It's a well-known fact that the Caribbean clock is not in sync with our tickers in the United States.

Things happen when they happen in this free-spirited lifestyle. The stress-free Caribbean clock carries over to Lansing on Saturday nights.

Saturday night is, and has been for the past two years, salsa night at the Metro Bowl Entertainment & Sports Complex, 5141 S. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in Lansing.

The building houses a bowling alley and multiple bars. Salsa nights are held in a relaxing lounge area with a bar and a dance floor and ample seating.

By 11 p.m., about 50 people are congregated in the lounge, catching up with old friends and making new ones. The music is on, the lights are low and there's a multicolored strobe light hanging from the ceiling. Scents of women's perfume and burning tobacco fill the room, adding a haze to the atmosphere.

Saturday night at the Metro Bowl is the ideal time to witness amazing salsa dancers in action. Many of them have been dancing their entire lives and the ages in the lounge range from 18 to late 60s and early 70s.

Couples hit the dance floor for an intense and exciting dancefest to songs often lasting between six and 10 minutes. On a good night, an average of 50 men and women of all ages, ethnicities and dancing abilities show up to the warm lounge to have the time of their lives.

Adrian Lopez, organizer of salsa night, also provides the music every Saturday night. He's a local radio DJ and enthusiastic dancer who recognizes salsa night as a family affair - though he's of no relation to the majority of the people there.

"After a while, people just start meeting each other and even the ones that come for the first time, by the end of the night they will meet someone, there's a family feeling," Lopez said.

And a very diverse family at that.

Lopez, a native of the Dominican Republic, said a wide variety of people attend every Saturday night.

"We've got a mixture of everything, Colombian, El Salvadorians, black people, white people, Chinese people," he said. "I can't pinpoint the majority of the crowd."

Every female in the lounge is dressed sexily, no matter her age. Either in slinky black pants and tight tops or in short fluttery dresses and spike heels, they all look beautiful. In the mostly red atmosphere of the lounge, their bright red lipstick and large gold hoop earrings don't seem overdone at all.

Their male counterparts aren't quite as dressed up, most of them wearing jeans or trousers and a nice T-shirt. There are a few guys in jumpsuits and basketball jerseys, complete with bling bling and all. But everything fits perfectly.

The relatively large dance floor accommodated about 10 couples at a time, leaving ample space to bust a move. The fog machine constantly pumps out dry ice and catches the random red, green, purple, blue and yellow lights when they flashed into it.

The lounge is appealing, the music liberates and motivates and everyone has a smile. It's the perfect place, outside of Havana, to experience salsa dancing.

Although there's often an expectation to know how to dance, it's not a crime if you don't. Megan Morse, a Lansing Community College student and East Lansing resident, said she was nervous when she first started attending the salsa nights. She said she got hooked on salsa dancing after taking a course on it at LCC.

"Sometimes, we would have field trips to the salsa nights," she said. "Now, I always go whenever I can."

She said the salsa lounge at the Metro Bowl is welcoming to all different levels of dancing ability.

"I was afraid of it, but once I got into it, I just said, 'Hey, I'm a beginner and I'm kind of clumsy, so bear with me a little,'" she said. "No matter what, I love it and I think it's awesome when people can recognize that and applaud my self-expression when I'm dancing. I go on that floor and I become alive, it's not anything I can explain."

Salsa dancing is all about communication, Morse said.

"You can see people who have more of a connection romantically or it's friends just having fun with it," she said. There have been other local establishments in the past who have held salsa nights, but none have been as successful as Metro Bowl.

"There have been other places that have tried, I don't know what happened," Lopez said as he smiled.

Lopez is obviously not concerned with the competition. As the only consistent venue for salsa music and dancing, he has no reason to be.

Michael Largey, an ethnomusicologist and professor of music at MSU, teaches a course in Caribbean music and the culture intertwined with it.

He said in most Latin American and Caribbean countries, dance is one of the most important - and entertaining - ways to express oneself.

"People learn it from a very young age, they are sort of acclimated to from childhood and you're expected to be able to do it," he said.

When you watch a couple dance the salsa, it gives you that warm, tingly feeling of pure romance. But contrary to popular American belief, Largey said salsa dance is not strictly sexual.

"It certainly can be, but a lot of people mistake the hip movement and expressiveness with a kind of sexy projection," he said, adding that while doing research in Haiti, he was expected to dance with all the members of one family, with no regard to age or gender whatsoever.

"It's really beautiful to see how people use dance as a way to get close, but not in this overtly sexualized way that gets projected of Latin dance," Largey said.