$195 for a bottle of Absolut! Dayum! A Welcome Home By Fritz Hahn Friday, January 10, 2003; Page WE05 I'VE ALMOST reached the end of my velvet rope. So many upscale nightspots opened in the last 13 months -- including Acropolis, Dream, the Harbour Club, Spank, Toka Cafe, the VIP Club, Vida and Zanzibar on the Waterfront's Skyclub -- that the VIP rooms and headset-wearing bouncers were becoming a blur. So I groaned when I heard that a new four-story club called Home was moving into 911 F St. NW, an address known in recent years as Babylon, the Casbah and Volt, all cramped nightclubs that attracted a hard-dancing international crowd. It had been empty since New Year's Day 2001, and sporadic attempts to reopen it had fizzled. Now, though, the space has been taken over by a consortium led by Tony Kowkabi, the nightclub impresario who runs Sole, Tuscana West and the Alamo Grill restaurants. In December, Home became the third see-and-be-seen club on its block. Thankfully, although Home sports the requisite doormen, dress codes, two VIP floors and cover charges, it's much smaller and more comfortable than other velvet rope clubs. On the main floor, large armless couches are arranged in groups, 30 feet below a carved plaster ceiling. You don't need a reservation to perch on one. A bar stretches along one wall, with decorative marble panels betraying Home's former use as a bank. Actually, much of the building's original architecture was preserved by the designers from Queue, who also worked on the Harbour Club and MCCXXIII. You can take in another view of the scene from a small mezzanine balcony known as the Guest Room, which has table seating -- again, first come-first served -- as well as its own bar overlooking the dance floor. Home is a narrow shoebox of a club, but it doesn't feel claustrophobic, even on a Friday night. Part of this could be its low capacity -- it's one-third the size of the VIP Club, and just one-fifth as big as Dream. You can walk around without bumping anyone. When the seats are taken, people stand around, chatting with friends, and dancing to top 40, club mixes and even Bhangra music spun by DJ Rob Corbett, formerly of New York's Limelight. He'll alternate with the well-known house DJ Junior Salinas on the main floor on weekends, while other DJs spin simultaneously on Home's other levels. I'm more apt to spend my time down in the Basement, a cozy warren of small rooms connected by narrow hallways. Each has a long vinyl banquette cut into the wall, and there's space to dance to the DJ spinning hip-hop, although the vibe is more loungey. This level was the bank's vault, and rows of safe-deposit boxes, now lit by colored lights, are visible through a glass wall. If you want to see the upper levels, dubbed the Master Bedroom and the Attic, there's no nice way to put this: You're going to have to pay. The Master Bedroom is similar to MCCXXIII's Spank: a row of eight large, rectangular banquettes lines one wall, separated by gauzy white curtains. If you want to sit on one, you and your friends (up to seven of them) have to spend a minimum of $500 on bottles of liquor -- and bottles range from $195 for Absolut or Bacardi to $2,300 for Remy Louis XIII Cognac. (It should be noted, though, that reservations include free admission to the club for your party, and the floor has its own DJ spinning international house music.) Up another level, the Attic, with its sculpted PVC ceiling and comfortable leather chairs, is the kind of place the Wizards and their guests rent out for private parties. You can pay $1,000 a year for access to the Attic whenever it's not rented out, and even bring three guests along. Home's crowds, thus far, are the kind of people who come in to sip champagne on Thursdays, when the bar pours $6 glasses of Moet, and not the party-hungry crowds who flock to the neighboring Platinum and VIP clubs on weekends. The atmosphere at Home is a little more jumping on Wednesday for Flirt, a hip-hop and R&B event with a packed dance floor, but for now, it's a comfortable little lounge-club hybrid that should have little trouble winning over mature been-there, done-that scenesters.
