No Dealing Just Wheeling

You don’t party in Vegas? Why not? It’s a must of SoCal culture, drawing hordes from the Valley to the Baja border.

Why stay home--where, especially in Orange County, most dance clubs close way too early--when you can easily hit half a dozen after-hours destinations in a weekend, then drive home refreshed after spending Sunday poolside?

With its strip bars and water slides, Las Vegas tries to be all things to all spenders. Variety marks the town’s dance clubs too.

The following roundup of clubs, reflecting a recent weekend visit, swings from mainstream to alternative:

The Drink

My fave, this two-story club mixes Cal-adobe, gothic, industrial, flower power, Deco and tribal looks into a delicious concoction filling up six environments and a restaurant.

Among the highlights: a big lounge with slouchy couches, a VIP enclave with an ultra-cool video casting fish figures onto a brick wall, and chunks of jagged concrete and exposed guy wire for a post-quake touch.

The venue’s thriving heart--the dance floor--looks like the dim interior of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. Look up and see bodies with beers in hand leaning over balconies draped with faux wisteria.

The deejay’s station inhabits an overhead aerie, and from it hums a high-energy blend of oldies and newer goodies: Annie Lennox, the Artist, Quad City DJs, Daft Punk. (Keoki regularly spins; visitors include Mark Lewis, also from L.A.)

The full-menu eatery features a Vegas-appropriate, decadent brownie a la mode ($3.50).

But what makes this club great, besides the imaginative visuals and fun flower-power logo, is the main room. Basically an atrium, the sound isn’t diffused, thereby wrapping dancers in a thumping beat-cocoon.

* The Drink, 200 E. Harmon Ave., Las Vegas; (702) 796-5519. Tuesday, 10 p.m.-5 a.m.; Wednesday, 9 p.m.-5 a.m.; Thursday, 8 p.m.-5 a.m.; Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m. to at least 5 a.m. Cover: $5-$10.

Club Rio

The progenitor of the current rash of casino-hotel dance clubs holds court in one cavernous room inside the Mardi Gras-themed Rio Suite Hotel & Casino, which is a bit off the Strip, but not without its glitz.

CEO Anthony Marnell II opened this splashy, $8-million danceteria in 1994. “There needed to be a place,” Marnell said, “where people, especially women, could come and dance and feel safe. A place that had some rules.”

Well said.

The venue has an amusing video effect. Roving cameras project clubbers onto huge screens along the room’s outer walls.

The Rio’s Voodoo Lounge bar may be a better, er, bet, than the mainstream club. A glass elevator takes you to the 51st floor for a jaw-dropping view and drinks such as the Lucky Mojo (Stoli, strawberries and banana liqueur in a martini glass, $6.75) and Black Death (a $6 shooter of Jagermeister, vodka and soda). There’s live jazz and food service, and the hotel has several other pricey eateries.

* Club Rio at the Rio Suite Hotel and Casino, 3700 W. Flamingo Road, Las Vegas; (702) 252-7777. Wednesday-Saturday, 10:30 p.m.-3 a.m. Cover: $10 for men, resident Vegas women free. Dress code: collared shirts or jackets for the men; no recreational or tennis shoes; nice jeans only.

The Orbit Lounge at Peter Morton’s Hard Rock Hotel

If you haven’t heard, the Hard Rock Cafe family gave birth to a Vegas hotel-casino in 1995, which recently sired the after-hours Orbit Lounge.

Like the cafes, the hotel (which is owned separately) is a frenetic museum trip, festooned with super rockers’ memorabilia (in one corner, the Temptations’ orange blazers; in another, Alice Cooper’s codpiece).

Orbit Lounge takes over the hotel’s concert venue, the Joint. There’s a stage, a dance floor-mosh pit, seating and a bar toward the back. Picture Fullerton’s rangy Club 369, only tidier, bigger and the patrons better behaved.

A Disneyfied rap duo with pristine running shoes cued the crowd to shout-along lyrics that, OK, the happiest place on the planet probably would have censored. Patrons lunged for giveaway cassettes the Dirty Dawgs hurled while performing their gangsta scamper-and-duck dance.

