I came across this article in my email from a friend which I found very interesting to me. It was written in away that questions the public opinion on the easy access lifestyle of wealthy New York City Metro young adults and what they're privilege entitles them too. Its hard for some people to grasp the idea of what the media portrays, but much of it has some truth to it. In the downtown lifestyle I swirl in night after night there is a world built of a whole social class structure system that takes basic roots in the human nature to dominate. The world of bottle service and celebrities is a multi million dollar business that any determined being can find them self playing. The media often only portrays and documents the development in the already wealthy and connected but the nature of the business goes so much deeper. Its fueled by young determine people out to establish them self inside a corporate market. At one point in time a younger me was soured by the wealth of some of my competitors, but after a few years doing this you realize money will only carry someone and their personal interest so far. You meet some kids who come from extremely affluent families and some kids who are just out right on the grind not everyone in the young corporate nightlife fit the stereo-type of anything in this article in particular. You have to respect someones natural talent and determination no matter if they are poor or rich. This is a hustlers paradise and play ground the question is how hard are you willing to go in a game that is brutally vain. It's a test of your wits at the end of the day.
Jimmy C.
August 19, 2011
The Night Is Young
By CAITLIN KEATING
“WHERE is the school bus to pick up all of these kids?” a 27-year-old man was wondering aloud around 11:30 p.m., in a parking lot outside the nightclub SL East on Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton, N.Y. It was a hot Saturday night in July, and around him girls who appeared to be about 18 were huddled together, illuminated by a chandelier and the sickly hue of their smartphones.
Behind a velvet rope was Ryan Skolnick, 23, a D.J. and promoter: texting, phoning, urging a new wave of fresh-faced arrivals toward the club. “I saw that there was no one taking care of my age demographic in the Hamptons,” said the scruffy-cheeked, tanned Mr. Skolnick, a University of Miami student, explaining his decision to work at the club, sometimes with help from his fraternal twin, Matthew, also a D.J. (he is mainly a producer), who goes by the last name Sterling.
The club scene in the Hamptons has always attracted the young, but this summer the crowd has seemed downright larval — thanks in part to a new breed of promoter, like the brothers, that is barely of drinking age, but has Facebook contacts in the four digits.
Matthew said he had been a D.J. a few times, and Ryan said that he used to promote at Nello Summertimes in Southampton on Saturday nights, but that the party there ended earlier than it was supposed to, after a New York Post article highlighting under-age drinking and drug use led to a police investigation. Now the brothers have moved operations to SL East, though they are vague about their commitment there.
“I do bring a good amount of people every Saturday, but I just do it to help out and have a good time,” Matthew said.
Much like the term “producer” in Hollywood, the job of promoter is veiled in a certain ambiguity. “A lot of people claim to be promoters, but they’re really just hanging out with the promoter and want to sound like they’re cool, like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I work there, I work there,’” said Eugene Remm, an owner of EMM Group, a hospitality, lifestyle and management company that also oversees SL East as well as Tenjune, a popular place in Manhattan. “It’s part of the game with people. They’re not necessarily promoters there; they just want to be able to get access to whatever pretty girl that they want to invite out or whatever group of guys that are their buddies that they want to say they have some access that someone else doesn’t.”
Mr. Remm said that on a typical weekend night his clubs will hire three or four official hosts. “Those hosts have the ability to hire subpromoters,” he said, a category also known as “subs.” “I don’t necessarily know who they hire, or if they’re necessarily paying them. Maybe paid in a couple free drinks and be able to feel like they’re part of the team.”
Asked how he decides who gains admission to his clubs, Mr. Remm passed the buck to his doormen. “We’re willing to lose out on a few dollars in order to justify and maintain the brand,” he said, adding a crowd of young people clamoring to get in can be good for business, even if they aren’t allowed. “It doesn’t hurt us. It only creates a better energy at the front door, which allows us to be more selective as to who we invite.”
At SL East, at least, his safety net appeared to be working. A group of six girls had tried to sneak in through the back exit of SL East, walking with as much confidence as they could with their heels getting stuck in the gravel.
“We need security back here!” a guard shouted.
SL EAST also sporadically employs Jake Truen, 21, who said he has promoted since he was in high school at Half Hollow Hills in Dix Hills, N.Y. In a telephone interview, Mr. Truen said his youth posed a distinctive advantage in the field. “The kids are the ones spending the money to get into these clubs,” he said.
Mr. Truen said he “hates” promoting (the term has a negative connotation, he said) but does it because he enjoys going to parties. And the process is relatively simple: He sends a mass text message from his BlackBerry telling his 450-person list of acquaintances where to go, and who is the D.J., at a club on a particular night.
“I’ve made a lot of connections,” Mr. Truen said, “so if Avicii is at South Pointe, I will call the owner of the club directly, tell him I’m coming, who I’m bringing, how much money will be spent, and that I want 10 percent of what my clients spend.” (Jonathan Schwartz, an owner of South Pointe, which is in Southampton, said: “We don’t have any promoters who are 21. The youngest promoter we have on payroll is 26 years old.”)
Mr. Truen said that he can make $1,500 on a typical Saturday night.
