Ah, Cain.

This is one of those nightlife establishments my heart goes out to. It’s like that really popular kid in high school who had the world at his finger tips, but ultimately ended up staying in his home town, teaching local soccer, and living in his mother’s basement.

This isn’t exactly a negative: Who doesn’t like the comforts of their childhood home’s basement?

The point is that years ago, Cain opened as the hottest thing on the block. I remember it being notoriously hard to get into. I used to quake in my heels at the door thinking about how threatening long-haired euros wielding clipboards looked. And everyone was wowed by their animal head and safari theme.

This was long before Goldbar’s impressive skulls and 1Oak’s ridiculously expensive engraved walls entered the picture, upping club’s decorating requirements significantly. Cain was hot. They had girls in zebra bikinis convulsing on white sides of the club that resembled caravan sheaths, they had drummers in abundance, they had struck an exquisite balance in music that managed to be tribal yet commercial. And who didn’t like their sexy, high ceilinged individual bathrooms? The club reminded me of Pangaea in London, and for that reason alone, I doted on it.

Around the same time, spots like Guest House and Home sprouted up. Twenty seventh street experienced a glorious run, then that dude fell down the elevator shaft of Bed, and the underage girl at Guest House was found chopped up in a dumpster. Consequently, establishments started carding and the street lost some of its shine. Soon it was clear Cain’s owners favored their sparkly, lounge-like younger child Goldbar, and Cain began to feel like an after-thought. The neglected older sibling.

That doesn’t mean there still isn’t fun to be had at Cain. I did a swing through last weekend, and while much has changed (the drummer’s now stationary, the music’s more hip hop, the door’s less daunting) I found the vibe enjoyable and fun.

Why?

Because the club’s lost its pretentiousness. It’s been dethroned. And the benefit of no longer being the coolest kid on the block is that your staff can lose some of the attitude and everyone can stop taking themselves so seriously. The atmosphere becomes laid back, dare I say – relaxing. Yes many of us are masochists who want to go out to be treated like shit only to savor the victory of knowing you achieved entrance into the hottest new place. But I don’t think anyone could categorize Cain’s transformation into kinder, more approachable creature as a ‘bad’ thing. And another animal is entering the Goldbar-Cain family. Cain Downtown in the SoHo area is officially in development. So those of you that enjoy lines, celebrity sightings and doorman abuse should be prepared to shimmy over there.

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: Cain, Chelsea, clubs, New York, VIP

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 5:50 pm and is filed under NYC, clubs. 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.