The Up and Down Club is an alcohol-free dance hall in the Greenwood area for the under-21 crowd, although plenty of 21-and-over people go as well. The music is exclusively big-band/swing stuff, and to match, the dancing there is primarily lindy-hop and east-coast swing. They are open Tuesday from 9:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m, and Friday and Saturday nights from 10:00 to 2:00. I have been told that they offer some sort of lessons on Tuesday nights at 8:00. The crowd there is energetic and lively, and not surprisingly, pretty young. I found the overall atmosphere to be very relaxed, friendly, and casual. Everybody there seemed to be having a genuinely good time. The dress code is quite relaxed; I saw everything from folks in silk shirts, slacks, and spats, to t-shirts, jeans and tennis shoes. A hint, though: the decor is heavy on the blacklights, so if you're into wearing dark clothes, make sure they're lint-free. Lint has this annoying property of being brightly fluorescent, and shows up against dark clothes like nobody's business.

On the plus side, the DJs play a lively sort of music. The songs are several minutes long on average--plenty of time to get into a nice groove and get some aerobic exercise at the same time. The music isn't too loud, unless you position yourself right next to one of the speakers. The $5 cover charge is quite reasonable, which appeals to the under-21 crowd and anybody else without a lot of disposable income. And, while there is no alcohol on the premises, the drinks they do serve--italian sodas, ordinary sodas, coffee, and water--are free.

But no place is perfect, and on the minus side, the dance floor itself is quite small at just about 1000 square feet. It can get pretty crowded with about 15 couples, so leads are definitely encouraged to be comfortable with their floorcraft. On the other hand, swing and lindy aren't travelling dances, so the small floor size isn't as much of a problem as it may sound. In my opinion, they should tear out the pool table area and make the dance floor bigger. I think they could easily triple the floor space if they did that and rearranged the standing-around space a little bit. As well, I'd much prefer if there was no smoking allowed, but only a few people there were smoking and the smoke level was really quite tolerable--better than your average Denny's, for example.