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Club Buca
Rating Details »
Category: Dance Clubs [Edit]
Neighborhood: Downtown707 Clamorgan Aly
Saint Louis, MO 63102
(314) 231-2822
- Nearest Transit:
-
Arch - Laclede's Landing (MetroLink)
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Price Range:
-
$
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- No
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Music:
- DJ
- Best Nights:
- Thu, Fri, Sat
- Happy Hour:
- No
- Alcohol:
- Full Bar
- Smoking:
- Yes
- Coat Check:
- No
18 reviews for Club Buca
Buca was definitely a hotspot when I was in college (2003-2007). But, I was of college age, so my expectations weren't high.
If you go into Buca with low expectations, then you'll have a great time. Yes, it's crowded. Yes, it's dirty. Yes, it's filled with tons of lower 20-somethings. But the music is good, the people are fun, and the drinks are cheap.
I am a relatively new poster on Yelp; I'm not quite 7 full months into my membership. I recently realized, looking at my previous posts, that I had yet to write a 1-star review. A moment ago when I decided to actually commit to writing such a review, Buca instantly came to mind. Enough said, right?
I'll continue anyways. I'm not a club person. I tried to be, but as a very reserved guy, I get the short end of any club experience: I'm too shy to approach the ladies sober and too cheap to booze up at the bar to remedy the shyness. In short, I'm not likely to have a good time at any sort of dance club. Objectively, though, I can unequivocally say that Buca is a bad time. Well, that is not entirely true. I can think of two exceptions, two types of people who have enjoyable Buca experiences: troll people and the soon-to-be brides of men with large muscles, barbed wire tattoos, and who are the inspirations for wife-beating jokes such as 'What do you tell a woman with 2 black eyes? Nothing you haven't told her already.'
This place is literally a dungeon. You go down stairs into a cramped, stone basement, filled with the undesirable and occasionally the sadly unattainable. This is truly a place of torture. I have seen some horrific things in this place. Beck Hanson once sang/rapped "What's wrong with a little grind and bump?" Well, at Buca, there's a lot wrong with the grinding and bumping. Crimes against nature-level wrong.
Here's the part of the review where I try to be positive to show how balanced a reviewer I am. Shining a light on this place still shows it as a terrible place. There are times where free beer is offered. Awesome, right? Until you get to the front of the line, and see your ultra low-quality beer dispensed from a hole in a dirt and grime-covered cooler. It's a bit nitpicky considering it's free beer, but Buca's required visiting cost of part of your soul must have some trade off, right? Would average beer from a sanitary dispenser be too much to ask? Another potential positive is the deck. They have a well-constructed deck out back. The same bad music plays there. The people are just as unappealing and now they have light shone on them. Also, to leave you must return to the dungeon and witness the sadness once more. But again, I'm not a club person.
This place is not very fun...and I'm putting it lightly. The only plus I give it was when I went to a bachelorette party on the landing and we got a free bottle of champagne and the girls got to dance on the bar. Super fun for the bride-not so much for me. I remember this girl slapped my leg..yeah..fun times alright. Don't recommend this place. There are much better bars/clubs to go to.
most likely the worst club in the landing. avoid if you can, there's much better options nearby.
Club Buca... the place I can't help making fun of forever.
Let me put it this way:
In my own personal hell, the mysterious afterlife of my own concoction ends up looking exactly like Buca on any given busy night - during the summer heat of course. It's like hell. Seriously. Picture it, you get Buca.
It's hot. It's dank. It's dark, smelly, sticky, teeming with young intoxicated hoosiers. I haven't been there in years, no will I ever go again. But its great fun to review/make fun of :)
I went to this place one time when I was 18 because we could get in without IDs.
I haven't been back since... and wouldn't go back if I was paid to.
There were several underage girls in the place. How do I know you ask?
I went to high school with them and they were freshmen when I was a senior, that would make them four years younger than me at least - and that would put them below the legal drinking age.
