Rachel Andrews, 12, was looking for something to do after school, so she came to Club Phoenix. “I just kind of got bored with home, and I wanted to see my friends,” she said.
Mike Conry, 13, has been coming to Club Phoenix for three years. He gets his homework done and then plays pool with some friends. “I know I can have fun here,” Mike said. “It’s a good opportunity to meet people from all over.”
Club Phoenix has been open for about six years and currently occupies a space in the basement of the Vienna Community Center. The program was originally started by the Vienna Teen Foundation but was taken over by the Town three years ago, said Brandy Mullen, teen program coordinator.
The idea of the program, Mullen explained, is to provide supervised activities for teenagers. “Teenagers are trying to find their own identity,” Mullen said. Club Phoenix gives them a place to be “cool,” away from parents, but with adults present.
The center is designed for students in grades 6-12, at varying times throughout the week. It is free to enter (non-town residents are welcome), except for special events, and the snack bar sells food and drink at a minimal cost.
When the program started, Mullen said, nothing like it existed in the Vienna/Oakton area. “The basement used to be a drop-in, hang-out kind of place. It wasn’t anything nice,” she said.
Now the basement has a sort of 1950s soda-shop feel with diner-esque booths, round tables with stools that have pink and blue sparkled cushions, a stage for concerts, pool and ping-pong tables, and in a nod to more modern times, a cushy couch in front of a big TV.
ON FRIDAY and Saturday nights, Club Phoenix draws an older crowd and will often have concerts featuring local garage bands that get to play in a real show. On those concert nights, the crowd will often reach its capacity of 100 people.
Although they’ve never, to Mullen’s knowledge, had any problems with the crowds getting rowdy, she has an off-duty police officer on hand to provide security. Besides allowing the concert-goers and their parents an extra sense of security, Mullen said it helps the teens meet the police in a positive environment. “They see the police officers in a different light,” Mullen said.
Sometimes the older students will come back and volunteer to work with the younger ones. But Mullen has a staff of six, all older than 18, who staff the center and provide homework assistance during weekdays after school.
Jacob Davis recently started to help coordinate after-school activities for the middle-school students. Besides the usual games and sports, Davis and Mullen are organizing more socially conscious events. “We’re going to try to collect food and clothes to donate for Thanksgiving,” Davis said.
“I’m really into getting teens to volunteer,” Mullen said.
Davis also has plans for a discussion group on world and local issues. He hopes to get the teens interested in current events. “If they learn to do that, they’ll start to read. They’ll start to form their own opinions,” he said.