Zero Gravity is a teen dance club, but it is far from a glorified sock hop with kiddie cocktails or a magnet for young gang members to strut their stuff.
The business, open since January 1996 in unincorporated Naperville, is on many nights a turbocharged house of bass with all the flesh and flash of an adult nightclub, sans booze. The crowd shows up to sweat and be seen.
Paul Malek has proved if you build a better club for teens, kids from as far away as Indiana and Wisconsin will beat a path to your door and gladly pay the $11 cover charge.
A Chicago native, Malek is the unabashed promoter and hands-on co-owner of Zero Gravity. His recipe for success is to treat his customers the way many of their parents hesitate to–as adults.
“The real bottom line is that I like to see people having fun,” Malek said sitting in the back office of the business he has built with his brother, Mario, and friend Peter Sherman. “Sometimes I just stand in the corner and cross my arms and watch people forget about their problems. We have the real thing here.”
With a club capacity of more than 800, security is a chief concern for Malek and his associates. The club has a strict dress code, metal detectors and an 18-member security staff that on most nights includes two uniformed officers of the DuPage County Sheriff’s Police.
Whatever Malek is doing on the security front is apparently working. An officer on hand on a recent night said fights are so rare he could not remember one he had to break up.
A register provided by the sheriff’s office shows two reported fights and one battery charge as a result of incidents at the club in 1996. One fight and three battery charges have been recorded in 1997, along with one charge of marijuana possession.
Identification is checked at the door, which opens at 7 p.m., and those who prove they are 17 or older are given wristbands. Those who do not have a wristband are herded out about 11 p.m. as encouragement to comply with local curfew laws. The club closes at 4 a.m.
Zero Gravity’s success led to the opening of a second club in Rockford last spring. Now Malek is looking to export what may be DuPage County’s hottest entertainment formula to a Rush Street location in downtown Chicago.
The 10,000-square-foot club is open on Friday and Saturday nights for most of the year, with other nights added during summer vacation or holiday weeks. Malek, who grew up in the restaurant business, said his goal has been to create a high-energy environment where about 90 percent of the clientele is ages 16 to 21. Teens 15 years old and younger cannot enter without a parent.
Those waiting in a line with more than 50 of their peers to get into the club on a recent night said Zero Gravity has shattered the image of the suburbs as a place where fun disappears after nightfall. Teens of many races and ethnic backgrounds had made the trip to the club at the southwest corner of Illinois Highway 59 and 75th Street from Antioch and Chicago’s North Side.
Earl Speechley of Naperville, 16, was one who said the club has evolved into a true stage for the young and hip. The club offers the latest dance and techno sounds mixed by disc jockeys.
“You get a lot of exclusives who come here,” Speechley said. “But some people go in and don’t dance and don’t like it. They’re the ones who head straight for the movie theaters.”
Eighteen-year-old Jeremy Gulledge of Bolingbrook said teens think the club is cool because they are left alone to dance and be with their friends. Many said they regularly drive past several closer clubs to get to Zero Gravity.
The club’s electronic strength, with its ability to deliver sound at concert decibels, is legendary among teens. The 250-square-foot DJ booth and its 15 miles of cables, which includes digital-editing capabilities, controls a 2-kilowatt sound system.
Jeff Andrews, morning show producer and dance music coordinator for radio station B96, said Zero Gravity’s combination of sound, lighting and atmosphere is almost a guaranteed winner among area teens. On some occasions, B96 disc jockeys such as Bad Boy Bill are on hand to show off their latest mixes for the crowd.
“I wish I had some place like this to go when was 16 years old,” Andrews said. “The kind of environment they produce offers everything and more than most 21-and-over clubs do.”
