Hola, salseros!
I've seen lately quite a few posts on this mailing list with basically
the same question: I'm going on this fabulous vacation to N and I
would like to know where to dance salsa there?
I thought it would be very nice to have an answer to this question for
every possible value of N. I went on a vacation to L myself just a
couple of weeks ago and I spent sometime researching the topic. I did
find a list of the salsa clubs in L (I was lucky: L is a very large
city, someone bothered to set up a website.) but the question of where
to go remained unanswered. Out of all these clubs, where do the best
salsa dancers go on a, e.g., Thursday night? I tried a random spot and
had no luck.
Most frustratingly, I know exactly who knows the answer to this
question. The locals. If I had lived in L for a few months, I would
have known it myself. But how to get in touch with these people?
So, here is the Salsa Nirvana project: http://www.salsanirvana.com/
It's a wiki for all of us salseros everywhere in the world to have a
place to tell our friends who live elsewhere what is the best place to
dance in our town. I have already started the Austin page:
http://www.salsanirvana.com/Austin
The page is incomplete and I doubt I'll ever complete it. And that's
the beauty of a wiki: anyone of you can login and pick up where I left
off. I don't know if there is still salsa at the Light Bar, but one of
you does. Why would you waste your time on this? No reason. I just
hope that there will be one brave soul out there who will decide to
show some hospitality to the visitors in Austin and tell them where to
go to dance when they are in our town.
Or, maybe, a club owner will decide that this is a cheap and easy way
to get some free publicity. I don't know what y'all's reasons are. I
just know that if one person in each city in the world will decide to
donate a few minutes of their time for the benefit of every salsero in
the world and write a few words about the salsa scene in his/her town,
next time I go on vacation to M, I will know exactly where to go to
dance, where the salsa action is, and I will have an extra good time.
I do have a request, though. Please let your salsa friends in other
cities know about this project. Maybe they'll post it to their local
salsa mailing lists and somebody will contribute. A single person
writing a few words about a single club, done hundreds of thousands of
times by different salsa dancers, this will become a very
comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the salsa around the world.
Thank you.
Max