Every Friday night in Canton, the second floor of Captain James Landing feels less like a seafood restaurant and more like a corner of Latin America transplanted to the Baltimore waterfront.
The Vela Room, a Latin concept bar perched above the iconic Boston Street crab house, fills with the sound of salsa and bachata, the clinking of pisco sours and carajillos, and the footwork of roughly 120 to 150 people who have come, for free, to learn to dance.
The event has become one of the more quietly distinctive nights out in the city: no cover charge, free parking, a curated Latin food and cocktail menu, and a one-hour dance lesson led by Renato Chavez, a Guatemalan-born instructor who has spent six years teaching salsa, bachata, and merengue across the DMV.
Chavez, who promotes his events under the name “Salsa Addict” and has cultivated a following of more than 2,000 online, was the one who insisted the night stay free.
“The majority of people coming are young people,” he said in Spanish, “and they’re used to my events being free. I didn’t want to charge.”
Before landing at the Vela Room, Chavez had organized and hosted events at Bayside Cantina, Luxury 360, Don Tigre, and Caliente Grill in Annapolis, among other locations. He runs his events under what he calls “LA style,” a salsa format known for its clean lines and emphasis on fundamentals.
In the smaller of the Vela Room’s two rooms, the one set aside specifically for the lesson, he commands the floor with an easy authority, breaking down basic steps and returning to them again and again. Repetition, for Chavez, is the point.
For Cianna Tejada, a George Washington University student who is half-Peruvian, it was her first time attending. She came with a group of friends, most of them beginners, hoping eventually to teach her American boyfriend the basics.
“I grew up dancing salsa with my family in Peru,” she said, “but I wanted to perfect it. I learned more in this class than ever before, because he really focuses on the basic steps and repetition.”
When the lesson ended and DJ Phoenix took over the main room, a larger space with a full bar, dance floor, and a sprawling balcony overlooking the water, Tejada reflected on what the night had meant to her.
“It felt like a taste of home,” she said. “It meant so much to me to have friends who are curious about my culture and came to try something new.”
That blend of cultures is by design. Octavio Moreno, an assistant manager of Captain James and Vela Room, who previously managed Maximón at the Four Seasons, described the crowd as “mitad y mitad:” half Latino, half American. The Vela Room was built to reflect the growing Latino population in the surrounding neighborhood, he explained in Spanish, filling a gap. The nautical décor, a nod to the boat-shaped building Captain James has occupied for 40 years, gives the space a distinct character befitting its proximity to the Chesapeake Bay.
The origin of the Vela Room was also, in part, practical. The iconic crab house operates only in the summer, and rather than laying off seasonal staff during the off-months, the owners, a Greek family that have run Captain James for four decades, created the upstairs concept to keep the operation running year-round. The Latin direction was a deliberate choice, not an happy coincidence.
“It was difficult at the start,” Moreno said of the Friday night classes, “but it’s been a little over a year now and there are many more people.”
Chavez sees the night as something larger than a dance class. Asked whether the event reflects the growing Latin presence in Baltimore, he didn’t hesitate.
“It’s a reflection, exactly,” he said. “But it’s also an example of how the Latin community can have fun in a healthy way.”
[Interviews for this article were conducted in Spanish and translated by the reporter.]
