Willie McBride's appeared to be your standard watering hole last Wednesday night. Between sipping pints of domestic beer and nibbling on chicken wings, casually dressed customers watched the Yankees break their four-game losing streak with a 12-1 win over the Oakland A's while Dave Matthews crooned about sex and seduction. In the back room, however, things were anything but ordinary, unless you're a member of the Hoboken Swing Scene.
Willie McBride's appeared to be your standard watering hole last Wednesday night. Between sipping pints of domestic beer and nibbling on chicken wings, casually dressed customers watched the Yankees break their four-game losing streak with a 12-1 win over the Oakland A's while Dave Matthews crooned about sex and seduction. In the back room, however, things were anything but ordinary, unless you're a member of the Hoboken Swing Scene.

Behind a set of closed doors at the end of the long wooden bar, dozens of swing dancers wearing soft-soled saddle shoes lindy hopped, jitterbugged and jack 'n' jilled to big band ballads for over three hours.

Established last summer by Jersey City resident Earl Hicks, the Hoboken Swing Scene is comprised of approximately 100 twenty to fifty-something swingers determined to promote the dance in New Jersey. The group gathers every Wednesday night at Willie McBride's (616 Grand St., Hoboken) for beginner and intermediate lessons followed by a three-hour open dance.

Despite last week's stifling heat and oppressive humidity, nearly 70 swingers - many traveling more than 25 miles - packed the lacquered dance floor. According to Lisa Cauda, one of the Scene's founding members, only 30 percent of Hoboken Swingers actually live in Hudson County. Each week members travel from as far as Hackensack, Morristown and Edison to swing dance in the back of a Hoboken bar.

"We get a lot of walk-ins from Hoboken," said Cauda. "But most of our regulars travel to get here because there aren't many swing dance venues in New Jersey. "

Carolyne Ruffilo, who heard about the Swing Scene through a friend of a friend, has been commuting from Wayne every Wednesday since April.

"I hate when I have something to do on Wednesday nights," she said, straightening her hair after a spin on the floor. "I usually cancel plans so I can come here."

While there has been controversy over the origins of swing dancing - some say that the dance is a derivation of the Texas Tommy while others claim it came from the Charleston - few people argue over the lineage of the lindy hop, the original swing dance. Developed in New York City nightclubs in the 1920s, the lindy hop was named after Charles Lindbergh's historic flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Legend has it that a young dancer named Frankie "Musclehead" Manning officially coined the term when he told a reporter, "I'm flying just like the Lindy," after a performance at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem.

Thanks in part to Doug Liman's 1996 independent film Swingers, the fashion and fad has recently come back in vogue. Manhattan nightclubs are once again overflowing with martini-drinking men and women wearing vintage rags and humming Count Basie.

Earl Hicks, who began seriously swing dancing in the early '90s long before Liman's film was released, has developed his own theory to explain the recent resuscitation. "Our current generation has been so involved with computers and technology that we have neglected human interactions," he said. "Swing dancing allows you to go back to a time when things were much simpler: when people took time to spend time with people."

Each week Hicks, who is the Hoboken Swing Scene's resident DJ, dance instructor and master of ceremonies, goes to great lengths to invoke the atavistic environment. Between spinning records and greeting newcomers, he makes a point of dancing with every woman who attends the event. Last Wednesday, with Fred Astaire-like stamina, he worked the room, twirling partner after partner after partner after partner after partner. Three hours passed and he showed no signs of fatigue.

According to Hicks, this enthusiasm for swing dancing is not restricted to Wednesday nights. "A core group of us go out in the city on weekends," he said. "And we really spare no expense to look and feel and fit the part. It gets to be more than just about the dancing. The men wear colorful ties and matching suspenders and the women wear shoes and stockings. It's wonderful to see a woman that you know took the time to present herself."

While Swing Scene's habitues may have adopted many of the period's culture quirks, Hoboken is not the venue for those in search of the martini-drinking society typically associated with swing dancing. Unlike most Manhattan venues, cocktails and cigarettes were conspicuously absent from the backroom of Willie McBride's last week.

"We want to let the world know that this is good clean fun," said Hicks. "There is not a lot of drinking and not a lot of smoking. People are here to dance."

In fact, other than a buffet of complimentary breath mints, there is little to divert attention away from the dancing.

"I don't want to say anything negative about New York," said Michelle Harmon, who designs the Swing Scene's website. "But it's not like this in New York. Our group is special."

"When you go swing dancing in New York you're in this sea of people," added Norman Fishbein, a one-year Swing Scene veteran who, at 54, claims to be the oldest member of the group. "The Hoboken Swing Scene has a homey feel. Everyone goes out of their way to make newcomers feel welcome. And I never feel like a chaperon. Even when I'm not dancing I enjoy talking to the people."

According to Lisa Cauda, the camaraderie that has been cultivated accounts for much of the Swing Scene's success.

"A year is a long time for a club to keep going," said Caudo. "But we've become like a family. Everyone gets to know everyone and we get involved in each other's lives. When someone isn't here for a week they're genuinely missed. And the next week everyone will ask, 'Where were you?'"

Ultimately, however, it is the desire to dance that bonds the group. In the words of Kilby Browne, a Swing Scene Veteran from Weehawken, "Swing dancing is like eating peanuts. The more you dance the more you want to dance."