A-Club
1 Sadovo-Karetnaya Ul.
Metro: Mayakovskaya
Tel. 972-1132
Fri. & Sat. 9 p.m. — 6 a.m.
Cover: none for club members, 100 rubles for others

Initially an exclusive artsy club, the A-Club has lost most of its bohemian crowd and become a fairly mainstream place in the past six months. The face control has accordingly become much more democratic. Has two stories, three reasonably priced bars, a large dance-floor, pool tables, a chill-out room with avant-garde walls and two TVs playing music channels. DJs treat the crowd of prevailingly average Europeans and middle-class Russians to some good-quality house.

B.B. King
4/2 Sadovaya-Samotyochnaya Ulitsa
Metro: Mayakovskaya
Tel. 299-8206
Open till 2 a.m. on weekdays and until the last client leaves on weekends
Cover: none on weekdays, 50 rubles on Thu. & Fri.

B.B. King caters to a respectable, older crowd interested in good food (dinner around 500 rubles) and good blues or rock 'n roll. Stylish interior, walls decorated with photos and autographs of Russian and Western blues greats. Afro-Russian cloak-room attendants support the blues style. Live concerts every Thursday; special parties on Fridays (beach party, Fender party, Latino music party, etc). Other days, it's open as a regular restaurant. Beers for 50 to 100 rubles. Discounts on drinks between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. weekdays. The only drawbacks are the tiny dancing space and the absence of a parking lot.

Baskerville Billiards Club
55 Leningradskoye Shosse
Metro: Vodny Stadion
Tel: 234-17901
2 p.m. — 5 a.m.
Cover: none

They say you don't have to line up to play a game of billiards here, even on a Friday night (whatever that suggests). There's a bar and restaurant – with beers for $3 to $4 – plus an open terrace. It's located next to a bowling alley. Offers live music free of charge, Thursday and Friday.

BELLS
51a Bolshaya Polyanka Ul.
Metro: Dobrininskaya
Tel: 951-4900
12:00 noon to 6 a.m.
Cover: 100 rubles for men, 50 rubles for women

In many ways the quintessential Russian club: loud, crappy music; a dance floor packed with frenzied, sweaty bodies; lots of menacing guys in black leather; but also plenty of hot women – i.e., a nice balance of danger and excitement. The number of young students means great pick-up opportunities for eazeballs. A half liter of beer costs 50 rubles.

Beverly Hills
1 Kudrinskaya Sq.
Metro: Barrikadnaya
Tel: 255-4013
Tuesday-Sunday; open 24 hours
Cover: None on eventless days; 150 rubles for females and 200 rubles for males on concert days.

Fashioned in the Beverly Hills style. Easy atmosphere, talk for uninhibited people. Beers & cocktails for $4. Euro-disco and modern rave, no rock or house. Live Russian jazz in the restaurant Thursday-Sunday. Male and female strippers. Casino.

Cabana
4 Raushkaya Naberezhnaya
Metro: Tretyakovskaya
Tel: 238-5006 / 5017

Home of the famous black male-stripper, Dillon, who once showed some Duma deputies how to "liven it up" with his contemporary dance performance of the Soviet national anthem. See him on Tuesday and Friday, when chicks get champagne and vodka for free! Mixed cocktails will set you back $7 to $8, but the happy hour is a marathon length from 6pm to 10pm, with 50 percent discounts.

CENTER
3 Kholodilny Per.
Metro: Tulskaya
Tel. 958-5887
12 p.m. — 12 a.m. weekdays, 10 a.m. — 6 a.m. weekends

Cover: 30 rubles on weekdays, 50 rubles on weekends and holidays – before 9 p.m. Nightly dancing 9 p.m. — 12 a.m. (11 p.m. — 6 a.m. weekends): 50 rubles for ladies, 80 rubles for gents. Center is a huge sports and amusement complex with a skating rink, a Q-zar range, billiards, arcades, a bowling alley, four bars and a restaurant (dinner around 300 rubles per person). A separate, supervised playground for small children (40 rubles on weekdays, 50 rubles weekends) allows parents to leave their kids behind and go enjoy themselves. The skating rink has a stage on the side and turns into a huge dance floor at night. Though the daytime Center is a customer-friendly children's world, its discos cater to Moscow's mass thug-with-little-black-purse audience and sometimes feature average pop singers onstage. High-quality lighting and a spacious floor are the disco's main advantages.

