Hank Berger's nightclub for gays

TRAXX

By Scott Scredon

ucked between tacky storefronts and old brick warehouses on W. 9th St. is Cleveland's most successful gay nightclub Traxx.

Most of its patrons are no more creative on the dance floor than is the mechanical disco music that blares around them, but they seem to enjoy the music and the club's atmosphere where a person can drink and dance with another of the same sex without feeling uncomfortable.

Traxx's owners boast that approximately 3,200 persons make their way inside each week and that the club has acquired enough chic that non-gays make up about 20% of the patrons.

Diahann Carroll, Chita Rivera and Rip Taylor have followed their acts at Playhouse Square or The Front Row with a visit to the club; so have some cast members of "A Chorus Line" and The Harlettes, the singing group which formerly accompanied Bette Midler.

There are about 15 gay bars and nightIclubs in Cleveland, but Traxx seems to be the most popular because it has the decor and atmosphere to rival some of the classiest "straight" clubs.

Its popularity has been attributed to Hank Berger, front man and co-owner, a person who could fill a lead role in the TV show "Class of '65." A Lakewood High School dropout, Berg-

Hank Berger, co-owner of Traxx.

er, 26, has combined his talents as an artist and his flair as a promoter-entrepreneur to make a gay club viable in Cleveland.

Berger has taken away the dark, dingy atmosphere gays are used to in their clubs.

At the end of a hallway is a wavy, funhouse mirror that originally was in the penny arcade at Euclid Beach Park. Wall decorations include original posters promoting the minstrel show of Leland McNammee, a Clevelander who did a black-face-white-gloves comic act in the 1930s.

Over the entrance to the dance floor is a "Chop Suey" sign that used to light up Chin's Chow Mein Restaurant on St. Clair Ave. These items mix well with a slickly varnished, brass-topped 38-foot bar.

The majority of homosexuals who patronize Traxx are white-collar, early 20s to mid30s, and male. Some arrive alone and wander through the crowd searching for partners. A few openly show affection for each other but not much more than a peck on the ear.

Berger, married and claiming non-gay status, says he wanted to start a dignifiedlooking gay club in Cleveland as early as 1973 after seeing his first gay club, The Change, on Prospect Ave. Friends convinced him, however, that a high-class gay club would fail.

Last year, he opened Traxx in a building on E. 18th St.; shortly after, to accomodate the crowds, Berger converted a six-room apartment upstairs into a lounge and roof garden. The building was destroyed by fire in late October.

CONTINUED

SUNDAY, APRIL 9, 1978