Basements are Midwestern getaways. Stodgy adults whose living rooms display all the most serious coffee-table books and the most breakable lamps equip their basements with pingpong or pool tables and occasionally even bars. Teenagers go downstairs to watch movies and listen to music while getting into all kinds of trouble (often involving the bar) out of range of parent types. That's the kind of basement that exists at the Point. Upstairs, sporty people enjoy after-work beverages, chatting respectably. Downstairs, cigarette smoke fills the air around black-leather couches, and grown-ups who used to be weirdos relive their high school days. One night a week, they willingly -- eagerly! -- banish themselves to this basement. On Mondays, DJ Rico provides the soundtrack to a goth and industrial night, playing new wave records from the '80s and inspiring now-happy adults to dance with a kind of individualism and virtuoso not generally seen in local bars. Aside from that, these grown goths look and behave a lot like you and me. It's just that when they think back on the '80s, they remember the Cure and Depeche Mode, not Cyndi Lauper. Being misunderstood the first time around might have had its drawbacks (getting beat up, being sent home for dress-code violations), but now that we're all adults, it rules.
