Updating The Secret Society Part 1

Back in the day TD wrote a tongue in cheek post called “The Secret Society”. In it he alleged that there was a secret sex society made up of women, gay guys and players.

Obviously this is not true, but there is a secret society that most guys who get into this stuff will have to encounter.

It’s the secret society of clubs.

What I mean by this, is that there is a society of people who exist within the confines of the club scene as well as a hierarchy and some basic rules you need to know if you’re going to spend a lot of time in clubs as a “civilian”.

Who makes up this secret society?

The secret society is made up of Promoters,Scenesters,Girl groups,Bottle Rats, Professionals,Ballers, 30k Millionaires,regulars, local celebrities and the help.

In short the scene is made up of what The Asian Playboy once called “The Fickle 500.” The fickle 500 idea states that in ANY city ( As of the time of writing this I’ve lived in Miami, NYC, Scottsdale, LA, Dallas, and Chicago and Las Vegas for at least 3 months of clubbing) there are only about 500 people who go out consistently.

This group is the secret society or “the scene”.

In this secret society there is a hierarchy. The lowest people on the totem pole are civilians and fat chicks. The average dude who waits in line to get into clubs, buys drinks and ironically supports the club with his money is the lowest of the low.

A key understanding here, is that the way clubs work for those outside of the Secret Society is this: The more a club can make you feel uncool, the more money you’ll be willing to spend to fix that feeling. This is why clubs will make you stand in line outside even when you’re on the guest list.

This is why for most good clubs in major cities you need to bring a 2 to 1 ratio of girls to guys, and this is why certain places hold the door. If you’re an outsider, the clubs want to make you work and invest as much as possible before you get in the door.

This is where the promoter comes in. Yes, technically the promoter’s job is to get people into the club. But if we’re dealing with a secret society place like Tenjune in NYC, Supper Club or Eden in LA, Surrender or Marquee in LV, or Set, Louis, and Prive’ in Miami the club fills itself.

And it’s here that we encounter the first rule of the secret society: Hotness is all that matters. When a club is hot, it has all the power. The club can create ridiculous policies like the “La Deux” line, where instead of having a line, the club just has velvet ropes people mass around and the promoters pick out the people they want to let in.

I call it the “La Deux” line because the club La Deux was the first place I saw use this technique when they opened back in 2006. Or they can have 2 different sets of door people as they do at Drai’s in Hollywood. In places the secret society likes to frequent, the promoter’s job is less about crowd accumulation and more about crowd control.

In smaller cities or non Secret Society scenes you can befriend promoters easily. In the Secret Society clubs a promoter literally has 30-40 people screaming at him from behind the velvet ropes and he’s concerned about not letting in dudes.

Next we have our scensters. Scenesters are there to see and be seen, these are the people who post on facebook that Steven Tyler stopped by their table, go to multiple clubs in a night, and wouldn’t be caught dead somewhere after the hotness is gone.

The girls in the SS roll in groups or crews and often have enemies and best friends forever that end up switching throughout their time in the SS. Most of the girls who are in the scene fall in to one of the following categories:

Bottle Rats: Bottle rats are girls who go out hoping to latch on to a group of guys with a bottle and stay there all night flirting for free drinks before disappearing into the night. Every time I’ve gotten bottle service we’ve had to kick some bottle rats out. You can tell their bottle rats if they don’t seem in to you but they are being nice, smiling and sticking around.

Professionals: Professionals are a fact of life in the Secret Society. These girls range from trophy wives and girlfriends to straight out hos. When I lived in Miami one of the hottest girls I dated ended up being a high class call girl on a website and everything.

This is a VERY common story in the SS.

Local Celebrities: Local celebrities range from your club princess who everyone loves to your weird hair chick who always comes to a certain club night. Local celebrities know everyone and are known by everyone in the club scene. Most commonly they are involved in some aspect of the club scene be it bartending, cocktailing, etc.

Local celebrities are more common in smaller places as in LA we have actual reality tv people to be our local celebrities.

The Help: Refers to girls who work at the club whether or not they are working that night. A very common thing in the SS is that girls who are off that night will come in to work anyway to hang out and get the local celebrity attention.

During the week (When the Secret Society is in full swing and civilians are asleep because they have to go to work) the best nights in the SS are industry nights where girls who work at clubs on the weekend come out to blow off some steam.

I used to have a thing for the help, but have been sober from cocktail waitresses and bartenders for almost 2 years.

Ok this is turning into a novel, so stay tuned Friday when I continue this piece by diving into the roles of guys and explain more of the rules of the SS.