King Cobra is closing after one last blowout bash tomorrow night. Here's what I wrote about the club when it first opened in January of last year (also published in the print edition):

On the second night of King Cobra’s “soft opening,” the new club—opened by the former Kincora crew in the space just vacated by Sugar—is still clearly a work in progress (the club is open for business, but won’t have it’s grand opening until March).

In the black-lit entry way, the woman working the door has a hard time adjusting to the dim light. “It’s so dark in here,” she says, angling my ID to get a better look at the birthdate beneath the glowing green state seals. “What does that say, ’80?”

Inside, the club’s LED lights have been switched from cold purple and blue to warm red and yellow, reflecting off the club’s mirrors and the still-white surfaces. (A friend overheard two employees talking about the color scheme, trying to find a no-green, all-red setting for the lights). A roll-down garage-style door blocks off what used to be Sugar’s dance floor. The brick wall behind the bar has been painted over with a mural of a gothic city skyline, industrial silhouettes studded with the odd skull or “rock’n’roll” banner and looked over by a towering red robot. The robot is pretty cool.

Upstairs, vintage vinyl records—Blondie, Judas Priest—have been centered on the circular mirrors on the black ceiling. There’s a black semi-sphere in one corner that may or may not still conceal a security camera. There’s a mix of non-descript black-upholstered bar stools and Sugar’s mod white plastic high chairs.

A friend describes it as looking like “the cool club you see in the movies—the hip, kind of dangerous club.” The aesthetic confusion—Sugar’s neon modernist décor being gradually overrun with Kincora’s black leather jacket vibe—seems a little like the seedy video arcade from the movies, loitering “bad” kids lit up by colored lights and screens.

A DJ table is set up in the upstairs’ southern corner, and there’s PA speakers standing on tripods. The DJs are playing rock records (at one point, Bobcat came by a friend’s table and asked, “Are you ready for some fucking metal tonight?”). Slats is there.

My friend Lee reports that Friday night’s opening party (I couldn’t make it) was a good turnout and that the food was especially good (“the chicken satay wasn’t just chicken with yellow food dye and peanut sauce, it was really authentic”).

Looking down from the balcony, the dance floor is dark, there’s plywood on the floor and a drum kit set up on the black stage. It’s a big space with a good layout. It should be a good spot to see a show. It will also be interesting to see how it fills up. Lee thinks attendance won’t be a problem because “’rockers’ are more willing to leave their neighborhoods than ‘hipsters’,” suggesting that King Cobra will become a destination for such folks from all over the city rather than just another bar in some insular Capitol Hill circuit.

We’ll see. It is a big space, in a very competitive nightlife scene, and they’re gonna have to fight hard to book bands and DJs that can fill the place up, unless they can afford to leave those garage doors down some nights. Also a little troubling: Despite press releases trumpeting the diversity of the music they plan to book (“everything from hiphop to punk, metal, alt-county, comedy, and even DJs”), all signs last night—the records on the ceiling, the banner in the mural, the metal-head DJs—pointed to a pretty narrowly focused vision.

Still, for tonight, the upstairs tables are all full by 11pm, and the downstairs—blacked-out dance floor excluded—is filling up too. It’s a good scene, and King Cobra’s crew should be pleased.

(I forget to ask if they serve the malt liquor of the same name—next time.)

(And, yes, here's what I wondered before the club opened, single-handedly cursing the place forever.)