It's Thursday night at the Lafayette Club, and DJ Lance Tremblay is trying to read the crowd.

He settles on Sir Mix-A-Lot.

Sure enough, as "Baby Got Back" starts spinning, 27-year-old Erik Lesniak rises to the occasion. He adjusts his backward cap and slides across the linoleum on his knees.

Sandy Moore sings karaoke with her grandson, A.J. Santos, at the Lafayette Club in Manchester on Thursday night. (DAVID LANE)

Moments later, he makes room for an unexpected dance partner.

"I love this song," shouts Sandy Bajraktari, in her mid-50s. She joins Lesniak — and a crowd of other club regulars — for some serious booty-shakin'.

Afterward, Bajraktari can't find her seat fast enough. She plops down next to her boyfriend, resting her legs across his lap. "My back's bothering me tonight," she says with a smile. "I'm too old for this."

She gets no sympathy from her table buddy, 79-year-old Helen Aubin, who's been up several times already, rocking the mike with her old-school karaoke. She says she and her husband have been coming to the Lafayette just about every night for the last 25 years.

"I love it. I absolutely love this club. And I love that the young people are coming in now," Aubin says.

"It's been wonderful," adds Bajraktari. "The young people not only accept us, but we have a lot of fun."

The love-fest here goes both ways.

Helen Aubin talks with Joe Bagg as her husband, Albert, looks on at the Lafayette Club in Manchester. (DAVID LANE)

"I came in one day and loved the atmosphere. We can be ourselves. It's great energy here, and the older members are a lot of fun," says Lesniak, taking a break from the dance floor to shoot some pool.

Thursdays have been booming at the Lafayette — ever since longtime club member Tremblay, 36, introduced a karaoke night. Drawing in the next generation of dues-paying members has saved the club from extinction.

Ten months ago, the Lafayette was sinking fast, club President Billy Brown said.

In response to the deadly 2003 Rhode Island night club fire, a revised state safety code here mandated that clubs with a capacity of 100 or more install automatic sprinkler systems.

Estimated costs to bring the Lafayette to code were upward of $100,000.

"We thought we were going to have to close the door and sell the property," Brown said.

Instead, city fire officials worked with the club leadership, striking a compromise: Lafayette agreed to close off the upstairs function room and scale back the square footage downstairs, reducing the capacity of the club to under 100.

It was about the same time that Lesniak and other members of the New Hampshire Fisher Cats organization were looking for an out-of-the-way watering hole.

They found the Lafayette.

As board member Richard Champagne tells the story, an announcement was made during one of last season's Fisher Cats games, asking if anyone from the Lafayette Club was in the stands.

"You can't get into the club unless you know someone, so that's how they found a member," Champagne said.

That new member brought in another new member, and so on and so on, said club activities director Tina Healy. This year the cost of annual membership doubled. There are about 250 paid members at $15 a pop.

"Over the past year or so, the crowd has been getting noticeably younger," said Healy, whose mother also belongs to the club.

Keeping it in the family is part of the club's transgenerational charm.

Sandy Moore, 66, started bringing her 29-year-old grandson, A.J. Santos, along for Thursday night karaoke back in April.

"I just recently became a member. It's a low-key place and I don't have to hustle-bustle like I do in other clubs," said Santos, who is married. "I think there's a lot of pressure, even on men, when you go out to clubs. It feels like a meat market. My wife doesn't care at all that I go out — if I'm coming here with my grandma," said Santos.

He excuses himself from the table and straightens his cowboy hat after Tremblay calls him up to sing, "High-tech Redneck." Moore hoots and hollers him onto the stage.

Thursday nights here feel more like your cousin's wedding reception than a center city bar. It may be a return to another era, said local history buff John Jordan, when private clubs were a prominent part of the city's social scene.

"Every nationality seemed to have their own — Irish, Polish, French, Germans, Belgians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians — there really was a proliferation of clubs," said Jordan, who over the years has frequented the Raphael Club on the city's West Side.

It was a way for mill workers to socialize after work — a tradition that continued until the advent of television, Jordan said. More recently, the decline of social clubs is easily traced to aging members and increasing costs of doing business, including licensing and taxes, said Brown.

"We're not the Black Brimmer or Strange Brew, where the prices are almost double what ours are," Brown said.

A portion of the club's monthly profits goes to local charities, such as the Police Athletic League. "Add in liquor and overhead, and we might make $200 a month," Brown said.

As Aubin takes the stage to sing, "I'm in the Mood for Love," bartender Marty Beauvais, 33, pops open a $2 Bud for one of the regulars.

"I started out here at 21 — my stepmother asked my sister if she wanted to bartend, and she didn't, so I did," Beauvais said. "Then I took time off for my kids. I've been back now about 2½ years."

Since then she's had plenty of job offers at other downtown bars.

"The money doesn't even matter. I love the people. It feels like family here," Beauvais said. "This is my family. This is home."