This weekend at the urge of many friends I decided to check out Sway, a long-established lounge on Spring street between Greenwich and Hudson in an effort to extend my nightlife knowledge beyond hardcore clubs. My consensus: Sway is definitely a breath of fresh air if you’re usually frequenting places like Pacha and Pink Elephant.

My experience at clubs has been that it’s primarily about who you know. You get in through pre-established contacts, congregate at a table with pre-established contacts, and assume any stranger who talks to you is a freak without their own crowd. Bars however seem to work in the reverse, it’s all about who you don’t know. Since there’s no bottle service, people are less likely to split off into table groups, creating a social free-for-all. So if you’re interested in meeting someone outside your extended friends’ network, Sway might be the kind of place you’d want to hit up on a weekend.

CitySearch wrote, “This is a huge meat market: the volume of numbers exchanged exceeds the hefty bank accounts of most of the male patrons.” This is utterly true. While no one’s wearing the slut tops you see at nightclubs, they might as well be. Everyone’s mentally undressing each other. This didn’t bother me since the first time in ages I found myself actually meeting people I might want to talk to at bars. The entire establishment was remarkably sleaze free with zero B&T. It looked like a frat house of young, healthy, athletic people…and interestingly enough, a lot of Southerners.

Why the name Sway? The place has been around for over a decade, and my girlfriend divulged that when it opened it couldn’t get a cabaret license.

Cabaret license? I did some research and New York Channel Thirteen’s website explained that believe it or not, it is against the law to have dancing in most New York City clubs and bars. Establishments that do not hold one of the city’s few cabaret licenses are breaking the law if they allow their patrons to dance; if caught, they can be subject to fines and shutdowns. Naturally, this has more to do with the side effects of dancing (brawls, drinking, noise, rowdiness in residential neighborhoods) than the actual act itself. Sway had trouble securing this license years ago, so for many months patrons could sway but not dance.

All the fun takes place at a long bar which opens into a small, sweaty dance floor and extends back into what looks like a mini mosque. There are intricate tiles, Moroccan designs and extremely slippery floors (so make sure you don’t hydroplane when sliding up to whoever you want to talk to.) There’s no cover charge to get in and the music stuck to upbeat 80ies, throwing in the occasional 50 Cent for couples who wanted an excuse to grind with each other. If you’re looking to meet someone of the opposite sex for a spring fling, I’d definitely recommend this place.

Miss Model Behavior’s the new nightlife writer for theBlaqlist.com. Feel free to post any nightlife comments or questions on our forum or contact her at MissModelBehavior@theBlaqlist.com

Tags: bars, drinking, lounges, New York, SoHo

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Mini Reviews, downtown scene, lounges. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.