School's Out for Summer

Once again, school has come to its summer end. The time for cramming for tests, standing in long financial-aid lines, and getting blitzed off Captain Morgan Rum and Juicy Juice before having experimental sex with someone of the same gender has been laid away until next fall, when many collegians will begin their seventh or eighth year of higher learning. Fear not, kids! Many clubs around the city are looking to facilitate those students who long to have a frat-party good time even though classes aren’t in session.

Our old friend John Finlay recently established a college night over at Bongo’s (818 Travis). Finlay pops up fairly frequently in the pages of this column. Last year alone, he opened a doomed nightclub near the Galleria (see “Treacherous Waters,” July 19) and tried to launch a spot in the somewhat resurgent Shepherd Plaza (see “It’s All in the Mix,” November 15).

This time around, he’s decided to go for a safer college night at the pre-existing downtown Latin restaurant-bar. It was actually Finlay’s 21-year-old daughter, Jennifer, who dreamed up the niche night. “Bongo’s called me to do some marketing for them,” says Finlay, who also runs promotions team JAM Media. “So I came down here to talk to them, and then Jennifer said, ‘Hey, why don’t we do a college night on a Wednesday?’ ” Jennifer, a University of Houston student, once helped set up a college night for her old man’s Galleria spot, Current Nightclub/Citrus Room. “There aren’t really a lot of 18-and-up opportunities,” the younger Finlay claims. “I mean, there are — yeah, you can just go to a club. But no one cares about that [crowd]. They can go in there and [the club] won’t show you a good time.”

The motives of the Finlays are simple: to give older teenagers and young adults a good time without the whole thing degenerating into one of those “Coeds Gone Wild” videotapes they peddle during the commercial breaks of Cheaters. “We’re trying to class up college night just a little bit,” says John Finlay. “We’re not gonna be doing the wet T-shirt contests.”

But most nights aimed at the college crowd can’t survive without those seamy elements. Rehab (709 Franklin), to name but one, has been known to dampen a young lady’s Playboy baby tee to the great merriment of a late Thursday evening, and TOC Bar (711 Franklin) brings in scads of college kids with similar shenanigans.

BAR Houston (534 Texas Avenue) has the same kind of sex appeal, but unlike most college nights, theirs is limited to a 21-and-up clientele. BAR Houston owner Michael Paolucci prefers it that way. “We attract the older college crowd,” he says. “Eighteen-year-olds are too much of a headache.” But Paolucci, who also runs the adjoining Have a Nice Day Cafe (544 Texas Avenue), has conceived an intriguing experiment for Bayou Place. He’s moving Have a Nice Day’s 18-and-up Tuesday college night to coincide with BAR Houston’s night o’ fun on Thursdays. “It’ll give 21-year-olds the best of both worlds,” says Paolucci, “and it’ll finally give their younger friends a place to hang out and dance.”

But those young ones for whom one night of debauchery a week just isn’t enough might have to head over to the southwest side. That old standby Roxy (5851 West Alabama) is 18-and-up Thursday through Saturday, and the brand-new Hurricane Hut (6130 Richmond) has landed on the famed Richmond Strip. Located in the same building that has already housed the nightlife debacles Danzoo and Ambrosia, the Hurricane Hut is a hedonistic hideaway for those who like the randy luau spectacle of Surfside Sally’s (2626 Tanglewilde) but don’t want to make the short drive to Gessner to get it. The 18-and-up herd has made itself at home there, thanks to the thong and bikini contests the Hut holds on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

“After they leave, I want people to say, ‘I had a blast,’ ” says Hurricane Hut owner Curtis McWilliams. That doesn’t seem like too tall an order. Hell, one recent Saturday, a woman even grabbed The Nightfly’s ass. Or at least he thought she was a woman. “I guess he/she thought you were cute,” explains McWilliams. “Take it as a compliment.”

But even with this spring break-style depravity going on all around them, the Finlays pledge that their night won’t get as raunchy, as racy, as E! Wild On as the other college nights in town.

So what’s their plan? Good, clean fun, the kind Grandma and Grandpa used to have. “We’re gonna do pajama-party night,” says Finlay. “We’ll be doing Hawaiian night and all kinds of goofy stuff just to try to make it a party every week.”