DJ bars get a Manhattan-style makeover

Do you remember the time when DJ bars felt like a brave new world? It's like clubbing, we thought. But with better drinks. And you can get a seat.

Soon, though, even nondescript chain bars like The Fine Line were booking crappy local record spinners to give their venues an aura of cool.

And now that almost every "style" bar in London seems to have a bloke with a record label T-shirt and a week-old beard in a corner playing funky house, the whole concept has started to look a bit tired.

Mercifully, some notable exceptions to the glut of mediocrity have been starting to arrive. North London, for example, found the DJ bar it had been crying out for with the excellent (if now rather rammed) Lock Tavern in Camden. More recently, the Big Chill House in King's Cross has kept the flag flying up north with its lovely three-storey, multi-roomed Georgian surroundings rocking from noon until 4am on Fridays and Saturdays.

The east has fought back with Sosho, Tabernacle and Shoreditch's T Bar. The money saved on smartening the place up was spent, I'm guessing, on the fat Funktion 1 speakers that stand proudly around this emporium of dance.

Check out the Sonic night this Saturday for a taste of tough electro as Sydney's Ben Korbel hits the decks. The last time I saw Ben play was at a house party over in Oz. He was DJing in a builder's hard hat and wellingtons. In the cold light of day it's tricky to explain why, but believe me, it seemed perfectly reasonable at 6am on a sunny Sydney morning.

Now the trail is being blazed by south London, as another seminal DJ bar gets a makeover.

Clapham's White House re-opens this weekend and it's clear that manager Jan Roberts has a good idea of where DJ bars go next. Quite simply, they become "Manhattan" style clubs. Gone is the fine dining menu, replaced by dim sum light bites. There's a brand new dancefloor on the second floor, while the downstairs dancefloor gets an updated DJ booth and powerful sound system. It's clubbing with cocktails. It's comfy seats combined with chest-rattling basslines. And it's arguably the next step in London's nightlife revolution - the stylish "club bar".

It's heartening to see these changes. Bar owners thought that we would appreciate posh food and table service, when all we really wanted was a sexier, smarter place to dance all night. The power of the people has prevailed.