Went on Halloween...slutty sleezy girls dancing on both bars and spilling drinks onto the people who were standing down below.
The music mixes aren't that great.
There's two kinds of people here, really young underage people, whom I dont know how they even got into the place...or some 40 somethings seeking out young girls...
The bouncers are at least pleasant and not total a-holes.
However, the bar on the main floor is very slow, they usually only have one bartender down there at a time..the bar is too large and the place is far too busy for one bartender to handle the downstairs.
I went on Saturday night for the very first time. I normally wouldn't find myself at a club like this, but as I was walking past, the bouncer asked me if I wanted free beer. I of course replied yes. So I went in with a friend without paying cover and had 2 beers on the house. We had to go to the basement for them and I felt like I was at a Fraternity Party. They served us been from a tubed up water cooler and keg. That is why Club Buca gets the extra two stars.
I've never seen a guy-to-girl ratio that slanted before at a non-gay bar. I sort of felt uncomfortable with the testosterone level of the basement. It was around 10:45 and no one was on the dance floor, so I wasn't about to go out there. We left after feeling sufficiently awkward, but I thought to myself that I should cash in on this free beer opportunity. It's from 10-11pm on Saturdays (at least).
Whenever my friends and I would go to the Landing we usually went with one sole purpose, to drink. On those nights we would bring what we jokingly called our "game livers" and took part in the buddy system to make sure nothing would happen to anyone in our party. With that early description of our mentality you could probably already guess that we would be the awkwardly dancing people out on the dance floor receiving strange looks from everyone and not really understanding why our desire to dance to Huey Lewis and the News seemed unreasonable with the hip hop music that they played.
Lately I haven't been to the Landing mostly because I'm not really into the club scene and I find it hard to keep up a conversation while having to shout the entire time. Though, Club Buca is good for what it is, a place to get drinks cheap and to dance.
This place is still open?
How is this possible?
Skeezy. Dirty. Crappy music. Full of underage people just looking to get wasted.
If your only objective is getting drunk then $1 Thursdays are for you. Everyone else should run away immediately.
icky
This place is nasty. I hate sticky floors, underage people, and would never dance on a bar for a free shot. Buca like most places on the landing is trashy - but hey you get what you pay for.
So, Thursday was $1 drinks - yay! And, if you dance on the bar - free shots (for females). Music was more hip-hop ish (it's alright), and there was more folks here then anywhere else. So, this was a good place to dance and drink the night away...
This place is disgusting and unsafe.
the absolute opposite of a chic ultralounge atmosphere, this underground club/upstairs outdoor area aims for early 20s and is kinda representative of the quality of the Landing in general, except maybe Xes. Nannan's review is spot on. if the weather is nice, then morgan street would be more crowded.
this place is totally awesome....if you like horrible music, weak drinks, getting dry humped by strangers and drunk soon to be married slut bags. sick nasty.
I always enjoyed Club Buca. It's an underground club with a Los Angeles feel to it. They played mostly hip hop, and it wasn't top 40 clean garbage that you'd find at most other clubs. It's a great place to dance, and if you like girls dancing on bars, this place has it all the time. It was a blast on New Years Eve, and they served champagne at midnight and even had an hour of free drinks. Lately though, it has lost its luster. It's dirty and the floors are sticky. It's fine and you don't notice it if you're trashed and looking to dance with some women like is usually the case with me, but I can see how sober ones complain about it. This isn't a place to take your girlfriend because there are guys all over the place grabbing girls' asses, etc.
If it wasn't for 10 of the girls in our bachlorette party, I probably would NEVER end up at Buca. But a place with very low expectations turned out to be a lot of fun for a group of girls with single objective - to get wasted. If you are into getting groped by sleazy men, trashy women dancing on tables, and so-so service from the bartenders, then you probably are already a regular at Buca. But in all honesty, it's a good place for a party. So go for it if you and your friends want to have a good time and get silly!
