JOHN BERGER / JBERGER@STARBULLETIN.COM Scruples Beach Club boss Fred Piluso and Kamakoa Page celebrated his club's 19th anniversary with an eight-hour party last week.

19-year party at Scruples

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By John Berger
jberger@starbulletin.com

Most nightclubs don't last long, and with good reason. A successful club must go with the social flow of the times, attract people with money to spend and then turn a profit despite government regulations. Take away the financial cushion provided by a parent hotel or a successful restaurant, and the odds grow longer.

That makes Scruples Beach Club on Kuhio Avenue a rare success story.

Fred Piluso, the high-profile chief executive officer of the club, celebrated Scruples' 19th anniversary last Wednesday, so he's obviously doing something right. The club was comfortably full until well past midnight.

JOHN BERGER / JBERGER@STARBULLETIN.COM The party continued well past midnight. Scruples is one of the few clubs in Waikiki that stays open until 4 a.m.

How do you describe a music format that consists of an anonymous deejay playing a cosmopolitan amalgam of house, rock, oldies, booty music and the mainstream reggae hits of Bob Marley and UB40? The well-mannered crowd seemed open to all of it, filling the dance floor most of the time.

Most of the dancers were probably infants in 1983, the year that Piluso and Dave Shutter opened Scruples in the space that most Waikiki night-lifers of the era remembered as the backgammon room of Rex & Eric's. It was another step forward for the Pittsburgh-born Vietnam vet, who had settled in Hawaii as an airline employee and gone into the nightclub business after he was fired for turning down a transfer to Philadelphia.

Scruples Beach Club Where: Waikiki Marketplace, 2310 Kuhio Ave. Open: 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. nightly Admission: $5 Call: 923-9530

Piluso opened his first club, Captain Nemo's, beneath the Imperial Hawaii Hotel in the early 1970s (the club later became the Jazz Cellar and subsequently the Cellar; the hotel is now the Imperial of Waikiki). Piluso was also part of the Point After management team during that club's heyday in the 1970s and '80s.

Piluso envisioned Scruples as an alternative to large discos and rock clubs. He's renovated the nightclub over the years but maintained the intimate ambience and unpretentiously upscale decor. Scruples is still a club where the music is loud enough to create a party vibe but not so loud that it's necessary to shout to be heard.

With Scruples now entering its 20th year on Kuhio Avenue, it's clear that Piluso is still taking care of business, even though his "beach club" is nowhere near the water.

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