San Francisco’s Temple nightclub is giving new meaning to doing the Electric Slide. 

 

This year the club plans to equip its dancefloor with crystal piezoelectric sensors that are charged by shimmying, shaking, and boogeying. “When a stress is placed on the crystals, an electrical pulse is created that we can feed into the club’s grid system,” says Mike Zuckerman, Temple’s director of sustainability. Zuckerman says the club will also put in an LED screen to display how much power dancers are generating; the club may even give bonuses to DJs who rack up the most energy.

 

Temple’s not alone in its endeavors: The nightclub joins a growing group of eco hotspots in New York, Chicago, Rotterdam, and Tokyo. With traditional nightclubs consuming about 150 times more energy a year than a four-person household, hopefully other venues will follow Temple’s lead.

 

The piezoelectric system is not the first of Temple’s pioneering eco features, which also include an outdoor vertical garden, kitchen grease donation for biofuel production, and workshops to empower budding conservationists. Cocktails are mixed with organic juices, and everything is recycled or composted — even the drinking straws. It’s enough to make any greenie want to get her groove on.  

 

Story by Eric Demby. This article originally appeared in Plenty in April 2008.

 

Copyright Environ Press 2008