"Everybody Loves Saturday Night," mirage or reality

Accra, July 23, GNA - The popular calypso song "Everybody Loves Saturday Night," by Lord Kitchener became an acceptable lifestyle of most Ghanaians as they horde entertainment centres to savour the Saturday night pudding.

Most Ghanaians lived under the vague thought that after a long spell of work, hustle and bustle during the week, it was important to restore the long-drawn-out energy of the body, on Saturday nights with amusement at night clubs, restaurants, theatres, beaches or hocked to other nocturnal activities.

This lifestyle seems to have staggered in recent times, a Ghana News Agency (GNA) night exploration of Accra revealed a lack of invigoration, which operators put at the doorstep of the high economic conditions, the increase in armed robbery and the swell of Christian Charismatic activities in the capital.

Night life is becoming synonymous with promiscuity hence the reduction of its appeal to the middle and upper classes, the flamboyant and affluent Kenneth Tsekumah, General Supervisor at the Vienna City Entertainment Complex in the heart of the city told GNA. He said Vienna City had step-out to change the face of nightlife in the city and the country with attractive entertainment packages to negate the perception and rejuvenate the "Everybody Loves Saturday Night," ecstasy.

Mr Tsekumah said in spite of operational challenges, the Ghanaian entertainment industry operators also fail to offer "tailored to fit" products for their customers, who had became sophisticated. He said, "we failed to recognise the influx of home video, collapse of cinema centres and the general effect of information technological changes and its impact on the entertainment industry". The greatest bottleneck facing the entertainment industry is labelling, branding, packaging and marketing especially of pub life, "we must move it from the perception of den of prostitution to home of excitement."

Vienna City Entertainment Complex has facilities such restaurant, consul games, pool table, poker machine - a card game in which the players bet on the value of their hands (of five cards), the bets forming a pool to be taken by the player who remains after all others have dropped out of the betting or who holds the highest hand. Electronic roulette - a gaming game played by rolling a small ball around a shallow bowl with an inner disk revolving in the opposite direction: the ball finally comes to rest in one of the red or black, numbered compartments into which this disk is divided, thus determining the winner.

Life at Boomerangs Night Clubs, Heavy's Spot, Abrantee Spot, Jockers Night Clubs, and the Glenns were not different. A palpable experience GNA observed during the exploration was the "titillating" show of some ladies to the soothing melodious resonance of music at the clubs.

Some of the ladies told the GNA, "we dress to fit the occasion, some of us are here to entertain and be entertained" while others on purely business terms said "there is no other way to attract our targets than to appear exotic to push the men to a highly susceptible sexual stimulation point immediately he steals a glance". 23 Jul 06