WeHo’s DBA Opens, Replacing Voyeur but Attracting Hundreds of Them

The east end of WeHo’s Santa Monica Boulevard is pretty empty late at night. Not so last night, when the sidewalk in front of 7969 Santa Monica was jammed with the hip and beautiful and those who love them. It was the opening night of DBA, Cardiff Giant’s new club. By 11 p.m. hundreds were gathered outside waiting for admission to an evening “curated” by Simon Hammerstein, impresario of New York City’s The Box, which Vanity Fair has called a “notorious theatrical nightclub.” The evenings Hammerstein has planned at DBA are described as “an NC-17 mash up of Cirque du Soleil meets orgy scene from Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.”

DBA, will have other seasonal guest curators at what Cardiff Giant describes as part performance space, part art gallery and part dance club (it also has a rare adult cabaret license). The nightlife cognescenti see it as rivaling Bootsy Bellows, David Arquette’s club on Sunset Boulevard, as a draw for celebrities in what has been a very quiet part of West Hollywood.

DBA replaces Voyeur, a bondage-themed club. But there will be plenty of voyeurs (read paparazzi) watching that block of Santa Monica between Hayworth and Laurel in months to come.