Cristal Night Club and Casino
38 Marksistskaya Ulitsa
Metro: Marksistskaya
Tel: 912-3554
Casino: 24 HOURS
Club: Wed. to Sun. from 10 p.m.; closed Mon. and Tues.
Cover: Casino, 240 rubles (includes chips of that amount);
Club, 480 rubles (access to casino and club included, as are chips of that amount)

The place provides free drinks, free buffet and free taxi ride home once you drop.

Dance Hall MDM
28 Komsomolsky prospekt (Moscow Palace of Youth)
M. Frunzenskaya
Tel: 245-8423
Cover: 50-75 rubles (ordinary program), 200 rubles or more (celebrity performance)

This is Moscow's biggest and the most disgusting night club. The main hall's interior changes with the arrival of each new party-host. One thing does not change — the huge dance floor which is continually overcrowded and dominated by thugs. Those who are not gorilla-types are scared off to the restrooms, cloakroom or lobby. The VIP area is more often than not populated by people who are far from ‘very important.' No dress code. Everybody is admitted, except those who are very drunk. MDM is a very cheap place, hence the attraction to teenagers.Parties are normally held on Sandays from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m., sommertimes on Fridays and Saturdays.Parking a car near the place presents a serious problem.

DIAMOND
5 Stramynsky Per.
Metro: Sokolniki
Tel. 269-9615
Tue.-Sun. 6 p.m. — 1 a.m.
Cover: 50 rubles to 80 rubles, or 30 rubles to 50 rubles with a flyer

One of the cheapest and loosest rock-clubs in Moscow, Diamond occupies a two-story building and has a concert room with some pretty bad acoustics, a bar with Baltika beer for 15 to 22 rubles, hot snacks for 10 to 40 rubles, a pool table and the dirtiest WC in the city The interior is dark and obscure, though it goes well with the fluorescent-painted walls. Diamond is a favorite start-up place for new rock, punk and grunge-bands, though it occasionally hosts celebrities like Time Out or Va-Bank. The crowd is young and alternative, from punks and metal-heads to rockabillies to bikers.

Embassy Club
8/10 Bryusov Pereulok
Metro: Pushkinskaya
Tel: 229-7185

Drinks are expensive for the average young and upwardly mobile, but the snacks are reasonably priced. Have a soup and drink it too. The jazz band is loud and mediocre. You must sit face-to-face in couple-facing-couple arrangement with strangers blowing cigar smoke in your face or looking hungrily at your company. You can't help looking at the other guy's girl without putting tremendous strain on your neck and talking to your date at 180 degrees. The kind of place that fat, rich Americans frequent, trying to impress young waitresses – and their Russian distributors – with their knowledge of cigars. The service is polite, prompt and professional.

Fellini's
16 Olimpiisky Prospekt
Olimpiisky Sports Arena
Metro: Prospekt Mira
Tel: 974-2500
9 p.m. — 6 a.m.
Cover: 100 rubles for females, 150 rubles for males on regular nights, around 500 rubles on special nights.

An expensive show and disco club. Plays the latest pop music and offers concerts by Russian pop stars, plus special shows and presentations, including erotic shows. Beers 50 rubles and up. All meant for big spenders. Hemingway-type loners and rock fans have no place in this part of town.

Forte
18 Bolshaya Bronnaya Ul.
Metro: Tverskaya
Tel: 202-8833
Cover: 100 rubles Wed.-Sat.

The music is usually pretty good jazz or blues, and the Dixieland jazz is cookin! You can eat for around $25, and beer costs from 90 to 110 rubles. Very cozy and has a laid-back atmosphere for hanging out. Free but unprotected parking.

Four Rooms
4 Raushskaya Naberezhnaya
Metro: Tretyakovskaya
no credit cards; no metal detector
Music: funk, hip-hop, jazz, house (mixed) LOUD

Each of the four rooms has a different decor. Room No. 1 is dark and loud and disco-balled; room No. 2 is a small, blue wine cellar with a bar; room No. 3 is a cozy dining room; and room No. 4, ladies and gentlemen, has billiards – for 35 rubles an hour, and at lunchtime, for the amazing price of 10 rubles an hour!

Garage
15/2 Tverskaya
Metro: Pushkinskaya
Tel: 209-1848
Around the clock
Major credit cards accepted

Look for the ass-end of a pink Cadillac over a metal door. Super-hip interior with all sorts of car and garagey stuff. You will get the ass-end of the face control if you show up in tennis shoes. DJs from Moscow's hippest radio stations spin a variety of music with an emphasis on house. Often crowded on weekend nights, usually relaxing during the day, and always ultra-cool in the wee hours. Loud as hell. Put down half liters of Sibirskaya Korona or shots of Smirnoff (70 rubles each) at the two bars. The cozy restaurant offers good late-night fare, like Beavis and Butthead nachos (120 rubles) and chicken wings (200 rubles), as well as nice entrees, such as chicken curry (160 rubles).

