In wake of deadly shooting, Old Town nightclub institutes age limits for weekly R&B night
The Wichita nightclub where 34-year-old Preston Spencer was killed over Labor Day weekend will put on its first R&B night since the shooting on Monday.
But the organizer of the weekly event has instituted some new rules and age limits that he hopes will reassure patrons.
Chris Boyd, who goes by the name DJ Fluid professionally, was at Enigma Club & Lounge, 351. N. Mosley in Old Town, on the evening of Sept. 6 when bullets started flying. A week ago, police apprehended and arrested 23-year-old Keshawn Maurice Dawson, who they say was kicked out of the club then returned to his car, retrieved a gun and started shooting through the front glass doors. The incident left Spencer dead and five women wounded.
The shooting happened on R&B night, a weekly Monday-night event that Boyd had started a couple of months earlier, intending it as “an escape from the normal Wichita nightlife,” he said. Boyd, who’s been working the Wichita club scene for the past eight years, had an agreement with Enigma owner Ali Kibar, who allowed him to host the events during a night when the club was normally closed.
They’d always been peaceful, fun events in the past, Boyd said, and they attracted a mostly female crowd. Attendees would gather on the dance floor and sing along as Boyd played old-school R&B hits by artists like Anita Baker, Boyz II Men, Teddy Pendergrass and Jodeci.
But it was Labor Day weekend, and the crowd that night included people Boyd said he’d never seen at one of the events before. A fight had broken out, and even though the event usually continued for another hour and a half, Boyd said, his instincts told him it was time to shut it down and get people home.
The lights came up, he said, and that’s when he saw the glass in the front doors shatter. Spencer, a popular local bartender and father or two, had been at the club with coworkers, his sister and cousin. When the shooting started, his friends say, Spencer put himself in front of his pregnant cousin.
Boyd said he knew Spencer personally, and earlier in the evening, Spencer had brought him a drink. He was devastated by the event and decided to stop putting on R&B nights.
“We took a break with the Monday nights to give people time to process and to give people who needed time to heal time to heal,” he said.
Recently, though, fans of the event began messaging him asking if he planned to start R&B nights back up. The club had reopened two weeks after the shooting for its usual Wednesday through Saturday schedule, and Kibar said he was open to resuming the Monday night events, too.
Boyd said he polled some of the regular attendees of the R&B event about changes they’d like to see and took their suggestions. He recently posted an open letter on the Enigma Facebook page outlining his new policies.
▪ Only women ages 25 or older and men 30 or older will be admitted at the door. Anyone younger will have to secure a membership card in advance.
▪ A “mature dress code” will be enforced that bans athletic slides, flip flops, Crocs, athletic sweatpants, sweatshirts or hoodies, sagging pants and blank white T-shirts. The purpose of the dress code is to discourage anyone who’s not looking for an adult evening out to stay at home, Boyd said.
▪ Security will be heightened with security guards inside the venue trained to de-escalate situations and off-duty Wichita Police Department officers hired to stand guard outside the venue.
Boyd, who will change the name of the event from “R&B Escape” to “Lovers and Friends,” said that the new policies were drafted with input from patrons.
He said he also checked with the family of Spencer, who told him he wasn’t to blame and that he shouldn’t let what happened stop him.
Cianyah Riley, a local mother of two who was a Monday-night regular before the shooting, said she was one of the people who offered input on the changes. She was also at the club the night of the shooting.
She had gone for a girls’ night out with her sister that Monday night, she said, and was outside when the shooting started. She immediately fled from the club with her children’s faces flashing through her mind, she said.
She likes the age limit change, she said, and she feels safe at the events partially because the crowd is always mostly women.
The stricter rules might keep out younger men who want to cause trouble, she said.
“It’s just a vibe,” she said of the Monday night parties. “It’s somewhere you can go and still feel safe, even with everything that happened.”
Kibar said he hadn’t had any trouble — not even a fight — since he opened Enigma in January 2020.
He’s always had security at the club, whose hours are 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, and he’ll continue to provide it, he said.
But security was not the problem the night Spencer was killed, he said. It was one bad actor, and now, Kibar said he’s having trouble persuading people it’s safe to come back out. Business has been down since the incident.
“It had nothing to do with security. We couldn’t have done anything,” he said. “We escorted him out, and he grabbed a gun. Security wouldn’t have made any difference.”
Those seeking a membership card to attend the Monday night R&B events should contact Chris Boyd via his DJ Fluid pages on Facebook and Instagram or via email at thedjfluid@gmail.com.
This story was originally published October 14, 2021 at 2:32 PM.
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