ManRay's closing leaves a hole in the club scene
CAMBRIDGE -- Jim Sarafin, a ManRay regular, still can't believe the club is closing. ''We all grew up here. This is a home away from home," he said there late Thursday as the dancing became more animated. ''The friends we made at ManRay have been friends for life."
Nearby, a spike-haired patron calling himself Chris T. said he'd been going to the club for eight years. ''I've liked ManRay because it always represented everything that was alternative," he said.
The clock is ticking for ManRay, which closes tonight after more than 20 years as a hub for goth events, gay nights, and fetish parties in Central Square. Owner Don Holland has been operating without a lease for two years and says the landlord intends to tear down the structure and put up a condo building in its place. ''You know how it works," Holland said.
Holland plans to reopen in a new site in Central Square and is negotiating to transfer his liquor license there. He said that he wasn't ready to share the details yet but that it will be one room instead of the three that he has had at the 500-capacity site. In the meantime, 30 ManRay employees will be out of work.
''The competition is trying to scoop some of them up," Holland said. ''But what can you do?" He said it will probably be at least a few months before he can move.
Nothing extravagant is planned for the finale tonight. ''Just our normal drag shows," said operations manager Matthew Gleason. An auction will be held at the club Wednesday (''probably 9 or 10 a.m.," Gleason said) to unload equipment, furniture, and some of the sculptures. The new club will have a fresh look, with new sound and lighting fixtures.
Many patrons were willing to share their feelings. ''This is the only nonjudgmental place in the Boston area," said Sarafin as the crowd teemed around him, with some dancing on the stage and others mingling or watching erotic videos on the TV monitors.
''You could dress up or down, but the only thing that mattered here was to have a good time," said another regular, Mark Evans. ''And you'd hear music that you couldn't hear anywhere else. It wasn't that superficial club music that you hear in many places." DJ Chris Ewen, who has been spinning at ManRay for 19 years, said, ''I play a mix of everything."
ManRay also leaves a legacy of live music, though that has been de-emphasized in recent years. In earlier times, such acts as Nirvana, Alien Sex Fiend, and Peter Murphy all played the room.
Holland took over the premises in 1979 when it was Simeone's Restaurant. He remade it into a gay club under the name Campus in 1983 before changing it to ManRay in 1985.
Club neighbor T.T. the Bear's is helping ease the transition by picking up the ''XMortis" goth night on Aug. 12. Eloni Feliciano, who oversees the event, suggests a dress code of ''goth, fetish, industrial"; if in doubt, ''wear all black."
