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by Rona Coster
A rainbow over Oranjestad: The island’s most important news item this morning, the opening of a gay club in Oranjestad
Jimmy’s place was always a favorite among locals and visitors, as a hetero-friendly gay club. We used to hang out at the bar and throw back B-52s, back in the days.
The club was a rundown smoky dive, on one of the back streets on town, but it had personality with Jimmy Douglas behind the bar!
Then it sort of disappeared from my horizon, perhaps because I stopped throwing back B-52s.
But it’s back in the news this weekend, in a stylish, sophisticated version of its old self, after 8 months of renovations, under new management, and it’s opens for dancing, boozing, flirting and cruising, promoting the Beauty in Diversity, of Aruba’s LGBTQ universe.
The club, powered by Aruba’s gay community, reopened under a fresh name, @7, and it hopes to attract the ying and yang of our human landscape, black and white, gay and straight, men and women, offering five distinctly different party areas: Le Club, with the main dance floor at the heart of the club, complete with a bar and VIP areas, featuring music, nightly parties, and performances by hunky divos and glitzy divas, who are “world renowned artists and DJ’s.”
Then there is the Gin & Olive garden, a specialty bar, serving you guessed: Gin and olives.
La Terrasse features fresh air, lounge music, cocktails, and relaxation, under the moon and the stars!
Not just one but two private VIP rooms are designed to attract the more naughty in need of discretion, those are called Les Salles Privées, in French, naturally, with a privately stocked customized bar option. Lastly, the roof-top pool, Piscine Sur Le Troit, but that I suspect is a plan for the future, a while down the road.
Lizzy Jansen is the general manager, aka: madame@7aruba.com. We met her first at CILO, at the Renaissance Marketplace. Then she disappeared, with the closing of that eatery. I now know she got involved with @7 and worked tirelessly to open this pocket of cool, this weekend.
The club owner, a Belgian entrepreneur, hence the French, first came to the island to run the over-the-top club on the second floor of Paseo Herencia, a few years ago. That task proved too much for him, but he became successful anyway, running vacation rentals and orchestrating parties with imported Dutch DJs, including Chucky, when he lived in Aruba.
I think I am still chasing him with an unpaid bill, but other than that he is a nightlife specialist, with a penchant for campy productions, and we expect the club to do well.
Finally! We haven’t had a club opening in years, and night owls may rejoice, on the occasion of a rainbow dipped old-new Club in Oranjestad with Tolerance, Diversity, Experience, and Unity, as its modus operandi.
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Originally Posted by Andrea J.
