The Story of Claire and Imette

By Gamal Hennessy

Imagine this; you and your friend go out for drinks. You both succeed in getting very drunk. At 3:30 the two of you leave the bar. But she isn’t ready to go home. She wants to hit another spot. You playfully argue with her in the loud, slurred tones that drunks argue in and neighbors complain about. Finally you agree to disagree and separate. You get into a cab and watch her stumble down the street towards the next bar. You shake your head and laugh at her. You go home, go to sleep and wake up with a hangover.

A few days later, you find out that your friend was abducted, beaten, raped, murdered and dumped on the side of a road in Brooklyn. Your friend is dead and the image of her walking away haunts you for years.

Unfortunately, this isn’t an imaginary story. Imette St. Guillen was murdered in 2006 after she left a bar called the Falls. When the trial of the suspected killer started this week, her friend Claire testified to watching Imette walk away after failing to convince her to get into the cab. It was the last time she saw her friend alive.

This tragedy raises a question for natives; what can we do and how far can we go to keep our friends safe?

I tend to overanalyze things, so there are principles I follow when I go out with a girl. When it’s time for me to go home I do one of four things; I put her in a cab heading to her place, I leave her with her friends, I take her to her place or take her to mine. If I don’t go home with her, I ask her to call or text me when she gets home to let me know she’s OK. I feel like if I follow this principal, the young lady won’t spend the night tied up. (Now if she likes being tied up, that’s different. I can do that for her, but that is another story and not the point of this post.)

The problem is that my principal does not guarantee her safety. She can get out of the cab or walk away from her friends. She might meet Justin Timberlake at the bar and will actively get rid of me to prevent inadvertent cockblocking. We must remember that nightlife is a playground for adults. As an adult, she is free to go where she wants to go, even if she’s blind drunk. Our playground has potential dangers, just like any other playground. There is no guarantee that she or any of us will live to see another bar. My principal reduces the risk, but it doesn’t eliminate it. Nothing can.

Twenty four million people go out in New York every year and violent crime and death are extremely rare. Ms. St. Guillen fell victim to an isolated but fatal combination of insanity, oversight and error. Her death isn’t something we would wish on anyone, but her circumstances were not that uncommon. How many times have you lost track of your friends after they were amazingly intoxicated?

Everything turns out fine most of the time. There is no realistic way to force someone to do what they don’t want to do. There are no neat answers on how to protect our people. Having said that, I still think it helps to at least try and keep an eye on our friends when we’re out at night. We’re all big boys and girls, but the extra effort is worth it. I don’t want to pick up the phone and get the call Claire got.

Have fun.
G

The Social Side of Nightlife

By Gamal Hennessy

An excerpt from the upcoming book Seize the Night

Communication as culture

When you walk past the bouncer and into a lively bar, it might feel as if you’ve submerged yourself into a chaotic mess. Various sized clusters of people are interspersed with floaters, stragglers and spectators. Some are laughing, some are dancing, some are yelling, some are oddly silent and a few of them are chasing each other around the room with digital cameras.

There is a certain amount of random shenanigans going on here, but if you sit back and observed them you can see that there are various types of communication, interaction and connection that going on in the room. Being able to understand what is going on will give you a stronger appreciation for the social dynamic in nightlife. The following examples are not meant to be exhaustive or exclusive. Many of these interactions can happen simultaneously and even a conversation within a group can ebb and flow from one to the other. But these examples will give you a sense of the complex dynamic going on in any crowded bar.

Sexual: The most obvious type of connection in nightlife is the sexual one. Nightlife is sex and sexual energy is sublimated in to every aspect of the nightlife experience. We present ourselves in ways that we hope will attract potential partners. We tease and flirt to test the waters. We play games of attraction and seduction to capture their imaginations and then we go where that connection leads us. Whether you are talking about pick up artists in a meat market or a quiet date at a martini bar, a one night stand or happily ever after, modern courtship happens in the nightlife space. Without it, a major link in the sexual selection process would be gone.

Business: While there is an axiom of never mixing business with pleasure, anyone familiar with the nightlife knows this combination occurs every night. Nightlife is integral to many business practices and many deals, business connections and meetings would not happen absent a night of drinking. I’ve spent time with people in the advertising, legal and media industries. Going out to “events” for or with the client is just as important (if not more important) than the work that goes on from nine to seven. I’ve seen upscale lounges sectioned off for so many private parties of investment banks and insurance companies that the place looked less like a bar and more like a convention at the Javits Center. I’ve been on both ends of the buying and selling process in several cities around the world and one thing remains constant; if a deal is going to get done, someone has to take someone out for some drinks. It could be a few pints at the pub. It could be bottle service at the newest lounge. It could be lap dances in the champagne room of a strip club. The concept is the same. If there is no pleasure, there probably won’t be any business.

Bonding: Our experiences are not limited to picking up strangers or selling something to our clients. A lot of our time is spent with people we already know and actually want to spend time with outside of work. Friends, family, couples who are dating, all use nightlife to reconnect and enhance the bonds they already have. How common is it to email friends you haven’t seen in a while and find out where they’ll be on Friday night so you can all hang out and have some fun? What is a date if it’s not a couple spending time together? If family members come in from out of town and they are not too young or too old to go out, isn’t it normal to bring them to some bar? You could get together for conversation, carousing or just to catch up. The bar or lounge are prime places to do that.

