If you are in marketing, you may have heard the term “perception is reality.” Basically whatever you put out there is what people believe. Check any social media platform today and you will see this is true. It has always been true…even Hollywood nightlife in the 90’s.
This is a fun little tale about what was like before the hashtags.
The E List
Like most big cities in the US, Hollywood nightlife in the 90’s had become all about the promoters. The concrete floors, black walls splattered with day-glo paint, black lights and smoky clove-scented clubs that I had loved were being replaced by more brightly lit, plush, super lounges. The music had gone from grunge, rave and techno to top 40. LA was no exception. A new club or bar could open on any given night but it was the promoter that made the place.
A truly hot promoter with a strong following could pack a rat hole (but they wouldn’t) with Los Angeles’s “penny-millionaires” if they so desired. The penny-millionaires would leave their studio apartments for the night and pull up to the valet attendant of the club du jour in their brand new leased Mercedes, BMWs or Hummers. They would clammer around the bouncer with the clipboard, boob jobs flying out of Gucci and Prada (or knock-off) mini-dresses, $100 bills flying out of wallets. Many would be shouting “I know the promoter, I know the owner…” or dropping any name they thought they could use.
The bouncer would look up from their clipboard with exaggerated importance and decide who among this crowd would gain entrance past the rope and stanchions. Occasionally the crowd would part like the red sea and a celebrity (or a “C” or “D” list celebrity or reality show star) would be greeted by the bouncer as if they were royalty. They’d be whisked inside, their entourage following closely like proud little lap dogs. The rest of the crowd would stand there pretending to be patient then go back to trying to gain the bouncer’s attention with bribes of sex and money.
Hollywood Clubs had become like castles in a kingdom, their entrances strictly guarded by gates of rope and stanchions controlled by their very own little mythical forest creature.
Deep (once one of the hottest spots in Hollywood but now barely a memory), had a bouncer so short he used to stand on an upside-down milk crate to see over the crowd that was huddled around. He would make people wait out in front for at least half an hour before letting them in even if they were on the list. Part of this was to give the illusion that the club was at capacity even if it was empty inside. The owners of the club took a small hit at the bar for this tactic but they allowed it because it made the fickle crowd of LA want to return to their establishment for a longer period before dropping it for the next elusive spot.
Vinyl, another super spot in Hollywood circa early 2000’s had a female bouncer who never remembered my name though it was the same as her own. She was known throughout Hollywood as the biggest bitch of them all and she worked at more than one of the popular clubs at that time. Everyone used to talk about her. One night, a friend of mine asked if I could help get her and her friend who was visiting from out of town into a club she was working and, against my better judgment I said we’d try- some nights “the bitch” acted like a friend and other nights she acted like she didn’t know me at all. It had to do with how I looked and who I was with that night. It was all about conveying the right image.
Unfortunately, when I met up with the girls they were not in proper velvet rope attire. They wore very little makeup and simple jeans, t-shirts and leather jackets. Far from the perfectly coiffed hair and makeup, expensive-looking miniskirts and tall heels that would get them into the place. I had even traded in my beloved recycled men’s Levis I had bought in South Beach, Miami and my Doc Martens for a dress I bought at Bebe in the Beverly Center. Suffice to say, we didn’t make it into the club that night.
Which got me thinking; Hollywood is known for its glitz and glamor, but in reality it’s just a desert. What makes it beautiful is the projected image we create and impose on it in films. Something that came from our imagination. Problem is, if there’s always something better in our mind, then how can we ever be content with our lives as they are? Maybe in the case of Los Angeles, it was the place that made the people. Not the other way around.
A week later, my cousin and her college friend were visiting from Atlanta for spring break. I brought them to another club worked by “the bitch”. The girls were young and decked out for a night in the big town. Not only did she let us in right away, but she let us in for free. We proceeded inside where we would be surrounded by a bunch of well-dressed strangers who had pretty much nothing of interest to say.
