It’s late at night and the discotheques, music bars and shisha lounges that have sprouted around Amman are buzzing with clients, belying the city’s old image as the sleepy capital of a conservative kingdom.

Jordan’s increasingly young population is helping shape this new scene, a tamer version of the Middle East’s so-called ‘sin city’, Beirut, renowned throughout the Arab world for its lively nightlife.

“You know, 15 years ago you could barely find a taxi after eight in the evening — the streets were mostly empty,” said Sarah, an American and long-time resident of Amman. “But nightlife has changed drastically since I first came in the early 1990s when there were basically two places to go other than the big hotels,” said the public relations executive as she listened to live jazz at Canvas, an upscale restaurant in a historical district of the capital.

Actor Nabil Sawalha, who owned a nightclub called the Cart Wheel in the 1980s, has also noted the difference. “Many years ago, there were very limited places to go out in the city,” Sawalha told AFP. “A few people could afford to go out for partying or dancing once or twice a month. We used to do so and return home by midnight. But now things have changed and partying has become a lifestyle for young people,” he said.

A decade ago, the upmarket west Amman neighbourhood of Abdun was lined exclusively with embassies and the stately villas of the city’s old wealth and newly rich. But the streets now share space with restaurants and cafes sprouting up to cater to a young clientele eager for a taste of Western-style leisure.

Even places in the heart of Amman’s old district, like Rainbow Street, have undergone a facelift, where venues with names like Wild Jordan, Books@cafe and La Calle now draw an intellectual and Bohemian crowd. Driving luxury cars and sporting the latest fashions, many of these young, affluent Jordanians gather almost every night at the chic new spots.

“The new generation has brought new phenomena from the West, created a new atmosphere and started to steadily break free from old traditions and Amman’s old image as a quiet city,” sociologist Seri Nasser of the University of Jordan told AFP

Source: Daily Times Pakistan (http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20102\26\story_26-2-2010_pg9_7)