Night owling

Boston's after-hours scene is limited, but the die-hards still seek out a handful of haunts

by Michelle Chihara

Most people think that Boston after 2 a.m. is a pretty tame place. And most people are right. Still, despite our premature last call, life after hours does go on, even legally. It's a small, drunken-munchies-heavy world where you can't take the T, catch a cab, or order a stiff drink. But for the handful of businesses that do cater to the die-hard late-night crowd, the period from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. is "rush hour." From patrons dancing on the tables to patrons dancing outside in their underwear in January, late-night Boston businesses have seen it all.

"I baby-sit. That's what I do," says Abid Lazrag, the night manager at the Kenmore Square International House of Pancakes. "We hire a security guard. And at the IHOP in Brighton they have a state trooper. We have to have it. We baby-sit. I could write a book about IHOP at night, I swear to God."

The patron who stripped to his skivvies outside on New Year's Eve is one of Lazrag's stories. As is the one about a famous comedian who is rumored, in a random act of drunken kindness, to have promised to pay a waitress's college tuition. And "a famous Spanish singer once gave me a $100 tip," Lazrag says. "For serving her a $6 plate." Evidently, the Latin vocalist was sick of waiting in line, and offered sotto voce to "take care of" Lazrag if he got her a table, pronto. He did seat her, and she then tipped him -- without having noticed that she was next in line anyway. "She was really drunk," says Lazrag. "It's just the booze. The guy who hassles you at 2 a.m. -- at nine the next morning, the same guy is a gentleman."

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The well-known 2 a.m. line outside the Kenmore Square IHOP is a testament to the brisk wee-hours business. The 24-hour Brighton IHOP is the busiest IHOP in Massachusetts, and Lazrag says that the Kenmore Square franchise does more than 50 percent of its business on weekend nights in the two hours after last call and before its 4 a.m. closing. Lazrag theorizes that breakfast food is light enough for a late-night snack, but mostly he chalks IHOP's success up to limited options: "There's nowhere else to go."

At other late-night restaurants, such as Café Pompei in the North End and Ginza in Chinatown, it's a similar scene. "It's always busy. Always busy," says Ginza manager George Chan. "Lunch is very busy. Dinner is very busy. Midnight is very busy."

Robin Sidell, co-owner and night manager of the South Street Diner on Kneeland Street, says most of her late-night crowd consists of regulars. "You get to know them," she says. "The day crowd is mundane compared to [the crowd] after two. They dance up on the tables, and it's like, `Oh God, watch out for the plates!' But they're regulars, so they keep themselves under control. A couple of months ago we had a masseuse set up a table in the corner."

For some of South Street Diner's clientele, the late hours satisfy more than mere craving. Four a.m. brings the earliest of the early risers: "We'll have the morning crowd start to mix in, people up for their first cup of coffee," Sidell says. And about a third of South Street's business comes from the Big Dig, whose incandescent work lights are visible from the diner's slanting windows. Construction workers who start their days at 3:30 p.m. take their breaks here -- at 5:30 p.m., 9 p.m., and then once more whenever they want between 1 a.m. and the end of the workday at 3:30 a.m. Peter, in a quilted jacket with his radio slung crosswise like an ammunition belt, won't give his last name but says he operates one of the Big Dig's 150 cranes -- and eats at South Street every night, three times a night. "I'm a red-meat man, always red meat," he says. He motions and smiles at Sidell. "She makes all my chow. This place is great. You should see it on the weekends. They got broads in here dancing on the tables."

Bartenders from downtown and waitresses from other restaurants get off their shifts and make their way to 24-hour establishments like the South Street Diner and the neighboring Blue Diner for coffee and hash browns. "I live for last call," says Heather Larkin, a cocktail waitress from Quincy, sitting under one of South Street's black-and-white posters of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe at 3:30 a.m. one Tuesday. A pretty redhead with an eyebrow ring, Larkin is celebrating her 25th birthday. "I work nonstop, and I never get to see the nightlife. So I like to come here, drink coffee. I love this place. The food is awesome, and I can play my songs," she says, as "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" plays on the jukebox in the background. "You've got the Blue Diner, and Pompei, but they're only open till three or four, and it's more of a Euro crowd. Here it's more down to earth. Here it's wicked down to earth." She laughs, and starts dueling with a friend over a piece of steak and cheese, forks clashing. "If the clubs were open, I would definitely stay out. Most definitely. I'd be there till they closed."

