Foam parties are hit with teens

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By Stephanie De Pasquale | Wednesday, June 11, 2008 6:40 PM CDT | () comments

Teenagers enjoy dancing in the foam on Tuesdays during Night Club Now at the Quad-City Sports Center, Davenport. (John Schultz/Quad-City Times) Buy this Photo

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More than 200 teens danced the night away, taking turns shaking it under a waterfall of soap bubbles that slowly filled the dance floor during Night Club Now’s first foam party of the summer.

The traveling party for teens has set up shop at the Quad-City Sports Center in Davenport and will host foam parties every Tuesday night in an ice rink that has been melted for the summer.

Bettendorf High School students Hannah Berntson, Krysten Sthlosser and Anna Dixon, all 17, were wet from head to barefooted toe after they danced under the foam stream in a hip-deep mound of bubbles. They all agree that the foam is the best part of the party.

“The foam is really fun and you can’t have a foam party anywhere else but at one of these things,” Sthlosser said. “And it’s really fun to dance under the foam when it’s all spraying on you.”

Berntson plans to come back to the foam parties several times throughout the summer.

“It’s the bomb,” Bernston said. “They play some good music and you just get to be crazy.”

The foam is created by pumping a water and soap mixture through a hose and into a fan which blows bubbles into the air and on the crowd.

Kevin Walker, Nightclub Now owner, got the idea for a foam party from a bar in Chicago and thought teens would love the concept.

“They just like to get wet and they feel like they’re in a big club,” Walker said. “I don’t see the big deal, I would never go in there, but they like it. They love it. That’s why we do it.”

Walker used to host Night Club Now parties for teens at various locations in the Quad-Cities about once a month before Energy, a nightclub for teens, opened in Moline in April. Now Walker’s plan is to only host foam parties during the summer.

“That’s why we used to do Night Club Now, because there was never a teen club,” Walker said. “I’m not going to compete with another club for 300 kids during the school year. During the summer we can do something that they can’t do, and we can do something fun.”

Although the first foam party drew in about 225 teens, Walker said by June 17, the parties should average 500 to 600 teenagers. Once the nights warm up, Walker is planning to move the foam parties outside to Modern Woodmen Park or in the Sports Center parking lot.

Walker said warmer weather also means the teens will start to come in bathing suits, and even the guys will don short shorts when they dance in the foam.

“They’re having fun, they love it,” Walker said. “They like being with their friends and they like winning free stuff and evidently they like Justin Timberlake.”

Night Club Now will host foam parties every Tuesday night from 8 to 11:30 p.m. through Aug. 11. Admission is $10 and open to teens ages 14 to 19. Coupons for $2 off the cover price are available at nightclubnow.com.

Stephanie De Pasquale can be contacted at (563) 333-2639 or sdepasquale@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.