(Mr. Remm expressed incredulity at this. “There is no person that works for me who makes $1,500 a night,” he said. “If they did I could quit my job and do that.” )
Before Mr. Truen’s clients head to the club, he said, they e-mail requests for a table. Then he simply forwards the messages to staff members at SL East, and the customers are put into the reservation system as Mr. Truen’s “clients,” enabling his commission to be calculated.
Though he works for several different venues, Mr. Truen said he considered SL East to be the best establishment in the Hamptons. “We are responsible for filling one-third of the club with our clients, who are all college students,” he said. Asked how the clubs monitor under-age clubgoers, he said: “They won’t turn down under-age tables or ignore them, but we’re not really their main crowd. They put us in one section toward the side, or the back of the club and it will be like 150 kids I know.”
But the boundaries can be porous, as Nello Balan, the owner of Nello Summertimes, can attest. After the Post article, it was reported that the local police sent an undercover agent to the establishment and arrested a bartender for serving her (two other arrests were made at 75 Main across the street).
The Southampton police didn’t return calls for comment, but Mr. Balan said that since the incident he has shaken up his management structure. “We made a mistake and used a promoter,” Mr. Balan said. “It’s a bad idea to use promoters. They try and bring as many people as possible, and it’s not the same crowd. A lot of places in the Hamptons hire promoters, and it’s probably a much younger crowd.”
Mr. Truen argued, however, that allowing junior clients past the velvet rope has become an economic necessity for clubs.
“Older people don’t want to go out on a Tuesday or Thursday night,” he said. “Kids will, though. They obviously don’t have to worry about going to work in the morning and will spend a lot of money to get in.”
Mr. Remm brushed away the suggestion that SL East is a hangout for under-age drinkers. “Our typical group at SL East mirrors our crowd at SL in New York — it’s an affluent New York demographic,” he said. And Mr. Schwartz characterized South Pointe’s clientele as being “in their late 20s and 30s,” adding, “While some clubs are promoter-driven and cheesy, we’ve tried to stay away from that.”
But Mark Baker, a nightlife veteran who used to work as a director of operations for Conscience Point in Southampton (infamous for a 2001 incident involving the publicist Lizzie Grubman and an S.U.V.), has noticed a palpable shift to college-age and even younger clientele, and traced it to a time when Manhattan club owners began opening outposts on the East End.
“All of the promoters that they use, a lot of them are kids,” Mr. Baker, 49, said. “And they’re bringing their kids with them.”
Now, he said: “There is nowhere for the older crowd to go. Maybe Nobu, on the deck, but it was a very humid summer.”
Some promoters are not even of drinking age. Howard Jameson, 19, a student at Pace University who is now manager of client relations of Riff Raff’s at the Hurricane Club in the Flatiron district in Manhattan, said he has been promoting since he was at Soundview Preparatory School in Westchester, logging stints at Marquee and Avenue. Mr. Jameson said he has booked clients from SL in the city for SL East, along with Day and Night, a roving party run by another pair of brothers, Daniel and David Koch.
“They will go out and get bottles,” Mr. Jameson said with some weariness of the East End under-age crowd, “and then the next day they will have to listen to their parents bicker about it.”
(One can see why such a summer job might appeal more than, say, scooping ice cream. “The club pays me cash in full, and then I take that money and subdivide it out to whoever else I have promoting for me,” Mr. Jameson said. “A thousand dollars in hand, and I might have two or three guys do all of the promoting, which means I literally do no work.” )
Marc Henry, a doorman at Georgica Restaurant and Lounge in Wainscott in East Hampton, said that he had noticed the trend of under-age clients — but not at his club. “We don’t have a single promoter on a Saturday night,” Mr. Henry said in a phone interview. We don’t attract the younger crowd, like some of these other venues do. I’ve had people leave Georgica, go to other venues, and come back and say, ‘Hey we walked into this club, and we just walked right out because it was just all young kids.’ ”
At the Surf Lodge in Montauk on that hot July night, Julian Cavin, 21, from Park Slope, Brooklyn, was leaning back on a wicker chair. Mr. Cavin said he has promoted since he was 16, while attending Beacon High School in Manhattan, and said he promoted three times this summer when “big D.J.’s” were playing South Pointe. He also D.J.’s for Goldbar. But tonight he decided to chill out at a place where flip-flops are encouraged and bottle minimums don’t exist.
Mr. Cavin briefly attended Brandeis University, but dropped out after one year to pursue being a D.J. He already talks about the night-life world with a certain jadedness.
“A lot of kids will just do it to look cool, so they can tweet about it or Facebook about it, so they can bring girls in, pour them a drink in the club and feel like a baller,” Mr. Cavin said of promoting. “It’s a false sense of reality.”
He described the crowd at South Pointe, where he has drawn crowds for the D.J.’s Avicci, Calvin Harris and Wolfgang Gartner, as “young hot girls and balding old men.” And he scoffed at the idea that clubs regulate the age of clientele. “If Justin Bieber walks up to South Pointe, we are obviously letting him in.” he said. “Age is meaningless.”
Though he said he makes a few hundred dollars per promoting gig, Mr. Cavin professed to already being sick of the scene.
“When I’m at South Pointe I feel like I could be on 14th Street in Manhattan in a dark room,” he said. “I just want to be on the beach.”
