Posts Tagged ‘nightclubs’

The 10 Guys You'll Meet in a Club

Monday, June 23rd, 2008


It’s rare that I go out clubbing these days. I got all that out of my system when I was 18. But every now and then, I have an uncontrollable urge to go out and back my thang up. Invariably, these occasions only serve to remind me why I stopped going to clubs in the first place. Saturday night, I went out and it occurred to me, that every time I go out, I meet a variation of the guys below. You may even recognize some yourself.

 

The ‘I’m not going to hit on you’ guy


He opens the conversation with that disclaimer and then proceeds to hit on you, roughly every 30 seconds. He doesn’t realize that his weak line didn’t lure you into that false sense of security he was hoping for. The jedi mind trick didn’t work. You are onto him. And you will not be fooled. You are aware that he is totally hitting on you.

 

The ugly good looking guy


Somehow he didn’t get the memo that nature was not too kind to him. He has all the arrogance of a good looking guy and a face like a cobbler’s thumb. He’s quite the enigma. While you spend your time trying to figure out how this smurf even got the balls to talk to a diva like yourself, he hits on you so hard, it’s like a UFC championship.

 

The newly single guy


He seemed to have mistaken the club for his psychiatrists office. You have no idea why he singled you out to vent on, but he does it nonetheless. ‘I’ve been single a month and a half now’, he starts by saying. You may as well get comfy, because he’s not going to shut up for quite some time. Around the five minute mark, expect the picture of the kids to be pulled from his pocket. Try not to roll your eyes.

 

The dancer guy


He’s taking up the most room on the dance floor, only to showcase his movement repertoire of crip walking and the butterfly – which would be fine, if it was still 1997. The crowd that has formed around him is more in morbid disbelief, but he thinks he’s a member of the Rock Steady Crew in Beat Street.

 

The completely egocentric wanker guy


His ego knows no bounds. You are repulsed by him, but only stay in his presence because it’s like some sort of nature wildlife show. You study him to figure out exactly why he thinks he’s the shit. You put some of his sweat in a petri dish and send it off to the lab. The results come back and conclude, 100%, that he is part of an ever growing society of males known as ‘wankers’.

 

The grinder guy


His reasoning for doing this is far beyond comprehension, but this guy will grab your waist from behind (often times without taking the time to introduce himself) and start grinding himself against you. While he gets aroused, you get disgusted and spend 30 uncontrollable seconds trying to pry yourself from his vice-like grip. If all else fails, your wing girl steps in and sucker punches him.

 

The short guy


The fact that you are at least 7 inches taller than him doesn’t deter the short guy. He’s quite content to maintain a conversation with your breasts, apparently completely unaware that they don’t talk back.

 

The racially confused guy


This guy outright refuses to believe that he’s white. He wears baggy jeans, a new era cap and some sort of LRG sweatshirt. He’s most likely a budding rapper/producer/nightclub promoter that you’ve never heard of, but he thinks he’s the hottest thing in town. He’ll refer to you as ‘ma’ throughout your conversation. You spend your time being embarrassed for him.

 

The Rastafarian guy


Any club you go to, there’s always one rastafarian in the corner, usually by himself. He nurses a few drinks throughout the night and says ‘ay gyal’ to anything with breasts that walks by. He’s cool, calm and collected until the ‘ragga’ portion of the evening, when he lets loose and hits the dance floor. Beware of flying dreads.

 

The ‘shoulda left the club hours ago’ guy


This guy isn’t just drunk. He’s verging on being in a coma. He’ll try to talk to you but the combination of loud music and his slurring makes you question if he’s even speaking English. He’s sweaty, he spits, he sways – he’s all around gross. He should have called it a day after two drinks, but he stuck around to give everyone the pleasure of seeing exactly how drunk he can get. By the time the night’s over, he’ll have violated at least two girls, gotten in a fight and puked all over himself.

 

So with this wealth of beauties to choose from, is it any wonder I don’t hit up the clubs that much any more?

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Posted in relationships | 6 Comments »

The Crappy Job Chronicles

Thursday, February 7th, 2008


There are certain jobs where there’s a good camaraderie with your colleagues. Nightclub coat check girls form a bond, a code of ethics, a sense of loyalty not unlike that of say, the marines. When you go to work each night, you’re preparing for battle.

 

Oh sure, the beginning of the night is all air-kisses and pleasantries, but the end is a complete clusterfuck of cokeheads, drunks, lost tickets, screaming matches, ultimate fighting championships and police cars.

 

The club where I worked, in Ladbroke Grove, had previously been quite a hovel, notorious for drugs and violence. Then it was shut down and bought out by people who owned a chic hipster hangout, not far away, in Notting Hill. They gave it a makeover and it attracted a new, more up market crowd (read: hardcore cokeheads).

 

There were usually two or three of us working the coat check and a small army of security working the front of the club. They were there as much to protect us, as they were anything else. (That’s when they weren’t too preoccupied sexually harassing us.)

 

The majority of the night would be pretty fun. People would arrive within in a two-hour or so time span. Once all their coats had been hung, the rest of the night was spent horsing around, shooting the shit with security or sneaking into the club for a quick boogie.

 

Yep, it was all fun and games until the clock struck (the dreaded) 3am.

 

At 2.55am, my fellow coat check comrades and I would suit up and ready ourselves for war. At 3am, the music died, club doors flung open and a few hundred club goers descended on the coat check en masse.

 

They’d charge at us waving tickets, complaining they’d lost theirs or sometimes just wanted to engage you with their drunken tale of how they just broke up with their girlfriend.

 

Our job was to deal with all this as quickly as possible. The coat check was a pretty confined area so we were falling over ourselves and each other, digging through mounds of coats while trying to keep people calm and get the security guards hands off our asses.

 

People who’d lost their ticket had to wait till the end and that never went down well. They’d insist on holding everyone up while they drunkenly explain to you theirs is the black jacket with three buttons down the front, or was it four? No, wait, three. Maybe, two?

 

On one particularly busy night, a woman gave us her ticket and we looked for her coat. Try as we might, we couldn’t find it anywhere. She was out of it and extremely annoying. She kept screaming the description of the coat and as I waded through the 700 or so jackets, 699 of them seemed to match the description. I guess her last hit of coke was wearing off because her nagging had reached a whole new level. She had all three of us ready to drop kick her in the face or pay security to do it.

 

We combed every inch of the coat check while she screamed about how she’d make sure we paid for it if we’d lost it.

 

Eventually, I found it. It was a hideous little number that couldn’t have cost more than £29.99 from New Look. I held it up.

 

“This is it? This?! I would have done you a favor losing this piece of crap, you wanker. Take your shitty jacket and piss off.”

 

The one and only time we did actually lost someone’s jacket was not pleasant. Apparently he was a semi-big drug dealer in the area (he didn’t seem to be following the golden ‘never get high on your own supply’ rule though). He threatened to come back and kill us. A little extreme maybe, but there are certain jackets in my collection that would totally warrant a death threat if they were lost. So, I can’t say I blame him. But I did high tail it out of there like my ass was on fire that night.

 

Usually one of the bouncers would drive me home. Sometimes we’d stop at the all night bagel place in Shepherd’s Bush for a bite. I’d be at home tucked up in bed by 5am, ready to get up and do it all over again the next night. Ahh, all this talk of cokeheads and bagels is making me all misty eyed and homesick.

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Posted in fashion | 2 Comments »