Celebration: Venues often market themselves as having the best parties in the city. We use events and occasions both large and small as the reasons to get together and enjoy ourselves. A few close friends might take you out to celebrate your birthday with you. Perhaps you attend a release party for an artist’s album or gallery opening. Maybe it’s an after party for an awards show, closed deal or concert. Or it could be a huge holiday celebration for Thanksgiving Eve or New Year’s Eve. We mark some of the significant events in our lives with a celebration and very often that celebration happens in a club.

Exhibition: The most subtle type of social communication is the exhibition. Many of us engage in a constant struggle to raise our social standing and rank relative to similar people in our surroundings or our peer group. To achieve this, we show the people around us our value through some type of display. Men will order bottle service to show that they have money to spend. Clubbers will throw themselves onto the dance floor to show that the skill they have with their bodies. Women will compare themselves to the size, shape, attractiveness and style of other women in the room. Social butterflies will move through the room collecting handshakes and kisses to show how much people love them. Drinkers will knock back beers as fast as they can to show their superior tolerance for alcohol. Each display is meant to send a signal, build reputation and ultimately value. The struggle to climb the social ladder is not unique to nightlife, but the exhibitions that can be found here are often different than what you might find in the daylight hours.

It is easy to see how music, food and architecture play a role in nightlife culture and by extension influence society as a whole. But culture is not only the artistic and aesthetic components of a society. How people communicate with each other is also an important factor. Nightlife is at its heart, social interaction. We go out to connect with friends, lovers and strangers on one level or another. Our social interaction is part of our lifestyle and lifestyle is part of culture.

Have fun.

Gamal

If Nightlife is Dead, then You Killed It

By Gamal Hennessy

If you read the nightlife blogs on a regular basis, you’ll often find reader comments about how New York nightlife is dead, how all the clubs suck, how all promoters suck, how (insert the name of a random city here) has a much better nightlife scene, how things aren’t as good as they were in the old days and other cultural critiques ad nauseam. This commentary isn’t isolated to online chatter. It isn’t hard to find people willing to bemoan the current state of affairs and pine away for the good old days (even if they weren’t around during the good old days)

What do people mean when they say our nightlife is dead? They can’t mean that no one is going out anymore. Clubs in New York currently register more than 64 million entries every year, which by some accounts is more than every major local sports team and Broadway show combined. They can’t mean that nightlife doesn’t generate any money. Clubs are responsible for 9 billion dollars in annual spending which is a lot of money for a dead industry. They can’t mean that no one is working in nightlife. The unofficial count right now is that there are at least 30,000 operators in the city. They can’t mean that the environment is stagnant. At least a dozen spots open up every week. So what are they talking about?

I think what they are really saying when they say ‘New York nightlife is dead’ is “my personal experience in New York nightlife is not meeting my expectations and therefore I have decided that the entire industry is somehow deficient.” If that’s your opinion you can’t be wrong. That’s the way you feel and no amount of statistics or data will change that. Your level of satisfaction with the nightlife climate is a subjective and everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but if you can’t consistently find a party you like in New York then you might want to consider changing your game instead of bitching.

Option 1: Look around
The sheer size of New York nightlife negates the idea that you can’t find your sweet spot. There are literally more than 1,100 nightlife venues that have a valid liquor license (I would never send you somewhere that had no liquor) and there are thousands of parties going on every single week. There might be tens of thousands of parties but I’m too lazy to sit here and count them all. I’m not talking about parties just on the weekend. There are events every single night. I’m not just talking about bottle service and Top 40 hip hop either. Almost any variation and combination of qualities you might be looking for happens here. You want reggae music in an outdoor garden on the East Side? Done. You want an interracial swinger party in Midtown? Not a problem. You can have loud or quiet, cheap or expensive, basement or rooftop…whatever. You can find it. All you have to do is look for it. Besides, that’s why God made the internet, so you can find stuff like that.

Option 2: DIY nightlife
Now let’s assume that you’re selective. You’ve searched and searched for a party that has the right combination of people, music, and atmosphere that you’re looking for but can’t find anything. That means NY nightlife is dead, right?

Wrong. If you can’t find what you’re looking for you can make it yourself. A prominent promoter that I recently interviewed told me that the only thing you really need to throw a party in New York is a Crackberry. A few phone calls, a couple of handshakes, an invite on Facebook and Going and you’re in business. You won’t be running Saturday night at Pink Elephant, but if you wanted that, you wouldn’t need to throw your own party. If it’s your party and you can pick the setting, the crowd, the music, the theme and all the other factors that you feel are missing from nightlife now, how can you not enjoy it?

Some people simply enjoy complaining. The ‘lack’ of nightlife in New York just gives them another reason to bitch. Some people are intimidated and complain as a defense mechanism because even if there was some ‘perfect, ultimate party’ to attend, they wouldn’t go. It is easier to wait around for some amazing party to walk up and smack them in the face than actually look for it or create it. But that probably won’t happen. Don’t let the complainers discourage you from going out and having a good time. Life is short. There is a lot of drinking, dancing and general carousing to do before we’re done. We don’t have time for a lot of bitching.

Have fun.
G