The dance floor is huge -- easily the largest I have danced on. Hundreds of people can get out there and dance together, and I have seen the floor packed. But the tables and chairs are your standard meeting hall folding variety with some white table cloths draped over them. Not very appealing, in my opinion.
The Rumba Club is located on Houston's south side. I haven't actually been there, but I have a friend who goes there often, and the legendary Jorge Mercado offers dance lessons there.
Many of the clubs offer free dance lessons in conjunction with local dance schools. The schools recruit students that way. I have met a few people who have gone from club to club, learning the different styles the teachers offer. The only good dancers (in my experience) who were doing this also happened to take regular classes (and in some cases private lessons).
Dance schools cannot compete with the clubs for ambience and experience, but the larger schools (and perhaps many of them) offer weekly practice nights for their students and quarterly, semi-annual, or annual shows and parties. These venues provide dancers with safe, comfortable, familiar settings to dance in. There are people who don't like going to the clubs, or who simply don't feel ready to do so yet. The dance schools help new dancers build up their confidence. Truth be told, if you don't have even a smidgen of an exhibitionistic spirit, dancing is probably not for you.
Music is such an important part of the Houston restaurant scene that many of them offer some sort of musical entertainment, even if it's only Karoake (I have been keeping my ears open for a Latin Karoke craze, but it hasn't caught on, yet). One restaurant, Los Tios (part of a small chain), actually offered a Latin night where they set up a dance floor in their large smoking section. They had a one-man-band keyboardist playing there one night. I could not entice my friends into going because it was on a Thursday night and the restaurant was farther west (almost to the Beltway 8) than they wanted to drive.
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Mary's Band has been playing at Cantina Laredo just outside the Beltway on Wilcrest since last year. The restaurant doesn't really offer a dance floor. The band provides a Latin music environment, but people will still get up and dance between the tables. A couple of times, I have noticed members of the staff dancing (and they were pretty good).
Mi Luna, inside the inner loop, is a popular night spot but the dancing starts so late and the floor is so small you get tired of bumping into people quickly. And, frankly, the menu is a little too eclectic for my taste.
A couple of other in-town locations include Taco Milagro, a restaurant with a bar and an open patio, and Azteca Bar and Grill. Taco Milagro has enough room for a small band to set up by one of the patio doors, and about an equal amount of "dance floor" space. Most people go there to meet friends, try to make a pickup (I haven't actually seen many guys succeed), or to actually eat the food (not the greatest, in my opinion).
Azteca has an upstairs dance area, but the one night my friends and I went there, they were playing more Hip Hop and Merengue than Salsa or Cha Cha. We have not been back since. However, guys, this is a great place to take a girl for lunch or dinner (I speak from experience). And the white cheese dip (queso blanco) is excellent.
Some other places I have heard of but not necessarily visited include Metropolis (across the street from Tropicana -- it reputedly caters to a much younger crowd), Amazonia, Babilonia, and Hush. I have actually been to Hush a couple of times. It is located way out west of Houston and is a splashy, sleek "modern" club. It strives to be the "cool" place in Houston. The girls on the staff wear leather bikinis, so you can imagine how half the guys who go there must look: drool hanging out of their mouths. There weren't many good dancers on the nights I went, but a lot of girls got out on the floor and sort of undulated.
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