The Tube

I may have found the Belgrade club where everything just falls into place, including the people, the music and the atmosphere.

The tube has no pretensions of being as, let’s say, “classy” as it actually is.

The outside of the club on Dobracina street, in the city’s centre, is fairly discreet, and though there’s usually a line outside, you won’t be looked up and down and price-tagged before being “allowed” in. Another plus – the bouncers don’t look like gangsters/drug dealers.

Though I am generally weary of places I have to wait to get into, I did wait, because you just have to try new things sometimes, and you get tired of going to basement clubs. Also, God knows I’ve been to Plastic, and was allowed to jump to the front of the line only because the club manager heard crowd I was with speaking English, so, I’m not exactly ashamed of being price-tagged.

As we descended the stairs, we were quickly overcome by how truly relaxing the atmosphere was. Although what who considers relaxing is rather relative, I think most would agree with me.

The club was filled with a patronage that seemed to have fought with honor and survived the war of puberty with no complexes intact, and therefore had nothing to prove. The crowd was not flashy, they smiled, and all seemed to be having down-to-earth conversations.

However, it soon became clear that there was one thing missing that is present in most Belgrade clubs, which has recently started driving me more and more towards wanting to become a hermit. This is the Balkan phenomenon of spending more time staring at others than talking to or dancing with the people you are with. The tube is price-tag/x-ray-free.

On the night I visited the Tube, the club’s regular DJ Peppe was spinning. Peppe plays a strange mix of funk and electronica and has been a staple on the Belgrade club scene for decades. He started on the scene over 20 years ago with the Belgrade Funk Brigade.

His fan base calls themselves “Peppists” and religiously follow the DJ from club to club every weekend. I met two Peppists at the place, who told me that if I didn’t end up in love with Peppe by the end of the night, they would embarrass themselves by singing Womanizer by Britney Spears with full-on choreography from the music video.

The other regular DJs are Pookie and Coba, who both have as solid of bios as Peppe.

Peppe added to the strangely relaxing mix of the club, which, surprisingly, was also put together in an interesting, minimalistic way. Most of the club is done in a sort of black fabric, with only the long, but low, table/bar in the middle.

As I write about the Tube, I am reminded of a conversation I had recently about how difficult it is to find a place to go to where the club looks nice, the people are great, and the music is at least bearable. It is difficult, though I don’t know whether you’ll sympathize with my sentiment.

For me, the Tube is that place. Everything fell into place and I, yes I, agreed with the look, people, and music of the place.

The only complaint I had about the Tube is that the drinks are a bit on the pricy side, with the average mixed drink going for 500 dinars.

That aside, I would recommend you check out the place, if for no other reason than to see whether out tastes coincide.

The Tube
Dobracina 12

Bitef Art Cafe

This Dorcol club is a aesthetically pleasing escape from the techno-charged and smoke-filled basement scene.

Located behind the Bajloni open market in the Mira Trailovic Square, this club has achieved a cult following among Belgrade intellectuals of all generations. However, it’s not pretentious or stuck up. Quite on the contrary, it’s very warm and welcoming.

Perhaps this is so because of the type of people that visit Bitef Art. I had a poetry professor once who said that there are two types of intellectuals. The first type are those that have become bitter because of an understanding that the world is one giant unjust mess and blah, blah, blah, and have now decided to sit around and judge everything around them and talk about it at length. The second type are those who have come to terms with this fact, realised that they can’t really change anything, and have decided to laugh about it.

The people of Bitef Art are the second type, and though I didn’t speak with each individual there, I will go out on a limb and say that they were out to have a good time judging by their enthusiastic dancing.

I visited Bitef Art on a Tuesday, when, unbeknownst to me at the time, they have their karaoke night. Had I known it was a karaoke night, I would not have gone because when I think of karaoke, I think of poorly lit basement bars, a horrible sound system, and Midi-type audio files playing in the background of a drunk 19-year-old who can’t sing.

But, at Bitef Art, t’was not so.

When we first walked in, we didn’t realise that what we were listening to was indeed karaoke. There was a live band, backup singers and two hosts, one of which was B92 radio-show Igor Brakus. In addition, the exceptional thing about this karaoke night is that the singers weren’t the only ones enjoying the music, the crowd was dancing and engaging them.

The club’s centre of focus is the stage, which has a number of variations and shapes depending on the event in question, and it’s almost as though the rest of the club evolved from the it.

At stage-left there is a balcony, which was constructed in such a way to give the club a sort of airy feel. In other words, the fact that there aren’t two floors, but rather a balcony means that the ceiling is higher and frees one of the claustrophobia/paranoia present in most basement clubs.

Now, since we’re on the topic of basement clubs like Francuska Sobarica, there is also another very specific point to delve into as far as Bitef Art is concerned. In the Sobarica, I have on a number of occasions been on the verge of tobacco poisoning because of the lack of ventilation. Though I am a smoker, I’ve become weary of too much cigarette smoke. In Bitef Art, most people don’t smoke, which is a relief.

It’s also not very dark in the place. This is because of the very thoughtful lighting system.

