14 Tips for a Good Club Night

By Gamal Hennessy

The article I published last week with tips for ladies to keep themselves safe in clubs got a lot of positive feedback. This week I’m going to be more inclusive and less ominous. I’m offering 14 tips to increase your pleasure and decrease your hassles no matter what type of bar, club or lounge you plan to visit.

Every social situation has a set of guidelines to help things run smoothly. The dinner table, the classroom, the office and the locker room each has its own customs to keep people from throwing food, throwing a tantrum or crossing swords.

People who know the rules often get ahead, even if they don’t always follow them. People who don’t know the rules often suffer. The nightclub is no different than any other social environment. There is a certain way to do things. Common sense will make most of these rules obvious, but fanatics have proven that common sense isn’t that common, so I’ve developed a few tips to help people along.

Before you hit the club, it pays to be prepared

1. Decide where you’re going and have a couple of back up options. Going online and doing a little research will help a lot.

2.

Find out how you need to dress to get in and respond accordingly. You don’t want to be turned away because of your clothing. You can figure this out from online reviews, word of mouth, or just looking on the venues website.

3. Figure out how you’re getting in whether it’s reservations, personal connections, using a promoter, standing in line or just walking in. Do not stand in line unless it is a short wait and you can stay relatively warm and dry. Nightlife does not have to lead to pneumonia.

4. Don’t travel with people who are going to sabotage your fun. That means leave the fanatics at home unless you plan to take responsibility for them.

5. Decide if you’re buying bottle service (and who is paying for it) before you get there. Standing at the door, in the cold, with a promoter in your face and a girl standing next to you that you’re trying to impress might not be the time to make a $1,000 decision.

6. Be realistic about how much money you’re spending. If you go to a high end spot on a Saturday night and order 10 shots of premium tequila to ‘get the party started’ you can easily spend $100. If you do this 4 times…you get the idea. It is pointless to throw a drunken tantrum when your bill comes at the end of the night. I’m not suggesting that you don’t drink when you go out. I’m just saying that if you know you’re going to spend that much, accept it in the beginning of the night and stop worrying about it.

7. When you get there be nice to the bouncer whether you are on the list, ordered bottle service or just standing on line. Giving them a hard time won’t get you in faster. It might prevent you from getting in at all.

Once you’re inside the main goal is having fun.

8. You can have a good time without giving the club staff a hard time. You can be cordial (or at least diplomatic) to them even if they don’t return the favor. It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.

9. Unless your express goal is

getting a hangover, it is always wise to drink and do something else while you’re there (dance, flirt, eat, talk, whatever).

10. The key to meeting people is helping them feel good about themselves while you’re around, not using them to help you feel better about yourself. This doesn’t apply just to your romantic interests. The people who bump into you on the dance floor, or stand next to you at a concert are not your enemies or your targets. They want to have a good time just like you do.

11. You don’t have to get drunk just because you drink.

When its time to go make sure things end well

12. If you can catch the attention of the staff that served you without getting in the way, thank them on the way out. They don’t get much of that and some of them will remember you if you come back. This can lead to a better time the next time.

13. If you leave with your people, make sure everyone gets to their chosen transportation. For guys, this means putting ladies in cabs before you jump into one (unless they are going home with you). Nightlife is a relatively safe environment, but even one Imette St. Gullien is too much, especially if it’s your friend.

14. Before you pass out on the short road to hangover (assuming you ignored concepts 8 and 10), try to make sure your people actually got home. Again, New York is safer than it has been in decades, but it shows you care. You don’t have to have a conversation. Just ask them for a quick ‘I’m alive’ text when they get in the door.

None of these ideas are designed to kill your mood or discourage you from clubbing. They are designed to make a good night better. If you give a little thought to your night out in the beginning, you’ll be in good shape to go out again on the following night.

Have fun.
G

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