Golden Palace
15 3rd Yamskovo Polya
Metro: Belorusskaya
Tel: 212-3909/41
Cover: Men pay 250 rubles before 8 p.m. and 500 rubles afterward, which can be exchanged for chips

This gilded palace is for controllers of the means of production, roulette addicts, and expensive women in love with expensive bouquets and champagne. A man with a machine gun once showed our restaurant reviewer the exit in no uncertain terms when he tried to crash a party for Moscow's Svetskaya Lvitsa. Daily entertainment includes live pop and rock music, striptease and a disco. In the restaurant on the second floor (with a good view of the casino below), dinner costs around $50 and beer 80 to 95 rubles. Polite staff and toilets with bouquets of flowers produce a pleasant impression. Free, AK-47 guarded parking.

Gramophone
3 Pushechnaya ul. (enter through the arch beside the Burda Moden store)
Tel. number is kept secret!
Open: Friday and Saturday from 11 p.m. until 6 a.m.
Cover: $5

This club is very reminiscent of its parent, Propaganda although Gramophone does not feature chill-outs hanging from the ceiling where you can watch the dancing, nor does it offer much by way of food. A bar occupies one of the club's three areas offering beers for 60 rubles, vodkas for 50 rubles and whiskeys for 75 rubles. Another two areas accommodate a chill-out room and a dance floor.

The Last rop/Poslednyaya Kaplya
4 Strastnoy Bulvar(through the arch)
Metro: Pushkinskaya
Tel: 292-7549/7681
11 a.m. – 6 a.m.
Cover: none
Credit cards: after New Year's

This relaxed bar with pool tables has a warm, apres-ski feel to it. The crowd here is a little more sophisticated and a little older than you get at nearby 's or the Garage. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, the place gets hoppin' with live jazz, rock ‘n' roll or country. Good selection of draft beers includes Pilsner (85 rubles), Murphy's (100 rubles) and four kinds of Czech beer.The classy restaurant serves food for cold climates: "Wings of the Soviets," or buffalo wings (150 rubles), "Silence of the Lambs" (300 rubles), and for youngsters in love with the world's most lovable screen piglet, "Babe" sausage (150 rubles). Weekday business lunch (98 rubles).

Kino
16 Olimpiisky Prospekt, Olimpiisky Sports Arena
Metro: Prospekt Mira
Tel: 937-7872
7 p.m. - when the last client drops; closed Sun.
Cover: none, except for live music shows Mon. and Thu.: free with club card, otherwise $30 – $40.

Easy to bump into Russian movie stars, but a half liter of Warsteiner for $7?! Maybe you're paying for the nifty cinema knick-knacks, like old movie cameras and Chaplin posters.

Krizis Zhanra
4 Bolshoi Vlasievsky Per.
Metro: Kropotkinskaya
Tel: 241-1928
noon-midnight
Cover: none

This place's reputation of a sophisticated retro keller for intellectuals has not faded despite dozens of later replicas. The crowd is still refined and pacific, the music is still good, the room is still tiny, and the management and bouncers are still friendly. Food is cheap (35 to 100 rubles), unlike the drinks (beer ranging from 45 to 100 rubles).

Manhattan Express
Ulitsa Varvarka
Hotel (northwestern entrance)
Metro: Kitai-Gorod
Tel: 298-5354
Cover: 50-250 rubles

An outdated dance club packed with pop lovers and much honored by Russian pop stars. Unless you find a seat on one of the few settees or in a separate restaurant room, you've no choice but to dance or lean on the bar. Beers from 60 rubles and up. Cover depends on the popularity of the singer performing.

Mesto Vstrechi (Meeting Place)
9/8 Maly Gnizdnikovsky Per. Building 7
Metro: Tverskaya
Tel: 229-2373
Cover: 50 rubles after 11:00 p.m. on Sat.

On Saturdays, representatives of the great tradition of British pop music take the stage, and the disco rocks all night long. Thursdays are for jazz. The club regularly has different theme nights and other events like the recent party in honor of Hemingway's 100th birthday. Naturally, entrance to such events is by invitation only, for you wannabe freeloaders.

