New electronica club draws big crowd to downtown San Mateo

"There's nothing going on in the Peninsula," Hu said. "The club would be the best place to create a platform to showcase new talent in the Bay Area and the world."

Hu, 29, once worked in the cell phone and pager business in Georgia and started distributing fliers on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue a year ago. The fliers advertised dance parties featuring electronica music, sometimes known as Raves, but Hu wants to keep away from that word to describe his events because of the negative stigma it often brings.

"It's in the club and it's an event. People think of bad things when they think of raves but it's just a new genre of music that's coming in," Hu said.

In fact, despite the crowd, San Mateo Police Sgt. Hugh Wilkins reported no problems on Friday. The club can hold 390 people downstairs and 128 people downstairs, according to Hu. At 10:30 p.m., Hu said police stopped the promoters from letting people inside.

"There was an overflow of people onto the sidewalk. So the problem was just the number of people," Wilkins said.

This week, Wilkins said San Mateo Police will talk to club owners to see if they can cut down on advertising to reduce the number of people waiting.

"It was opening weekend and they did a good job with promotion, but we're hoping it gets controlled a little better in the future," Wilkins said.

Already done, according to club owner Imelda Monoghan.

"There's no other place for young people to go," she said. "But we're asking [the promoter] to not advertise as much."