Another trippy video effect evokes “Star Trek,” with two trampoline-like screens hovering above.

Another plus: Mr. Lucky’s restaurant, also off the hotel’s lobby. The lights are kept hangover-low, prices are reasonable, breakfast is always served and the place never closes. It has a fine view of the casino’s bleeping video slot machines, vested dealers and robotic drink servers intoning “Cocktails” even as the desert sun burns at dawn.

* Orbit Lounge at Peter Morton’s Hard Rock Hotel, 4455 Paradise Road, Las Vegas; (702) 693-5000. Friday and Saturday, 12:30 a.m.-4 a.m. Cover: $5 for men, women free.

Ra at Luxor Las Vegas

The taxi driver had it right: This is a club sans personality. Slick marble floors and Hollywood bastardization may explain the problem, although an older, Newport Beachy crowd with ample ‘tude doesn’t help.

Ra does have apocalyptic lasers, undulating go-gos in fishnets and sequined bras, and a wall-to-wall throng that keeps the place pounding.

The hotel’s Egyptian theme goes back to the future in the club’s long and narrow main room, which looks like a sci-fi flick space station with mechanistic designs. Standing guard are tall, sphinx-like figures (the club is named after the ancient sun god Ra) and busty statues that could be Bloomingdale’s mannequins.

The music jams, a nonstop assault of house sounds spiked with what sounded like salsa-techno and other tasties.

And the video screens? Conventional, although the club gets points (demerits?) for creative commercialism: Some screens hype the club’s swing nights, a new phenom that the Hard Rock Hotel has begun to offer poolside. Ra also hosts live acts, such as Run-DMC.

* Ra at Luxor Las Vegas, 3900 S. Las Vegas Blvd.; (702) 262-4444. Wednesday-Saturday, 10 p.m.-6 a.m. Cover: $10 for men, Vegas women free, $5 for out-of-town women.

Utopia

This is the Strip’s alternative coven, sating a younger set with electronic, techno and trance sounds rotated by Vegas’ star underground deejay Robert O’Leysyck and spinners from London, L.A. and elsewhere.

Opened two years ago, the two-story structure is tucked into the rear of a strip center. It’s refreshingly scruffier than any of the hotel-casinos. Sure, there’s a glassed-off VIP room with fake masterpieces, but beanbag chairs and Day-Glo wall scribblings prevail.

Vibrating acoustics, ethnic variety and free-form dressing rule, too.

Braided pigtails, pierced body parts and elephant bell bottoms flop along with the happy clubbers who blow whistles like all good ravers.

Two caveats: Candy bars are the only nourishment available (although 24-hour fast-food huts are steps away), and Nevada hasn’t banned smoking in bars, so be prepared to leave smelly.

* Club Utopia, 3765 S. Las Vegas Blvd., Las Vegas; (702) 740-4646. Wednesday-Sunday, 10 p.m. ‘til morning, usually between 5 and 9 a.m. Cover: $10-$15.

The Beach

Wear ripped jeans to Sin City’s primo kick-back bar, a keg-head’s heaven where white cocktail napkins carpet the floor, everybody dances with everybody, and friendly ‘tenders clang the bell for big tips.

Surfboards, fake palms, beer signs, pool tables and the smell of alcohol sum up this Bacchanalia (it’s like Geckos in Huntington Beach, but more decadent). It boasts an Eastern Seaboard exterior and beer-hawking beauties in thongs within.

This atrium has a raised dance platform overlooking the busy bar that gives attention-deprived dancers the limelight and a great bird’s-eye view.

In the second-floor sports bar--love that red-checked carpet--there are big-screen TVs and video poker games that come with instruction: “Insert bills, $1 to $100, face up.”

Hey, if you manage to leave any of these clubs face up, you win.

* The Beach, 365 Convention Center Drive, Las Vegas; (702) 731-1925. Seven days a week, 24 hours a day, dancing beginning at 10 p.m. Cover: $5-$10, excluding special events such as the “Heat Wave” lounge-style dance show for $19.95.

Others to check out: the Nightclub at the Hilton, Studio 54, Motown Cafe.