clubbin' it in c'ville

Since one of my highschool friends was visiting over the weekend, I took him and met up with a bunch of people that I'd just found out was in town all summer long (hah, I seem to have done that a lot in recent days. Oops) to a club on the downtown mall called the X-Lounge. There, I met up with even more people that I hadn't realized were in town. (I ended up losing my voice the next morning because I'd spent most of the night screaming delightedly in excitement and bellowing conversations to each other over the music.)

So that was my wonderful weekend interlude (if only I'd realized sooner that I had about eight more friends in town! Sigh.) -- which brings me to today's topic of Charlottesville's night life.

Let's not sugarcoat it. For a lot of us, it's our first time away from parents and we're bound to go quite a bit crazy. When we turn 21, we can go crazy legally. However, you might find that venues are quite lacking. This is one part of C'ville that I'm not too fond of. Other than a couple bars on the corner and a smattering on the downtown mall, you really have nothing else to choose from. Many students default to apartment or frat parties, but if you're looking for a place to dance in which the bass is thrumming through your bones and you won't get a noise complaint, you'll have to look hard. This is one of the advantages of a big city that C'ville lacks. This is not to say that our bars are boring though, there's still quite a few gems if you know where to go.

But then again, a surrounding city's nightlife really shouldn't be your main deciding factor in choosing a college. You've got the rest of your life to party, but you only have four short years for college.