The legendary Deep Ellum venue will hold a reunion soirée May 30.
It may seem impossible to devise a nightclub that is all things to all types of revelers, yet the owners of the legendary Club Clearview did just that.
Arguably one of Dallas' cultural totems from the 1980s through the mid-2000s, Clearview managed to reestablish Deep Ellum as the center of the city's nightlife while drawing a mixed crowd of club kids, live music fans and celebrities to its warehouse environs.
What began as a series of outlaw parties thrown by Detroit native Jeff Swaney in 1985 in abandoned warehouses eventually evolved into a complex of sophisticated lounges, a live music room, a funk-forward disco and the notorious black light room with its neon-painted go-go dancers. But initially, the Hewlett-Packard employee-turned-real estate mogul just wanted to have fun.
"I did about five of those [parties] and got busted," says Swaney, who initially partnered with friends, including future mogul Mark Cuban. "I started doing real estate at the same time. I just loved it, and I kind of kept working and meeting people. I discovered the 500 Café and Theatre Gallery, and I loved hanging out in Deep Ellum."
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First establishing the club at 2625 Elm St. in the 90,000-square-foot building of the former Clearview Louver Window Corp. (thus the free sign), Swaney dealt with holes in the ceilings, flooding and the accidental near-electrocution of the New Bohemians, the Dallas rock band that would team up with Edie Brickell. Unfortunately, the building was owned by the Baptist Foundation of Texas, which wasn't amused by the ongoing shenanigans and soon sold the space to a developer.
Having hired local graffiti artist Clay Austin as the club's artistic director, Swaney moved the colorful concept of Clearview 2.0 into a 10,000-square-foot, seven-room environment at 2803 Main St. (now the site of Stirr restaurant and bar).
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By 1988, Clearview was an automatic stop on a night out for many Dallas residents, whether it was to see acts like Divine, the Butthole Surfers, Ministry or Dick Dale, or to meet fashionistas at the Art Bar, a chic, white-tiled lounge beloved by hairdressers and real estate agents. From the start, the place drew a shockingly diverse crowd, from frat bros to punk rockers, who managed to stay in their lane (or at least their preferred room).
"I invited everyone," Swaney says. "Yuppies and yippies and hippies and buppies. If you could keep all kinds of different people here, we wouldn't be a fickle 500 club. You'd walk into a different room, and it was a totally different universe with the diversity of what was being provided. That's what kept it open for 20 years."
A constantly moving organism, Clearview made another change with the addition of Jeffrey Yarbrough, a former Women's Wear Daily marketing executive turned party promoter already throwing events in the space. He joined Swaney in 1990 to open the Blind Lemon, initially a restaurant before becoming what Swaney dubs a "funk beer joint."
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Swaney and Yarbrough served as Clearview's id and superego, hiring and training a motley crew of young creatives as staff. At any given night at the club, one might find oneself riding a motorcycle indoors in a fashion show, arm wrestling with a member of Pink Floyd or drinking margaritas on the sidewalk with Timothy Leary. In short, anything could happen (and probably did).
"The Born on the Fourth of July afterparty and the Pink Floyd night was one of the times it was truly sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll," Yarbrough recalls. "But every room had its own kind of demographic, and everybody got along. You had the music rockabilly crowd in the live room, and the Art Bar was professionals, architects and flight attendants. Then the Blind Lemon was very collegiate."
By 1997, Swaney left the business to focus on his real estate empire and Yarbrough took over solo, passing a "no penises, vaginas or devils on stage" rule during his tenure. He also continued to morph the space, adding a "space-age bachelor pad room" called Red, a sculpture garden roof deck and the Open Lounge, which refreshed the Blind Lemon in 2002. But by the mid-2000s, Deep Ellum was changing -- and not in a good way, partly due to crime and street fights. Yarbrough sold the club to the owners of the Curtain Club, who closed the space in 2007.
Yet the influence of Clearview didn't end when that last cocktail was served. The generation of scrappy young employees has gone on to become doctors, video game designers, PR executives and entrepreneurs. On May 30, all are welcome at It'll Do Club from 5 to 8 p.m. to catch up, celebrate and try to revive those fuzzy memories. Ron "DJ Freeze" Stanley, who was the DJ for Blind Lemon during its heyday, will play music for the reunion.
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"We kind of hit that whole thing when it was magic," Swaney says. "You can't invent that stuff -- it just surfaces. I rode it and fed it, and it was a blast. What a hell of a ride!"
Adds his former partner Yarbrough: "When I look at my team, the legacy is we gave people a chance to work on teams and be experts in their field. We churned out humans who were great citizens of the city and then went on to other cities and took a piece of Dallas with them. It's a high school reunion for misfits. I want lots of hanging out, hugging and storytelling."
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The Club Clearview reunion will be May 30 from 5 to 8 p.m. at It'll Do Club, 4322 Elm St. in Deep Ellum.
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