salsa in Missouri?

[Sagitta]

I'm probably going to be in St Louis, Missouri late April 2006, and might pass through Kansas city and Kansas city/kansas. I'm particularly interested in comments of personal experiences...rather then websites, which I can easily find.

[salsera_alemana]

Sagitta,

My experience dates more than 3 years back. You don't want URLs but check this one out for the venues that play salsa: http://www.salsanoche.com/start.htm. And I recommend to you to call Howard Carney (his phone number is listed on the web site) or write him an email. He is a nice guy and he basically has developed the salsa scene in Kansas City in the past years. My husband and I lived outside of KC from 1999 until 2002 and basically stopped going out dancing because the DJs always "sucked". It might have changed, I have no idea. The Oasis club I cannot recommend, the music was terrible (I know you are salsero and like your salsa, so do we)! And the crowd was not too appealing, especially on Saturdays.

The Madrid Theater is a wonderful venue! It is an old theater that was renovated in 2001, with a huge ballroom and a stage, wooden floor, no smoking in the ballroom, only in the foyer and at the bar, it is just beautiful!!! At the beginning a friend of ours played the music and it was OK, but then another DJ took over and that was it! Awful music. And now they seem to play Latin music only once a month, so I don't know if it is still worth it.

The Beaumont and the Westport Beach Club are right next to each other, they are not bad places but the music was just as bad, always the same 2 or 3 DJs. One was DJ Ringo who played almost only Colombian salsa. The other's name I don't know.

El Caribe is a restaurant, nothing special dancewise.

St. Louis: I went out twice in St. Louis, it was not much different to KC. Here a URL with some clubs: http://www.salsapower.com/cities/us/stlouis.htm. I looked them up to remember where we went. I was at Club Vida on two different occasions (1999 and 2002), nothing special, it is in a fairly stuffy basement. And I was at a place somewhere in the bar/restaurant district near the water near downtown, but I forgot the name of the place. This was in 1999 and this place is not listed on the website above. That place was a little better musicwise and had a big dance floor.

So don't put up your hopes.