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If Boston offers insomniacs few non-gustatory choices, it's not necessarily for lack of trying. Tom Beaulieu had to fight hard to open what he says is Boston's only after-hours club, a late-night lounge and dance spot for the scenester crowd. The club, called Rise, is actually a members-only hangout for club kids, drag queens, and the section of the gay world not afraid to dance shirtless. "We're setting a new standard," Beaulieu says. It's alcohol-free and tucked away behind heavily soundproofed walls above a quiet, darkened doorway on Stuart Street. Especially in the context of that club-filled neighborhood, it's relatively innocuous. In part, that's intentional. Rise was denied a full entertainment license by the city, so it has kept a low profile. Only members who pay yearly dues (and their guests) are admitted, and in order to become a member, you have to be sponsored by an existing one. Dues range from $50 to $300 a year, and only higher-level members are allowed to bring guests. It's not what Beaulieu originally intended, and the club is rarely filled to capacity.

Still, Rise members are entitled to the following: upstairs, a techno-throbbing black box of a dance floor, like any other trendy downtown club's except that the guys are a little bit more cut and have more of a tendency to take off their white T-shirts and tuck them into the back pockets of their jeans. Also, the door to the bathroom, which includes urinals, is sometimes inexplicably open. Downstairs, groups of modern couches and coffee tables furnish an otherwise neo-colonial lounge, with oil paintings, tall wooden shutters, and potted ferns. Piles of red-orange Christmas-tree lights under the armchairs add an edgy, smoldering glow. Three Pepsi machines in the corner sell soda and water, and the only other refreshments come from a group of bubble-gum machines.

On a Friday at 3 a.m., mix-and-match-gendered couples sit draped over each other. Almost everyone who enters immediately sees people he or she knows, and walks over to coo and greet them. An Asian girl in a baby-tee that says "Pervert" and a guy wearing a studded leather collar strike up a conversation in the line to the coat check, which probably has the friendliest staffers of any coat check in the city. A pair of hairdressers in crisp white shirts, their shades still on their heads, fiddle with an Etch-A-Sketch on one of the couches. Jai Soto Mayol, a staffer from Avalon with a trim goatee and mustache, is also wearing his sunglasses at night. The three start swapping mirrored for wraparound -- "How do these look on me?" "Oh, these don't fit me . . . "

"I'm not even gay, and I love this place!" Soto Mayol says. "Me and my girlfriend come here all the time. It just has such a positive vibe." A blonde walks in, and Soto Mayol screeches, "Alicia! I love you!" After Alicia, two drag queens enter at the opposite door, and Soto Mayol points them out too. "See the drag queens? I goof around with them. They love me."

"It's kind of like a madman's coffee shop," says Matthew, who works as a bike messenger and does sewing work in the South End. He's been coming to Rise for eight months. "I've seen it all," he says. For Matthew, Rise is a breath of fresh late-night air: "I've been in Boston for a year, and I'm so over it."

Beaulieu says that those willing to jump through the hoops end up feeling a sense of ownership. "Members really help out," Beaulieu says. "They come and help with everything; they help clean up." He also says, "We turn people away every night." In the end, Rise feels rather like a low-key in-club rave, as if the beautiful people here feel too much at home -- or too bonded over their lack of options -- to act haughty.

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Of course, if you can't get in at Rise and you're not in the mood for sushi or a greasy spoon, the mean streets belong to everyone. At 4 a.m. on Heather Larkin's birthday, some Emerson students are filming a video for a class project on a street corner near Mass General. It's about the afterlife of a man named Bob, who is played by a young man wearing a jacket and two yellow ties. The scene seems to involve a fair amount of horsing around. One of the actors launches into a mean Sean Connery imitation while the cameraman/director circles his actors and a cop circles the block, looking as if he might stop to question the odd-looking bunch at any moment. "He thinks we're out here dealing drugs. I'm not dealing drugs. Are you?" says Andrew, 19.

Andrew just got back from a couple of years in Denmark, where he was of legal drinking age. "Longer hours in Boston would mellow people out," he says. "Here, everybody gets out at 2 a.m., and especially if, say, the Red Sox just lost, things turn sour. In Denmark they spread out the drinking. They'd still manage to get wasted, but by the end they're too tired to start fights. If the bars are open longer, people know they have time and they don't have to get hammered by 2 a.m."

Relative newcomers to Boston, these budding filmmakers already say they love it. And they would love to see it stay open later. "It would definitely improve the city," says Andrew. "If we could go out to bars, and stay later, we would. But then we probably wouldn't be out here doing this."

Or as Dan, a computer consultant from Watertown, says one Thursday at midnight on his way to Lansdowne Street, "It would be so much better for Boston to stay open late."

"How would you know? When's the last time you made it out past two?" asks his wife, Amy.

Dan smiles sheepishly. "Yeah, but I still want to know that I can."

Michelle Chihara can be reached at mchihara[a]phx.com.