Teen Nightclubs

In the late 90s/early 2000s, my small town had 5 teen nightclubs. That’s 4 too many teen nightclubs.
The names of these clubs were: Xtreme, Metropolis, Coconut Joe’s, Zavos, and Millennium.
Being that there was no social media, you only heard about these places and their reputations from the bathroom gossip at school. People would come to homeroom on Monday with giant X marks on their hands and you’d be like whoa, where did you go? And also, you didn’t shower since then? But it was like a stamp on a passport. You wanted people to know that you’ve been to the other side.
Teen clubs were a basic necessity to developmental growth in Ohio because you had to know there were people outside of your bubble that existed. It kept you alive. You could go back to your own personal hell as long as you knew that someday you’d be in a totally different hell with other people. I imagine it’s like when an Amish kid sees an ankle for the first time. It keeps you going.
The weirdest part about going to a teen nightclub is physically getting there. No one has their license, so you have to convince some sort of parental figure to drive you there. So there you are: hair in twists, body glitter, thong outside of your jeans, butterfly top, and frosted lip gloss on, and you gotta ask dad to take you to an abandoned building so you can dance to Nelly songs with your friend who told her parents she was going to Young Life.
The second weirdest thing, now that I’m remembering it, is that we didn’t all have phones. What the fuck did we look at when we were bored?Even if we did have cellphone, it only had snake on it. Did we actually socialize and talk to people. That’s insane to think about now. We actually stayed with our group, had a meeting point and code words, and were present in the moment.
I have a few distinct memories from my clubbing days (Jesus Christ I hate myself). One was dancing with a boy and then telling him, “I’m sorry I can’t do this” in the middle of it and running away. My friends had to console him as I ran to the bathroom to panic. I was deathly afraid of boys at the time, and was overwhelmed. However, I would love to use this strategy again anytime someone tries to pull out their phone and show me photos of their vacation. I’m sorry…. I can’t do this.
Another was seeing a really slutty line dance that everyone seemed to know. It was to the song, “Pony” by Genuwine which is still a banger. I was fascinated with the dance and how did everyone know this? Did they go school teaching people? I didn’t know it. I had to learn it. So I did, and I used my knowledge to dunk on people for the next year. Oh, you don’t know this dance? Let me teach you. And I shall be the queen of the hoes.
The last memory I have is hearing that one of the clubs was shut down because there was a make out room in the basement that you could pay to get into. That is terrible, because somewhere there had to be an adult who runs a business who thought, you know, this club is pretty successful, but I could use an extra $60 a night.

All these clubs are now shut down and I don’t think the concept would ever work again. Kids have Snapchat now. which is so so much worse,