Consumption as Competition in Nightlife Culture

By Gamal Hennessy

There is an international competition every four years that brings athletes from all over the world for several weeks to participate in events of all types. There is a social competition every night that patrons of every class, race and demographic group compete in when they step up to the bar. Olympic athletes compete for fame, medals and patriotism. What do drinking competitors getting out of their experience? What motivates them to push the boundaries of tolerance and risk damage to their health and social status?

When Drinking Becomes a Sport

Keep in mind I’m not referring to any specific drinking game here. We are discussing drinking as a competition in and of itself without any other secondary set of rules. The rules of the game are simple; who ever is perceived to consume the most liquor in a given period of time and remain functional wins. This is a sprint, not a marathon. Someone who has one drink every night for ten nights is irrelevant to this contest. Someone who has ten drinks in one night is likely to get attention.

The interesting thing about the rules of competitive drinking is that they are seldom explicit. They are only hinted at in the statements that these rivals make:

Don’t try to keep up with me. I will drink you under the table!

You had 5 drinks last night?  I don’t even remember how many I had. It must have been around 9 or 10....

Who wants more shots?

The message is clear; in order to participate in this competition you have to keep drinking until you attain the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat.

Benefits of the Game

In competitive drinking, the quality of the drink is not important. The quantity is important. That means the benefits of this type of drinking are not sensual, they are social. The winners of competitive drinking are attempting to raise their social status among their peer group. It is a display of strength meant to send a message of high tolerance, endurance and superiority in comparison to the other drinkers. It is also a secondary signal of abundant resources and enthusiasm to push oneself in the name of “having a good time”.

All of this might sound petty and juvenile to the nightlife foreigner but the same dynamic exists in all levels of modern society. In the normal world, we compete in terms of money, house size, weight, hours worked, material goods owned and a host of other social struggles that are nothing more than substitutions for violent conflicts for dominance among our peers. Not everyone subscribes to competitive drinking as a concept, but that doesn’t make it any more or less credible as a social competition within that environment.

Pitfalls of the Game

Every game that has a winner also has a loser. In the case of competitive drinking, the loser is the one who consumes alcohol to the point where he is damaged socially, legally, financially or physically. This can manifest itself in a drunken brawl inside the club, a tarnished reputation, a lost job or a trip to the hospital. The pitfalls of competitive drinking both in the short term and over time can impact every other aspect of the competitor’s life. Like any other social competition however, some people are willing to risk everything for the chance at success. Everyone feels invincible when they start and very few people imagine themselves being the losers. Winning is a more happy daydream.

Two Types of Player

In competitive drinking there are the ones who drink and the ones who pretend to drink and exaggerate their consumption. The drinkers have the ability to enjoy the benefits of the game but also are susceptible to all of the pitfalls. The pretenders also can enjoy the benefits but can often avoid all of the pitfalls depending on how adept they are at subterfuge. While there is a potential social backlash for a person who is consistently caught lying about their drinking levels, the reality is that many people exaggerate their consumption to participate in the game and most of the drinkers do not have the attention span to keep track of what the pretenders do and don’t drink when they are in the heat of competition.

Organizers of the Game

When we try to find out who set up this game and who benefits from it, it is easy to point our fingers at the operators and accuse them of organizing and profiting at the expense of the patron. But a more reasonable observer has to look beyond the four walls of the bar. It is our wider society that pushes the maxim that more is better. It is our general economy that encourages increased consumption as a cornerstone of our prosperity. Outside of nightlife we have found a way to make every aspect of our social lives into some kind of competition. In many ways, nightlife culture is a mirror to mainstream culture. The patrons are primed to compete long before they step past the velvet rope. The operators may profit from this behavior, but they are hardly the ones to create it.

The Game in the Context of Nightlife Culture

Nightlife Culture is an artistic and social environment. If there is an absence of other types of interaction (musical, sexual or communicative) many patrons will default to competitive drinking. Understanding the motivation behind the action and dealing with those drives will help both the patrons and mainstream society better handle the benefits and pitfalls that it creates.

Have fun.
Gamal

The Four Residents of Nightlife Culture

      

by Gamal Hennessy

All nightlife patrons are not created equal.

I am not talking about differences in race, income, social status or gender. I am not referring to the reasons they might go out or the things they might like to do or the places they might like to go. The personal preferences of one patron and another is a natural and normal expression of individuality. I am talking here about basic patterns of behavior. I’m referring to the perspectives that separate one person from another and directly influence that person’s nightlife experience and the experience of the people around him or her. In my experience I have found that there are four types of residents in the nightlife space; operators, natives, amateurs and fanatics.

Operators: make the nightlife machine work. They are the people who offer the services and experiences that patrons come to enjoy. Operators exist on many levels and perform a wide variety of functions. Everyone from the owner of a venue to the manager, bartender, DJ, musician, hostess, waitress, security guard, dancer, sound technician and promoter are one level or another “operating” in nightlife. For many of them it is a passion. For all of them it is a business. Whenever you go out and enjoy a good party at a well run venue, with no fights, good service and a positive atmosphere, you have the operators to thank from the top of the food chain all the way down the line.

Natives: see nightlife as their natural habitat like a polar bear in the arctic or a tiger in the jungle. They are the people who spend a lot of time in nightlife and maintain a harmonious relationship with it. These are the people who go out to on a regular basis for a variety of different reasons and experiences; lounging with friends one night, listening to new music on another night, meeting clients for drinks and then dancing with a date at the end of the week. Some of them might know operators and use those relationships to get the inside track on the latest and greatest. All of them know the spots that best suit their personalities. The most important aspect about a native is the sense of balance. These people can drink, dance, and date several nights out of the week without sacrificing their health or their ability to work and without leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.