Monte Kristo Billiards Club
4/2 Preobrazhenskaya Ploshchad
Metro: Preobrazhenskaya Ploshchad
Tel: 963-3768
24 HOURS
Cover: none

Offers billiards and pool tables. Russian billiards costs 180 rubles per hour at the table, one game of pool costs 25 rubles. There's a bar and restaurant, with beers for 35 rubles and up and meals for 90 rubles and up.

Niagara
55 Leninsky Prospekt
Metro: Leninsky Prospect
Tel: 135-9538
6 p.m. - 6 a.m.
Cover: none, except for Fridays & Saturdays: 30 rubles

Non-stop dancing club. Dancing every night. Male striptease Wednesdays & Thursdays, mixed striptease Fridays. Special dance shows Saturdays. Pop and house muzak unlimited. Beers 40 to 50 rubles, meals 80 rubles and up.

Orakul Bozhestvennoi Butylki
1/13 Sredneovchinnikovski Per.
Metro: Novokuznetskaya
Tel: 953-0556
8 p.m. — when the last customer leaves
Cover: 60 rubles on live music nights, free otherwise

Fashioned in a trendy woodsy style, the interior resembles an ancient, Irish log cabin furnished for a big feast. Incredibly cozy and stylish. The place reeks of bohemia, packed with emancipated femme students and their young middle-class admirers. A beer is 30 rubles.

Oranzhevyi Galstuk
55 Leninsky Prospekt
Metro: Leninsky Prospect
Tel: 135-9538
6 p.m. — 6 a.m.
Cover: none, except for Fridays & Saturdays: 30 rubles

Nightly dance club with male striptease Wednesdays & Thursdays, mixed striptease Fridays. Special dance shows Saturdays. Unlimited pop and house music unlimited. Beers 40 to 50 rubles, meals 80 rubles and up.

Papa John's
22 Myasnitskaya Ul.
Metro: Chistye Prudy
Tel: 755-9554
6 p.m. — 6 a.m.
Cover: none on weekdays; Fri. and Sat. 50 rubles for ladies, 150 rubles for gentlemen

It's all the rage since it managed to reincarnate the wildest aspects of the Hungry Duck. Live music shows every day (mainly rock and funk), followed by "fun" contests and DJ music (Latino, funk and house). Seventies nights on Thurs. Beers for $3 -$4.

Paris Life
3 Karetny Ryad (in the Hermitage garden)
íel: 209-4524
Cover: 90 – 130 rubles on Fri. and Sat.

Great performers like Rondo, Moralny Kodeks, Mango Mango, Mechtat and others. Music starts at midnight. Disco party in effect every night. The bar and billiards room is open daily from 7pm to 7am; the restaurant from 12pm to 7am. Beer costs 40 rubles, with 50 percent off drinks on Fridays and Saturdays.

Park (inside Gorky Park in the building of the Green Theater)
Pushkinskaya Naberezhnaya
9 Krymsky Val
Metro: Park Kultury
Tel: 237-1069

The coolest things about this club are the flying saucer DJ booth, a kind of pulpit and cockpit that appears to levitate, and the transparent sections of the floor on the second floor.

PLAZMA
54a Novocheryomushkinskaya Ul. (Tbilisi Cinema)
Metro: Profsoyuznaya
Tel. 128-7603 11 p.m. — 6 a.m.
Cover: 80 rubles, 60 rubles with a flyer; 100 rubles after 1 a.m.

One of Moscow's most laid-back techno-clubs, still abiding by the do-as-you-please principle. Has a fluorescent interior, several rooms (including a V.I.P. room), two dance floors, two bars (beers affordable) and an easy-going clientele, mostly high-school and university students. Special nights present show performances and live techno and trance music from DJs like FLY, Solntse, Shaman and Quantum. Not recommended for those who hate loud music and rave culture.

PLEKHANOV CLUB
36 Stremyanny Per. Building 3
Metro: Serpukhovskaya
Tel: 237-9209
Cover: 40 to 60 rubles for live music

At first glance, it may seem like a bohemian hangout, but customers are mainly employees of nearby businesses The club used to feature deafeningly loud rock, but has shifted to jazz, art-rock, and acoustic guitar. There are intriguing special effects, like the sudden appearance of fairy tale images on the wall. The club has three monitors displaying soccer matches and, if Spartak or the Russian national team wins with a score of 2-0 or higher, all fans get a glass of vodka on the house. Dinner: 300-400 rubles. Beers: 20-60 rubles. Business-lunch: 95 rubles from noon until 4 p.m.