Apr 09, 2004  | COMMENTS     

While nightlife options for straight black women seem to be plentiful, for area African American lesbians there are only a handful of club options on any given night. And they are often noisy and overcrowded.

From this lack of variety Inhertwined Entertainment sprung forth about 18 months ago as the party promotion company responsible for the popular Merge happy hours, which are held every second Friday of the month at Club Daedalus, in downtown Washington.

Smiling women immediately greet guests as they enter the club, which has a dress code that discourages jeans and athletic wear. Inside, they lounge in cushy chairs or at one of two bars, nibbling hors d’oeuvres and sipping drinks.

Women groove to house and R&B music on a sunken, mirror-surrounded dance floor in the center of Club Daedalus. Others flock to the recently opened VIP lounge, complete with expansive couches and, on occasion, chocolate covered strawberries.

Fights, a common occurrence at some other lesbian-oriented nightspots, are unheard of at Inhertwined events.

The gatherings are all inspired by the vision of Tara “TJ” Tolbert and Alana Keigh Futrell, who created the party promotion company in 2002. Jay Morrow, 31, would later join the women, handling promotions.

Then new to the local lesbian party scene, Tolbert says she and Futrell, both 26, visited established spots such as Wet, which holds monthly gatherings at a club in Southeast D.C. with exotic dancers and wet underwear contests, and Delta Elite, a club in Northeast D.C. that has long been home to Friday evening parties for black gay women. But they would often leave these nightspots drenched in sweat.

“We wanted to be in a place where we could dress up and feel comfortable and not stick out,” Tolbert says.

The answer, they thought, was to start their own party. Of course, it would need a catchy name.

“We wanted something that induced a sensuality — but a subtle sensuality,’’ she says. “We wanted to make it known we were for women.”

The result was “Inhertwined,” a play on the word intertwined, which means to join or become joined by twining together. Later, the promoters would use the word mixture as inspiration in naming their party series Merge.

“I went to Blackplanet.com [a Web site with entertainment news and personal ads for African Americans] and started kind of putting out ‘coming soon’ information on my page,’’ Tolbert says, acknowledging that her first attempts yielded few leads. “One particular young lady came to my site and told her friend.”

That friend turned out to be Stephanie Robinson, then purveyor of Between Friends, a lesbian-owned club on U Street in Northwest D.C. that is temporarily closed following a recent fatal stabbing on the premises during a night reserved for mostly straight fans of go-go music.

With Robinson’s contacts and using an Internet-based company model, the women were soon in business, Morrow says.

They held the first Merge in December 2002 at Acropolis, a restaurant-lounge in Northwest D.C., on Connecticut Ave. That night, Tolbert scanned the club, hopeful women would soon come. They did — all 32 of them.

The promoters would end up paying the club $300 that night, the difference between what they earned and the bar’s $1,500 minimum profit.

Still, they personally thanked each of the women and looked forward to the next event.

“With good atmosphere and good food, you’re gonna tell your friends,’’ Tolbert says. “And that’s what happened the next month.”

They relocated to Vermont Avenue in April 2003, and continued their success with upscale appeal in a party scene that often sees more football jerseys and Timberland boots than sexy blouses and pumps.

Merge also offers other substantial differences. Rather than an all-night party, it takes places from 6 to 11 p.m., which Tolbert says is ideal for women who might want to try other nightspots afterwards. The parties are also just once a month, something Futrell says helps preserve the “special event” nature.

But creating a weekly Merge event has been curtailed by the lack of an available venue. “We’re still looking, but that’s a hard thing in D.C.,” she adds.

Both features also help attract women who might not go out often.

“We have a lot of women in our patronage that are like that,” Tolbert says.

The women also pride themselves on injecting a touch of class into the scene, distributing business card-sized flyers, and enforcing a strict dress code that increases the entrance fee for patrons in jeans. Heading a small street-based advertising team, Morrow says she targets women who look like they meet the group’s target market: ...