Downtown’s I-Bar an escape for goths
The night is dark and getting darker. Nearly every article of clothing in view ranges from faded black to a complete absence of light. And the dance floor is building.
“It usually starts picking up by 11,” says DJ Lavidicus of the crowd forming below his booth. “And then it builds and builds.”
This is Memento Mori, the monthly incarnation of goth night, at downtown Orlando’s Independent Bar. The music is downbeat and danceable, the fashion is both elaborate and disorderly and there are way more smiles than the square community would expect.
The macabre subculture has long had a home at the corner of Orange Avenue and Washington Street, going back at least as far as the club’s days as Barbarella. In 2002 the spot known as Barb’s became Independent Bar (nickname: I-Bar). DJ nights have lured in local goths for decades, most famously Necropolis, which ended its nine-year run in 2011. Memento Mori has taken over the third Monday of the month for the past two and a half years. (Starts at 10 p.m. No cover charge.)
Orlando resident Lavidicus perches like a raven in the second-story booth, watching for the dancers’ reaction to the music. “They’re starting to dig on this heavier, slow beat,” he says. The playlist is familiar, featuring classic industrial and electronic rock bands such as Assemblage 23, Sisters of Mercy and Fiendflug. “I’m seeing a younger crowd,” says Lavidicus, 41, who has been working clubs since the early ’90s. “They seem to have embraced the older tracks.”
A sales and marketing rep by day, Lavidicus says the night is an escape for him, a sentiment echoed by the regulars. “It fits my lifestyle,” says Shadow, 26. “I can be open here.”
“It’s an outlet to be me,” says Amber, 27. A receptionist for an animal clinic, the occasional professional go-go dancer is a six-year veteran of goth nights. She’s wearing what appears to be a bikini top, short shorts and fishnet leggings. “I come to dance,” she says, “so I dress for dancing the whole night.”
Others have gone a different route, adorning themselves in horns, spikes, goggles and lots of leather. Still plenty of the partygoers are fine in their T-shirts and jeans. The air starts getting thick as I-Bar is one of the last establishments downtown to welcome indoor smoking.
Former Orlando Sentinel night-life reporter Tod Caviness says goth is mostly a sense of humor. Amber agrees; goths don’t take themselves as seriously as some might think. “I just want people to know they should come out,” she says. “No one will give you a hard time about how you dress or anything. Come have fun with us.”