The Clog Palace is born
About a year after I started clogging, the Tap Room closed down, and I felt like an addict cut off from her connection. I was going to the square contra dances at Glen Echo as well, but that kind of dancing didn’t lift my mood up the way clogging did. It took a while, maybe months, but a venue for old-time music and clogging cropped up at a Greek restaurant in Rockville called Rena’s Place, due to the persistence and vision of Dorothy Schultz, another fanatic.
During that time, I danced when I could, but I was working full-time and also taking six graduate credits a semester in library science. I was determined not to drag this college degree out over several years like the last one. There were times that the Thursday nights at Rena’s were the only social outlet I had all week long, including the weekends.
I didn’t know it at the time, since I was at that time at the fringes of the clogging scene, but finding a place that welcomed cloggers was not an easy thing. When I eventually was in a position to find a place for the clogging, what I offered the restaurant management was a steady, paying crowd one night a week. In return, I was allowed to bring in old-time bands of my choosing for cloggers to dance to. No money exchanged hands directly from me to the restaurant or vice versa, and I’m pretty sure that was the deal with my predecessors in the role of clog impresario of D.C.
It was the nature of the places that would have us, that they were restaurants somewhat down on their luck. Every once in a while, the cloggers would need to find a new meeting place due to changes in the restaurant’s management or financial solvency. And so it came to pass that some time in 1984, Rena’s Place ceased to be a venue for the clogging.
As for what the cloggers wanted, here’s what Dorothy Schultz said in the Capital Clogger’s Club newsletter, after Rena’s Place closed down:
“Of course, a wood floor … with just a little give to it and just the right amount of wax or John’s special corn or rice meal dried powder on it so they can slide instead of slip. For size it must not be too small, although for one person, a 3′ x 3′ step-a-tune will do. And it must not be too large either, or have too few cloggers on it. They like to be just close enough to get an energy boost from each other’s batteries. Julie says she likes to feel as if she is dancing in a phone booth. It is a bit dangerous though. Patsy got kicked in the thumb again on the 26th. Please be more careful when you kick and watch out for Patsy’s thumbs.
“Next, they like the string band music to be southern style–moderate to fast speed–and bouncing off the walls–loud, but not deafening, being still able to carry on a conversation.
“They like long tables, with space for lots of shoes underneath, and comfortable chairs. The temperature should be on the cool side because they always warm it up. Smoke free air is nice also. … A millionaire or two wouldn’t hurt to help the proprietor’s frame of mind. That’s all we ask. Know any place like that?”
Months passed in which the cloggers had to content themselves with clogging on the sidelines at the contra dances, or at a private party. Still, they longed for a place to call their own with a real, live band and a wooden dance floor. This time, the resourceful individual who answered the call was Mike Marlin. It was Mike who did three important things in the history of clogging in the D.C. area: he made an agreement with Captain White’s Oyster Bar in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland; he started an informative and entertaining newsletter called The Daily Clog; and he dubbed the cloggers’ new home with a name: The Clog Palace, or in full, “The World Famous Captain White’s Oyster Bar & Clog Palace.”
The rest is history.
Posted on May 8, 2008
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