There is no shortage of themed nightclubs in the Los Angeles area.  On weekends, you can find pretty much any type of club experiences imaginable, and now thanks to Bernie Bergman of Nerds Like Us and his friends/partners, Club Cosplay is happening too. Opening officially on Saturday June 28th, Club Cosplay (at the M15 Concert Bar & Grill in Corona, CA)is going to offer attendees a safe place to enjoy each other’s costumed company, and various nerd-geek themed entertainments.

Bernie was nice enough to answer some questions about how the idea of a cosplay themed club came about, and what his vision is for the success of the idea:

“This is meant to be a nightclub experience with all the usual happenings of a nightclub (live and mixed music, drinks, VIP booths, bottle service, etc…) but in an environment geared towards and ran by Cosplayers and other nerd-culture supporters. There’s a code of conduct called Nerd-safe, which will be strictly enforced to protect against any form of poor conduct or exploitation. We encourage costumes or other fandom-repping high fashion (kinda like Castle Corsetry pieces),  however it’s totally acceptable to dress in whatever you’re comfortable in to be in a nightclub. We’re giving away $500 in the professional division of the costume contest. The contest is being judged by some very well respected people in the scene including Ivy Doomkitty, Dave Turner, Lauren Bergman, and Fanboy Brandon (Hillock). Live acts include Jedi Elvis (Cosplayer Eric Caijut who does Elvis impersonating and changes the lyrics to be SW themed… think “dancing’ the the Death Star rock”) and action-band Songhammer which does metal songs about MMO gaming. Songhammer won the BlizzCon battle of the bands last year.

I’ve wanted to do something like this for a while, and Ivan (the promoter at M15, the venue in Corona) started talking about ‘who should host a cosplay nightclub’ on his Facebook and my name came up a bunch so we linked up. He was going to move forward with the idea and I went into a conversation with him to ascertain if he was a legit nerd and wanting to do this right or if he was just like many of the others that have slapped the word ‘cosplay’ in the title of an event to draw attention from our phenomenon. What was supposed to be a 30 min conversation was more like 2 hours and we covered a lot of ground and I got the impression that Ivan was legit and wanted to try and do this thing as right as he could so I put my chips on the table and came onboard as an organizer and as the MC of the club

The goal is to provide a regular (monthly) destination event for Cosplayers to go to for that fun hyped level of socialization and entertainment above and beyond what we get at a con. We deserve our own party and we’re about to get it.”

So if you have the chance, head on down to Corona for this event, and share your photos with us, we’d love to know how their opening night goes!

ABOUT >> Mary Anne Butler

• ACCOUNT NAME >> Mab
• BIO >> Mary Anne Butler (Mab) is a reporter and photographer from San Francisco California. She is a lifelong geek, huge music nerd, occasionally cosplays at conventions, does Renaissance Faires, and in general lives the life of a True Believer. She may be short, but she makes up for it with a loud voice.
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