In June 1978, Karin Winegar wrote a long article about Uncle Sam’s, describing the club’s liquor-free Sunday nights, open only to teens. Admission was $3, and the hours were 7 to midnight during the summer and 6:30 to 11 during the school year. No one over 19 was admitted, “vigorously enforced by manager Steve McClellan, 28, and his muscular doorman, Richard Lukas, 24.” (Minneapolis Star, June 26, 1978)
When teen night was initiated the year before it was met with nervousness by the City Council and the police, but during the first three summer months, attendance grew from 300 to 1,200. School administrators disapproved, “but Sundays we have a full house, anyway, and there’s more energy here on this night than on the rest of the week put together,” said McClellan.
Bouncer Luka touted the over-19 ban as protective: “Older guys who think it’s easy pickin’s with young girls, men who want to push kids around or sell drugs are just eliminated at the door.” He and McClellan, along with undercover floor staff, remained alert for kids with smuggled booze or marijuana, or “attempts by ‘Hennepin Avenue punks’ to gain entry.” Kids that smell like liquor or are deemed to be troublemakers are ejected.
While there are a few kids in the grade school age levels, most of the clientele were in high school. Fashion mattered, as they modeled their “jeans, espadrilles, and gypsy frocks.”
And one nice tradition prevailed, as it was reported that the “boys still ask the girls to dance most of the time.”