If you haven’t been to the Rumba Room on South Main Street downtown you should check it out, especially on a Saturday night when the stars come out.
Just don’t get out on the floor with them if you don’t know what you’re doing.
The cover is $10 for men and nothing for ladies. That includes a short lesson which gives the uninitiated the mistaken idea that they might be able to do this. A basic three steps, don’t look at your feet, don’t count out loud, and keep your feet moving, what’s hard about that? A lot. You can look like an even bigger idiot than you think other people think you are.
Memphis has some terrific salsa dancers. There were at least a dozen who could have made the finals of Dancing With the Stars, including several leggy, sharply dressed women who could have passed for pros. The best of the male dancers were just as good. Some were flashy, others looked like they came straight from a construction site. A true Memphis melting pot.
Reluctant dancers take a lot of abuse, but our tribe knows these rules of group behavior from hard experience:
It is all right, even mandatory, to dance at weddings. Same goes for line dancing on beginner’s night or any place where the floor is too crowded for the talented tenth to move around. But beware of the Rumba Room, Roberts Western World in Nashville, or Cajun bars in Louisiana.
Stay out of the poker room at Tunica casinos if you’re playing with scared money.
It is all right to sing drunken karaoke at the company Christmas party but do not ask to sing or play with the band.
If Overton Park is your favorite golf course, don’t join an unknown threesome at a private course.
Don’t fly fish with anyone who has “done a little guiding” unless you’re paying them.
Think twice about taking your suit to a company party where “the pool will be open.”
