Tantra: Hmm, It Sounds Mystical

Until recently, surfer dudes and dudettes had few places to party late on the Westside. Once the gyms close, muscleheads have searched in vain for alternative places to sweat. With all due respect to that most bohemian of SoCal towns, Venice always has been a club wasteland. Sure, there are a couple of restaurant/bars with music as a side dish and a few raucous joints with Led Zeppelin cover bands--but few have attempted to lure the mixed bag of locals from their beachy-keen digs to do something as crazy as . . . dance.

Now there is Tantra Bar, the perfect antidote for an exhausting day of espousing obscure political philosophy along the boardwalk. Located at the western end of the North American continent on Venice’s most famous street, Windward Avenue, the club’s sign still says St. Marks. Years ago, St. Marks was a swell jazz supper club that eventually degenerated into a less-than-swell magnet for Holiday Inn circuit bands and a few name acts.

For the last three months, Steven Beresford and Faruk Singh have operated Tantra Bar as a raging, raving after-hours dance club. Forget about the original entrance on Windward. Walk around the beach side of the building, past the roller-blading Venus mural made famous in Steve Martin’s “L.A. Story.” At the back door, you’ll find an oh-so-American touch to this European-style disco: a doorman who frisks you. God bless America.

“We don’t really need to do that,” says Singh, a quiet man with a British accent who fancies long scarves tied gypsy-style around his head or Austin Powers-style blue velour suits. “We really just frisk people for effect. This is Venice, you know, and there’s that element of danger.” Singh is CEO of Raga Corp., which owns Tantra Bar and the catering company that is associated with it. Singh cut his food and beverage teeth at Oberoi hotels in India and at the Bay View Bar, a music venue overlooking the Bay of Bombay. In Los Angeles, he created theme nights at the Mayan and Shark Club. He also created Dirty Laundry, a thematic nightclub in a San Fernando Valley Laundromat in 1992.

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Now, Valley night stalkers are actually driving to Venice to dance till dawn. The weekly menu of clubs is somewhat sporadic, with live blues, reggae and other music most nights starting at 9:30. You know the routine. Call ahead. But the Friday and Saturday after-hours electronica scene you can count on.

Beresford has English roots. From 1994 until 1997, he was operations director of Enlightened Leisure Co., which owned the trendy Club Eden in the High Wicombe section of London. Before that, Beresford was general manager at Zoots Discotheque, the Avenue and Club UK. Both Beresford and Singh find the European club scene exemplary.

“We’re so close to the airport, people can just fly in and be here within 15 minutes,” Singh says. “We have some regulars who fly down from San Francisco and people have even arrived just off the plane from Europe.”

That may be so, but the Tantra crowd still looks pretty L.A. Rather, beach L.A. Dress is a little more comfortable than Hollywood, although some well-heeled attendees do show up dressed to the nines.

Once you endure the tedium of frisking and deposit any weapons at the door (do lipstick and perfume count?), proceed down a hall and into a medium-sized dance area floor. The mood is ‘60s/’80s. The dark is punctuated with oil lights crawling across the walls, typical disco lights and smoke. Off to the side of the dance floor is a dining area. The food service is sporadic, depending on the kitchen’s heavy load of catering jobs. Tuesdays are usually a good bet for an actual dinner at the club, but again . . . call ahead if you’re counting on food.

The large bar snakes around another extension of the dance floor and ends at the former entrance of the club. Up the curved staircase is the VIP area, with another bar, tables and a lookout above the madness on the dance floor. And madness it is.

From midnight on, the floor is jammed with throbbing, undulating industrial-techno rhythm kids. Gotta dance, gotta dance! Oh, man, this isn’t the Venice of the Beats, the politicos and pit-bull-on-a-stick. This is the Venice of those who dance because they have to, who dance alone to some band playing in their head, who dance until the sun shuts down Tantra Bar.

Then, the faithful empty out onto lonely Windward Avenue, past the vigilant officers in the LAPD squad car who wait for someone to do something wrong.

BE THERE

Tantra Bar, 23 Windward Ave., Venice. 21 and older. All ages after 1:30 a.m. $10. (310) 452-2222.