The Fluxx interior was designed by Davis Krumins.

Copyright©2006 sandiego.com, Inc.

The much-anticipated opening weekend of new downtown dance club Fluxx was surrounded by hype and hyperbole, buckets of ballyhoo and considerable comparisons to flashy Las Vegas and Miami venues.

Could any new Gaslamp Quarter spot live up to the high expectation level set?

Bathroom gridlock will need to be addressed. But pre-opening lip service at least paid off in high foot traffic. By 7:30 p.m. on Friday night, the general admission line was at least 100 strong, stretching half a block down Fourth Avenue—and doors didn’t open to the public until 9 p.m.

By 9:40 p.m., the club had hit capacity (902). The centerpiece of Fluxx (designed with detailed attention to unorthodox textures and colors) is a circular dance floor. Management tapped Sound Investment Audio to create a custom sound system for dancers. Cost: nearly a million dollars. The quality is noticeable.

That sound system has more than a dozen 21-inch subwoofers and 50,000 watts of high fidelity power. The all-wood dance floor literally vibrates as the sound system delivers bass (insert your own “vibrating wood” joke).

Five times throughout the night, liquid nitrogen tanks blast out cooling air—literally whiting out the room. But those blasts are occluded fronts to the Saturday night storm whipped up by San Diego native and Super Bowl winner Reggie Bush. The New Orleans Saints running back tossed 1,000 one-dollar bills into the air to “make it rain” during a Fluxx light show.

That green dusting could have paid the cover for 50 Fluxx patrons. The door will be collecting $20 per person on Friday and Saturday nights “for now, until special events change that,” says spokesperson Lauren Clifford.

It’s possible at least one “guest” will never pay a cover (and he’s not even in the NFL). Fluxx is in the location previously occupied by Aubergine, and a former bartender reports the building is haunted. He says a ghost was blamed for loud noises and knocked-over chairs.

Fluxx general manager Dave Renzella has heard the rumor that “the upstairs office is haunted by a Chinese man who died there. No sightings or strange noises...yet.”

If this Chinese ghost spreads the word about Fluxx—perhaps to the purported lost souls of the nearby Horton Grand Hotel—the message will be this: It’s the hot new haunt for rattling your chains and shaking your BOO-ty.