The Hollywood Velvet rope scene was really quite a scene. It was everything you see in the media and then some. I’ve seen girls get nose jobs when their noses were perfect before, boob jobs when their boobs were big enough in the first place. I knew people who scraped the money together to buy an expensive car when they could barely make rent. They figured no one saw where they lived but everyone saw the car they rolled up in every night. Actually, they may have been justified. Once I drove up in my Miata and was informed by a valet attendant, every bit as snotty as the rest of the people that worked at his establishment, that I would not be getting in that night. Later, I traded in my Miata for an Audi TT Roadster Convertible. Not only did the valets take my car, they parked it up front where they showcased fancy cars so others could judge the place by the cars that were parked out front. I didn’t mind that as it meant retrieving my car at the end of the night would be quick. I did mind, however, when they returned the car and the radio station had been changed and my seat and mirrors had been adjusted. I guess everyone wanted a piece of ‘the LA dream’.
Ah well, by the end of the night we were all too drunk to care that deeply about bouncers, valets and other elves and wooded creatures who worked the entrances and exits to our nightly fantasies.
The shift from the 80’s to the 90’s was evident, but since then not much seems to have changed. I guess once everyone started living online, we stopped living in real life. And image has become quite literal.
The C List
Not that it wasn’t evident before. In Hollywood more than anywhere else, image is everything.
My friend Rachel worked for a popular promotions and event logistics company in Hollywood. She had a good body due to daily trips to the gym and wouldn’t be caught dead in anything that was not the latest in labels and trends, and had a group of friends that hit the party circuit every weekend and sometimes during the week as well. Rachel and I liked each other from the start. Both from the east coast we still had that mentality and humor ingrained in us but Rachel had taken to LA life more easily than I. It was my unwillingness (or inability) to adapt that was likely what limited my invitations out with her group.
Kent was the group’s leader. Think ‘Abercrombie & Fitch’ model (down to the tight-fitting ribbed t-shirt). He was a trust fund kid who tipped the bouncers $100 bills as they allowed him and his entourage into the clubs, and always had this air about him as if he was trying to be nice to you but was clearly bored and couldn’t possibly be bothered lest you said something about getting invited to the after party, or Fiji.
He was also never without his number one accessory; an almost carbon-copy of himself; his best friend, Drew.
“They’re dressed exactly alike again.” I said to Rachel as we were walking past the bar on our way back from the ladies room. Having just arrived we didn’t need the bathroom. We just wanted to check ourselves out in the mirror to make sure we looked as cool as we felt walking past the crowd still waiting outside.
I motioned to the table with bottle service where Kent and Drew sat drinking champagne and talking to three of Rachel’s friends. There was Samantha, a workout fanatic obsessed with labels. She was emaciated due to her bulimia and had an inflated sense of how good-looking she was. Then there was Jenna, a tall, pretty blonde who was nice, easy-going, and went along with whatever everyone else said. I never got to know Jenna very well though because every time we went out she would find a celebrity toward the beginning of the night and go home with him. Last there was Gina. Of the group, Gina was the girl that everyone looked up to because she had been the lead child actress on a television show that had a five year run. So pretty much your standard LA group of half, or almost “made-its”.
It’s interesting, from the time we started capturing people on film (especially in Hollywood), we’ve been able to see ourselves from another perspective. More than a mirror could show us, and we weren’t really designed to be able to see ourselves beyond our reflection in a river anyway. No wonder we’re all obsessed with it.
Later that night at an after-party in a mansion at Mt. Olympus sat on couches next to a wall of open windows, the LA breeze a perfect temperature to keep us cool without needing a sweater. The music was decent and had some people dancing. The couch I had found was incredibly comfortable and had a great vantage point for people watching. On one side of me, I witnessed the very recently divorced basketball player Rick Fox get hit on by various women. On the other side of me Jenna was flirting with the singer of 311. Everyone else in the group was spread out around the room or on the balcony just beyond the open windows. Anyone I couldn’t see was likely upstairs or in one of the back rooms powdering their noses with LA’s finest.
The A List
“Hey Jenn, you’re a Prince fan right?”
“Yeah.”
“Go check out the VIP room…now.”
Making our way into the middle of a tiny VIP room in the back of a club called Blue, we saw Prince had rope and stanchioned himself and his entourage off against the wall in a corner of the VIP room as if the room wasn’t enough. I stood talking with my friends and at one point I turned around to scan the room behind me. I came face to face with Prince himself. Even in his fancy outfit and platform shoes he was much shorter and much skinnier than me. Both facts were hardly believable given as thin as I was back then and as larger than life as he always was. In my head I screamed and turned around. I then mouthed to my girl friends “THAT’S PRINCE!!!!” Of course in reality my face probably screamed “YOU’RE PRINCE!” Right in the poor guy’s face.
