Dealing with Drunks: A Practical Guide

 

Drinking is good. Getting drunk is not good, especially when you’re feeling the effects the next day. Dealing with a drunk isn’t much fun either. Unfortunately, if you go out at night there is a good chance that you might encounter a drunk. It can happen in any type of venue, no matter how high class or low key. This doesn’t mean that your night is automatically ruined. As a nightlife native, there are a few things you can do to contend with any drunk that crosses your path or stumbles into your table. 

Are You OK?

The first tip for any nightlife native is responsible indulgence. The whole point of nightlife is going out for pleasure. But if you drink so much that you pass out, you can’t successfully deal with a drunk. In fact, you become the drunk that someone else has to deal with. So the goal here is to drink, but not get drunk.

The second tip is choosing the right approach for the particular drunk that you encounter. People often identify several different types of drunks with labels that remind you of the Seven Dwarves. There are sleepy, happy, angry, flirty, loud, friendly and sad drunks. These tips don’t deal focus on those specific personality traits. Your objective is to have fun, not try to understand the drunk’s underlying emotional issues. For our purposes, there are only two types of drunks; strangers and friends.

What to Look For

No matter what type of drunk you are dealing with, you have to be able to recognize them first. 
The editors at Wikihow offer the following signs that a person has had too much to drink: 

● slurred speech 
● inability to stand or sit up straight 
● a strong desire to lie down or roll over 
● stumbling or a questionable walking technique 
● unusual, loud, or embarrassing behavior 
● violent reactions 
● bloodshot eyes

Keep in mind that a display of any single behavior does not indicate drunkenness. We all have friends who do some of these things even when they’re sober. Also, this is not an invitation to play watchdog and stick your nose in everyone’s party. Just know that a combination of these or other behaviors in your general vicinity is a clue that you might have to use your anti-drunk skills.

Do I Know You?

Dealing with Strangers: When drunken strangers rain on your parade, you’re probably not interested in taking care of them any more than you have to. While you might decide to get involved in extreme cases, your main goal is normally to remove them from your space and continue your fun. 

This is more complicated than it sounds, since it is difficult to have a logical conversation with a drunk. It is usually counterproductive to argue with or try to bully someone who thinks they are stronger, faster and smarter than they really are. 

There are two keys to distancing yourself from a strange drunk. First, isolate them. This could mean moving out of their general area, misleading them into leaving your space, or enlisting the drunk’s friends to collect their associate and move him for you. The second key is to notify someone who works in the venue that the drunk is wandering around, since isolation is only a temporary solution. Any drunk who leaves could easily come back. 

If you are the type of person who doesn’t like to get other people into trouble by calling the bouncer, keep in mind that you are helping and not hurting the drunk in this situation. Operators often have more training and experience in dealing with drunks than you do including TIPS (Training for Intervention ProcedureS)  and Nightlife Best Practices. It is actually their job, not yours, to deal with drunks in the club. Finally, if the drunk could potentially endanger themselves or someone else, then you could be preventing a problem before it happens. 

Again, this is not a suggestion that antagonize everyone in the bar with aggressive attempts at drunk control. It is a concept to help you go back to your enjoying your evening with as little hassle as possible. 

In part two of our drunken guide, we will tackle the delicate situation of dealing with one of your friends when they get drunk in public.

Have fun.
Gamal

Fashion and Personal Style as Nightlife Art

By Gamal Hennessy

Long before Fashion’s Night Out, New York Fashion Week has had an intimate relationship with New York nightlife. The highlights of the week can often be found at the high profile parties. Every year, new venues time their grand openings to coincide with the runway shows. But the connection between the two doesn’t end with Fashion Week. Fashion itself is an integral part of nightlife culture long after the tents have come down. It is one of the few active art forms that we as patrons can take part in every time we go out.

Fashion as Art

In spite of all of the creative work that goes into fashion there are some who believe that it is a merely business and not an art form. This viewpoint fails to see the fundamental meaning of art and its relationship to clothing. Art is “the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others.” Once you understand the definition, accepting fashion as art is simple. The dresses, suits, shoes and all the other elements of fashion are the artistic objects created with skill and imagination. We share them by using our bodies as canvases, displaying them and our own artistic tastes or pretentions every time we go out. Fashion is a multibillion dollar business, but like nightlife it is grounded in creative foundations.

Fashion as Personal Art

Keep in mind that there is a distinct difference between fashion and style. Longtime editor of Vogue Magazine Edna Woolman Chase said it best. “Fashion can be bought. Style one must possess.” Stated less eloquently, fashion exists in the material goods you can buy and wear. Style is your individual personality expressed by what you wear. Fashion is simply the raw materials. Your style is the finished product. Your style is your basic tool of communication. It can be used to identify you as part of a particular group or class. It can project a certain social status or level of wealth. It is a primary tool of seduction, used to attract, excite and tease. It can be used to influence people without you ever having to say a word. Every nightlife patron, consciously or unconsciously, expresses their style when they go out. They might conform or standout. They might be elegant or outrageous. They might do it well or poorly. But all of us are expressing ourselves through what we wear, even if we wear nothing at all.

Active Art and Passive Art

There are many aspects of nightlife culture that are beyond our control. Very few of us can create the music we hear, design the spaces we party in or craft consistently good cocktails. In spite of what many people think, most of us can’t be good DJ’s. These are the aspects of nightlife that we experience passively.

But there are elements of nightlife culture that we can fully engage in as natives. We can use our bodies to dance. We can use our wit and our charm to hustle and seduce. And we can use our style to enhance everything that we do. As nightlife natives, we have a playground of expression open to us that begins with our personal style. We can be an integral part of nightlife culture long after the tents come down.

Have fun.

G

See Also:

Fashion Week and New York Nightlife: Love at First Sight

Why You Should Care About Nightlife Culture

The Four Residents of Nightlife Culture

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