As clubs got increasingly smaller and only needed to let ten people in every hour, the role of the doorperson dramatically changed. The door guy went from someone who was constantly stressed and permanently outside maniacally waving a clipboard to someone who has relatively nothing to do.

If your club’s capacity is eighty, meaning the doorperson will probably only let in around ninety people in the six hour span of an evening, that makes for a night’s work equivalent in boredom to manning the late shift at an off-road gas station in Kansas. Outside a club, everyone wants in and therefore perpetually harasses the doorperson with pleas of ‘I know so and so,’ and ‘I’m with girls!’ regardless of the fact that the door guy has neither the ability to make the locale any larger nor the authority to make the ostentatious door policy any less strict.

It therefore comes as no great surprise that in an effort to avoid boredom and persistent pestering, the doorman will take refuge inside the club. Often for chunks as large as twenty to thirty minutes at a time.

Does no one else find this absurd?

Doesn’t the title of the doorman imply that he should be at the door? Not relaxed by the bar wholeheartedly enjoying a martini while sixty-five plus people outside wait for him finish playing with his olive and actually reappear to let them in.

It’s come to my attention that at these new small places, I’ll often find the door person dancing at my side. Or running around flirting with models. Or just sitting at a banquette relaxed, handing out his business card or engaging in casual networking. And I always want to scream, “Hello! You’re on the clock! Hello! It’s not even cold outside yet! It’s not like you even have to warm up! Get on your feet!”

It’s gotten to the point where often we’ll have friends outside wanting to enter, but the door person is, as usual, MIA. It then becomes your nightlife responsibility to treasure hunt through the crowd in search of the individual in charge of the door, tap on their shoulder and in the most non-intrusive way possible, request that they go do their job. Often, their response is:

“The place has a nice level of people right now,” or “I’ll go out there when I finish this bottle of champagne,” and you’re like, “Wait! My friends are the future customers outside who are supposed to be having a good time. And ‘nice level of people’ means you’re nowhere near capacity, just that you’re too lazy to move your ass to the door right now!”

In the old days of Euro-style clubs like Pink Elephant, the only reason a doorperson wouldn’t be always stationed outside is if some bottled host failed to properly do their job. Then you’d see the door guy running around inside frantically with a flashlight doing damage control Speedy Gonzales-style. The red ropes were never unattended for more than five minutes at a time. Flash forward now to the days of snooty, child-size places like SubMercer, Eldridge, Beatrice and Goldbar, and you’re lucky if you manage to catch the doorman on duty.

Let me tell you, if you don’t, it can be a loooong wait. Amazing to think that nightlife is, in theory, a service industry.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.