God knows anything I am thinking is broadcast across my face like a flashing neon sign. Like the time I was leaving the restaurant Dan Tana’s and I came face to face with Billy Corgan. I said nothing as I wanted to respect his privacy but my face went right on and said “oh my god you’re Billy Corgan!” Billy said nothing but his face replied with “please don’t say that out loud and attract attention.” Then we both quietly continued on our ways, faces and all.
Then there was the night of my birthday party, Hugh Hefner and the Playboy Bunnies. My then-boyfriend and I had celebrated our six month anniversary with dinner and drinks at a new bar in Beverly Hills called Joya. We rarely went out in Beverly Hills but this bar was getting so much talk from everyone I worked with that we decided to check it out. We ended up having such a good time that I booked a table for my 29th birthday party. At some point during that night, Hef walked in with 6 of his girls who looked a little skanky. My boyfriend said “he must have brought his B-list tonight.” One of the girls heard and gave him a dirty look. Ah well…
Mostly the nights during this phase of my life blur together. Like any other phase in my life, there were high points and low points.
I think we all try to manipulate others into seeing us the way we want to see ourselves because that’s how we turn it into reality- manifestation, affirmation, whatever it’s called nowadays. It’s not new.
As a society, we invented concepts revolving around status; everything from money to racism, in order to fabricate value for ourselves, ironically in an effort to control the way we connect to other people, rather than just letting it happen. Rather than just being what we are. Because once we learned that we could create tools to shape the world around us, there was no letting go of that.
The truth is, image is exactly what you make of it. Perception is reality.
The No List
I really hated dealing with the bouncers and stanchion scene so for New Year’s 1999 my friends and I bought tickets to a weekend long event at the Hyatt on Sunset Blvd. Nicknamed “The Riot House”, the hotel was known to have hosted some of the wildest musicians and outrageous parties over the past few decades. You could say it had seen its share of notoriety and been trashed in the meantime. Newly remodeled, The Hyatt had agreed to allow a handful of Hollywood’s most popular promoters to take over the entire hotel. Those who bought tickets were given a room for two nights, parties with DJ’s all weekend and a countdown from the roof at midnight on New Year’s Eve. So, a week before the event my friends and I made a trip out to the giant Peppermint Rhino Strip Club (as one does…) to pick up our room assignments and wristbands and prepared for our weekend of fun.
Arriving at the hotel on Friday afternoon and waiting to get the keys to our room I looked around the lobby. It was filled with good-looking people dressed in the trendiest of clothes. Some were the Gucci/Prada set and others were the club kids. In both cases there was a high energy of people trying to project an image. At the time I was impressed by that energy I picked up from them but after a time I found it exhausting. Later that night as the DJ’s, music and parties began everyone loosened up and had a great weekend.
Over the next couple of years I went out less and less in the velvet rope scene and began exploring other scenes. I had recently met Stacie who immediately became my partner in crime and we were in search of something different. I returned to the 80’s cover band Saturday nights that I had loved in Santa Monica. Stacie and I checked out the bars of Abbot Kinney, Venice Beach and even The Valley. We had many adventures (possibly for another future article…) before discovering the Sunset Strip. In the early 90’s I had visited the Strip a couple of times as somewhat of a tourist. It’s a much different scene when you become a regular (definitely enough for a future article or two.)
One of the last times I went out of my way to hang out at a velvet rope club was on Halloween probably circa 2006. All dressed up in costumes, I was with a group of friends at a club called Mood. I was on the list plus 6 I think and we were just about to walk inside. Just before we did I stopped and looked at all of the people in the line that was forming. I was in my 30’s now and they were all kids in their 20’s. I turned to my friends and said “we can go in here with THESE people, or we can go across the street to Bar Sinister and be guaranteed a good Halloween night.” My friends agreed and we headed over to what is still Hollywood’s best goth club, Bar Sinister. The ambience was dark and smoky, reminiscent of the old grunge and techno days. I was happy to find the scent of clove in the air. The music was awesome with a lot of New Order, The Cure, The Smiths, Sisters of Mercy, etc. The only attitude people seemed to have was one of having fun, and we did. Between the Sunset Strip and Bar Sinister, Stacie and I had found our phase for the next 10+ years.
And the best part is, I didn’t have to think about how I looked once.
