waifs and an overall array of misfits and maladjusted youths paid homage to these forerunners of the Gothic movement (although a surprising number of fans could only name one of the group’s songs, the Bauhaus hit “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” which the band wisely saved for the end, making for a rousing encore). . . .

Those planning to attend the Humpers show at Bollocks on July 24 should get in line early because the small club in industrial downtown is likely to sell out early.