Amateurs: are relatively new to the nightlife experience. Circumstances like age, a previous lifestyle or simply being new to an urban environment have limited their exposure to clubs and the things that go on inside. New amateurs haven’t been to many venues. They don’t know what to expect when they get there. They don’t know what they can handle. They don’t know how to react in different situations and they haven’t integrated nightlife into the rest of their life. Old amateurs only go out to the clubs on rare occasions, but they go out on these same occasions every year. Although they have been exposed to nightlife on their birthday, New Year’s Eve and possibly Halloween, their relationship with nightlife is tenuous at best. Many of them still are unsure of what goes on in nightlife, many of them consume too much when they do go and many of them suffer in one way or another as a result of that over consumption. While some new amateurs evolve into natives, old amateurs shy away from repeated exposure to nightlife because of the pain associated with their over consumption.

Fanatics: combine two distinct qualities. First, they have considerable exposure to nightlife. They know where to go, they know what to do, they know what they can and can’t handle. Second they consistently strive to go beyond the limits of what they can handle with little regard for the consequences. These are the people who leave their homes at the start of the night with the mantra “Tonight, we are going to get fucked up!” They believe the volume of liquor they can drink is an indicator of their status. They see fights with other patrons and police altercations as struggles for respect and freedom. They consider the destruction of property and the disruption of people’s lives as inconsequential. They regard blackouts, hangovers and strained relationships are the cost of doing business. In the mind of the fanatic, if you’re not going to go too far, you shouldn’t bother going.

So where do you fit in?

Everyone who goes out fits into one or more categories. It might not be easy at first glance to figure out where you fit in. As I said before, it’s not based on age, standard of living, gender, race or social background. What kind of resident you are is based on your pattern of behavior and the frame of reference that guides your actions when you are out. Some patrons enhance the night, some patrons cause problems. You know who you are. The question is, are you the nightlife resident that you really want to be?

Have fun.

G 

Halloween and the Nightlife Amateur

By GamalHennessy

Halloweenis one of my favorite holidays. It beats out Thanksgiving, July 4th andeven Arbor Day. Halloween is similar to nightlife because it gives people achance to move away from their daytime personas and create a new identity fromtheir imaginations. Unfortunately, Halloween is also a breeding ground foramateurs, and little good can come from a night over run with amateurs.

Natives and amateurs
I need to be very clear about my distinctionbetween nightlifenatives and nightlife amateurs. Where you fit in isn’t a function of how many clubsyou’ve been to or how many times you go out. It’s about quality, not quantity.

For nightlife natives, going out is part of their lifestyle.We enjoy the drinking, dancing, dating and hustling that is a part of cityliving. It’s not a problem for us to go out three or four nights a week andconsistently make it to work the next day without hangovers, scars or gaps inour memory.

 

Amateurs on the other hand tend to crash and burn.The combination of liquor, hormones, drugs and sleep deprivation that nightlifecan generate often overwhelms them, leading to decisions that can generously bedescribed as questionable. When you’re out at night and you see people fighting,throwing up, peeing between cars, getting thrown into a squad car or anambulance or unable to show up at work the next day, you’re looking at amateursin action. When community boards complain about the nightlife that is ruining theirquality of life, they’re complaining about amateurs. Simply put, amateurs give nightlifea bad name.

 

The need for amateurs
At this point, you might think that I don’tappreciate amateurs. That is simply not true. Amateurs are essential tonightlife for three reasons. First, everyone has to start somewhere. It hasbeen said that you don’t really know your limit until you’ve crossed it. Manynatives go through an amateur period in the beginning that teaches them whatthey can and can’t handle. If you can evolve from that stage no worries.Amateurs often serve as an entertaining example of what not to do.

Second, amateurs are a good source of nightlife revenue.When amateurs go out, they are willing to pay extra to get in or they just buybottles. When natives go out, many of them can have a very good time withoutspending a lot of cash. If everyone was a native, clubs might not make enoughmoney to stay open.

Finally, and most importantly, some people likebeing amateurs. Of course, they don’t call themselves amateurs. They considerthemselves hardcore party people or players inspired by Jersey Shore who needto prove how much liquor, coke or sex they can consume in public. But since ourdefinition of amateur revolves around excess quantity, anyone whose goal isover consumption qualifies as an amateur.

Avoiding amateurs
If you’ve read this far and decided that you wantto avoid amateurs at night, be careful. There are some common misconceptionsout there. Some people believe that if you avoid B&T traps, you avoidamateurs. Not true. While many amateurs come from outside the city, they canpop up anywhere…even in Brooklyn.

Also,some people might think that if you just get a bottle and stay in the VIP area ofa club, you are shielded from amateurs. This is a trap. Amateurs often buytheir way into places they couldn’t otherwise get into. They are actually drawnto the VIP area for the temporary status it promises. There is nothing worsethan paying several hundred dollars for Grey Goose AND being surrounded byamateurs all night.

There are two main ways I’ve found to avoidamateurs. The first is to go out on the nights that amateurs stay home. Thedays from Sunday to Thursday are often the best native nights. Friday andSaturday are mostly amateur nights. The second solution is to go to the placeswhere amateurs can’t get in, including house parties, private clubs or out ofthe way spots that the amateurs haven’t found yet. Even in this period ofpolitical change, this might be one occasion where segregation is desirable.

When amateurs attack
As I stated before, you can find amateurs all overthe city on any given night. However there are some nights when theconcentration of amateurs swells to crisis levels. These nights include thebirthday of the individual amateur, New Year’s Eve, St. Patrick’s Day and ofcourse, Halloween. It might not be so bad this year since Halloween falls on Monday.Saturday will be the big party night, which means I’m going to a private party.Nightlife needs a certain number of amateurs, but I don’t need to be aroundthem.

Have fun.
Gamal