I would recommend you check out Bitef Art on a Tuesday, however, the club offers a number of other options like themed nights, and live jazz bands.

Bitef Art Cafe
Skver Mire Trailovic 1
063 594 294 Bitef Art Cafe

Francuska Sobarica

Everyone’s always been a bit suspicious of my obsession with gay clubs. I’m not talking about gay and lesbian clubs, I mean clubs for gay men. They don’t seem to understand the inherent charm of a place where no one in the place will even turn to look at you, much less check you out. Knowing this gives you endless freedom to act, well, like an absolute moron, which makes for an infinitely more beautiful night than a visit to a standard Belgrade meat market like Club BlayWatch by Hotel Yugoslavia.

Francuska Sobarica is not a gay club, but the ladies and gentlemen frequenting the place are so incredibly out of it, that there’s basically the same effect of a gay club.

“Whatever do you mean, Vanja?”, you may be asking yourself. So, as we say in journalism – show, don’t tell, so I’ll let facts do the talking.

The last time I visited the Sobarica, approximately 45 per cent of the population was over 45, according to an infallible head count I did. On the other hand, a completely infantile 17-year-old, wearing his grandma’s track sweater and work-out shoes from the early ’80s and white sunglasses, was doing something, which to me looked like an aerobic workout, in the middle of the crowd. A group of trashed metal-heads in the back of the dance floor were swaying and screaming. A group of five hipsters, wearing shawls, tight pants, infallibly perfect shoes were standing in another corner.

It was in this unimaginable mix of people that one realizes that they can do no wrong. The people I was with and I decided, since there was absolutely no prospect of meeting a sane human being that night, to act like the biggest morons there, and therefore had a good night.

The Sobarica is  a bit difficult to get to if you don’t know how to get there to begin with. It’s on Francuska street in the centre of town. There are no signs outside of what looks like an abandoned residential building. Once you walk through the door, and go through the courtyard of the building, you find yourself in the basement club.

The club is nothing special as far as the decor goes, and looks like any average club anywhere in the world. In addition, it’s fairly small.

It’s my recommendation that you completely avoid the place on the weekends and go there on Tuesdays, when the music is not the standard techno from the late ’90s, but rather a mix of indie and ’80s pop.

However strange it seems for me to say this, I do recommend the place, though I may be a bit biased. Why? Well, I was never a very nostalgic person, but, recently, I’ve been looking for a place that reminds me of those run-down, back alley places in somewhat dangerous parts of town you go to in America because, well, you’re that kid. The Sobarica reminds of these places, and has, over time, become close to my heart.

Francuska Sobarica
Francuska 12

Danguba – The Beauty of Southeastern Europe

Hey, remember when glam metal was cool? I don’t. But, for the sake of argument, I’ll assume it’s because this movement overtook the world before I was born. Or, maybe, I’ve been oblivious to its prevailing influence. Maybe, I’ve been living in an isolated Indie circle for far too long.

 

I have to admit, when we walked into Danguba, I felt a bit uneasy. As we descended the stairs to this tiny, dark club, I swear, time warped and we were on the set of a Whitesnake music video. I’d never seen so much teased hair in one place before, and, God, I didn’t think they made leather jackets anymore.

 

“How is this possible?” I thought to myself. “It was 2008 a few seconds ago!”

 

But, then:

 

“No, Vanja, you have to give it a chance. Your hipster friends can’t save you now. This is what you get for making fun of them then. This is assimilation. This … is karma.”

 

Who said that?

 

Fine. So, I gave it a chance.

 

We squeezed our way to the front, settled in next to this one guy I was told to avoid at all cost – apparently, everyone there knew each other. 

 

The cover band, Pro rock, was lead by a greasy haired man in a black cut-off t-shirt and ripped jeans. He was screaming Shot Through the Heart by Bon Jovi.

 

As the night progressed, I calmed down. Yes, I even danced a bit. At one point, I found myself in sync with the place. A familiar tune came from the synthesizer, a tune people the world over would instantaneously recognize, and before the lead singer could begin, the entire crowd – me included – was yelling “I, I just died in your arms tonight, it must have been something you said, I just died in your arms tonight.”

 

Although, however pretentious you may be when it comes to music, I know you’ve listened and danced to this song when no one was around. You may have even played it on repeat. Several times.

 

I am still a bit in denial about what happened that night. I think I experienced musical freedom.

 

It was then that I came to understand the beauty of Danguba – it isn’t your typical Belgrade scene. In fact, it’s a bit of a place to escape the smashing Janet Jackson look-a-likes my colleagues Zoran Milosavljevic and Richard Wordsworth keep writing about, and that in itself is a bit of a charm.

 

One of the most interesting things about Danguba is that everyone is really there just to have a good time listening to music they truly enjoy. That’s something you have to appreciate, no matter what your tastes may be.

 

In other words, I’m recommending the place, but don’t tell anyone I did.

 

To get in is heinously cheap, only at 100 dinars. The drinks follow in the same vein, with nearly everything under the 100 dinar mark.

 

 

Klub Danguba

Cirila i Metodija 2