Baby Loves Disco, and So Do I!

As a hip, urban twenty-five year old young woman, my Saturday afternoons always include dance parties. This past weekend was a bit different. I went to a dance party but, this Saturday I danced with babies—no, not hot male babes, babies, as in diaper-clad, bottle-gripping, pacifier-sucking infants. I admit, it was weird to switch up my vodka-tonics for cranapple boxed juice, but this dance party was one of the hippest and liveliest ones I have ever attended.

Baby Loves Disco is a craze started in Philadelphia by professional dancer and professional mama, Heather Murphy. Her brainwave was to make a unique space for parents to boogie with their babies. She was sick of the mass-produced, commercialized places that encompassed the world of children’s entertainment. At Baby Loves Disco, Barney, Mickey mouse-ears, and junk food are banned. Baby Loves Disco happens in every major city in the United States and numerous big cities abroad. It employs local parents and lets them keep the hallucination alive that it is possible to work from home and avoid getting a real job. The San Francisco event was hosted by Sarah Mallas, an über hip mama who wore a midriff-bearing Baby Loves Disco tee with dangly beaded tassels.

As I walked into the lobby of San Francisco’s sleek Ruby Skye nightclub, I was stunned. If it were a Friday night, this club would be over-flowing with skimpily dressed girls with too much mascara and horny boys with too much hair gel. Behind the red velvet rope today was pee-pee, spit-up, wobbly-feet, and tears. The surly black-clad bouncers usually shun this type of behavior—but not this afternoon. As I shimmied under the disco ball, I knew I was in an ankle-biters paradise. The DJ played the ABBA hit “Dancing Queen,” and the mamas, papas, and babies squealed, gyrated, and wiggled.

The lounge area had been transformed into a baby haven—tents, storybooks, tunnels, and toys were strewn everywhere. There was a table full of healthy snacks and the bars were brimming with juice boxes and milk cartons. The second floor of the club was packed with bubbles, a maze of hula-hoops, and face-painters. The entire club was buzzing with the energy of diapers, drool, and parents in need of a night out.