Shot on site at the Living Room, Boston.
It may seem counterintuitive that a city like Boston, with
its rich history steeped in forward-thinking, revolutionary attitudes, has a
nightlife scene largely dominated by a backwards, neo-puritanical matrix of
legacy laws upheld by a deeply stubborn old-boy network. This network could
prevent Boston from truly becoming the metropolitan city it has the potential
to be. This frustrates me, my staff, my friends, and my various colleagues who
work, live, and play here to no end. So, when one of these said colleagues and
I opened up a discussion to some of the long-time players and rising stars of
Boston nightlife, the response was overwhelming.
Most of you have probably been invited by one (or many) of them
to an event, begged them to let you and your friends in out of the cold and
into their clubs, or flirted your way to the front of their lines. If you're
really into the scene, you've called or texted them to get you on a guest list
or into a seat at a table with a big fat bottle of vodka.
We didn't get to talk to each and every nightlife player in
Boston, but the following people represent a group of dedicated night owls who
have about 100 years of experience in this business among them. We're not
talking about the Facebook-obsessed hipster kids throwing dance parties at
places like the Middlesex Lounge (although we fully enjoy adventures across the
river to such nights). No, these people have come up through the ranks and seen
Boston's nightlife scene evolve.
They have the experience to know how to operate their businesses
but are still young enough to realize that Facebook and Twitter take their
classic word-of-mouth marketing power to a whole new level. They represent the
next generation of Boston nightlife impresarios and plan to pick up where
people like Patrick Lyons and Seth Greenberg left off. That's not to say that
the abovementioned nightlife czars are completely gone from the scene -
they've just moved on to other projects, like culinary ventures, themed bars,
and luxury hotels.
Meet the junior class. They've all grown up and come up in this
industry as former club kids, wait staff, bartenders, doormen, etc., and now
they're ready to call the shots, run the show, and take us into a new
generation of Boston nightlife - provided our city will let them.
Tim Collins, 36, got
his start as a dishwasher and busboy; he's now the GM of the Foundation Room at
the House of Blues.
Michael Winter, 36, started out as a bouncer
on Lansdowne Street; he's now the director of nightlife for Splash and Umbria
Prime.
Demetri Tsolakis, 26, started as a promoter at
the ripe old age of 17: he's now the GM of Cafeteria and the soon-to-be-opened
club on Stuart Street.
Dimitra Tsourianis, 29, is a former coat-check
gal at the Sugar Shack; she's now the GM of Alibi.
Frankie Stavrianopoulos, 29, started out with
parties in his college dorm room before becoming a promoter: he's now a
managing partner at District and co-owner of 6one7 Productions, SoVIP concierge
service, and the soon-to-be-opened Stoddard's Fine Food and Ale.
Brig Dauber, 28, started as a security guard and
is now the GM for Estate and Suite.
Dave Barry, 29, started out as a bartender and is
now the GM for Gypsy Bar and Liquor Store.
Sal Boscarino, 29, started out as a club
kid/flyer boy while studying at Northeastern; he's now a co-founder of SoVIP
concierge service and partner at 6one7 Productions and Stoddard's Fine Food and
Ale.
Ace Gershfield, 30, is a
former "flyer bitch"; he's now a partner at 6one7 Productions and part owner of
District and Stoddard's Fine Food and Ale.
Danielle DiGiorgio, 30, is
a former bartender turned director of special events at Felt, Vinalia,
McGreevy's, Lobby Bar & Kitchen, and Revolution Rock Bar.
STUFF:
Why nightlife? It seems like the kind of industry that sucks you in. Most of
you have worked your way up through the ranks. You work hard and keep at it.
Why?
DiGiorgio: You become a family, and if you leave
it, you miss it and you want to go back home.
Winter: We're nuts.
Stavrianopoulos: It's fraternal I think. It's
social.
Gershfield: It's a job, but it's fun.... You're
being paid to hang out with your friends to an extent.
STUFF:
Doesn't it ever get exhausting?
DiGiorgio: Of course! But it's really hard to go
back to an office job after you've done this. You enjoy the work, meet awesome
people; it's entertaining and exciting. If you're an extrovert, it fulfills all
of your needs.
STUFF:
Aside from being an extrovert, what are the qualities that make a good
candidate for your jobs?
DiGiorgio: Confident, outgoing, driven...
Stavrianopoulos: Not afraid of conflict -
we are like nightlife politicians.
Gershfield: There's an album called The
Politics of Dancing, and it sums it up really simple. Even back in
the day, when we first started and you'd put a flyer on a car and another
person covered yours with theirs, and the next thing you know...
Winter: Bloody knuckles hitting some kid on
Lansdowne Street. (Laughter)
DiGiorgio: And you have to be competitive and
creative.
Stavrianopoulos: Yeah, you're always looking for
the next best thing.... You can be competitive with each other, but you have
to also have respect for each other. Having a big ego will get you out of the
scene real quick.
Collins: You have to have that drive to be better
or be different. You want to be original; you don't want to do what everyone
else is doing. You have to be creative.
DiGiorgio: It's about trust; you have to build
trust.
Stavrianopoulos: It's building relationships. I
think we all kind of compete with each other in certain regards, but we also
have mutual respect. If they come to one of my events, they are skipping the
line; they treat me with the same respect.
STUFF:
So are there any major conflicts? C'mon, there's got to be juicy stuff that
goes on. What's frustrating about this gig?
Stavrianopoulos: I hate Facebook! (Everyone
laughs.)
DiGiorgio: I do too. I deactivated myself, I got
so sick of it.
Stavrianopoulos: There was a certain art to
things at one point, and now everyone thinks they are a promoter...
Winter: The kids go on and go to any of our
profiles and steal our friends and throw events. The next thing you know, they
think they are just like you.
Gershfield: It dilutes the product, but there are
pros and cons to it. The cons are that there are so many options now. The key
to it all is the personal, social aspect of it, and that's what we bring to the
table, and that's why people are going to come back to us. It's the filler
crowd that people are fighting over on Facebook.
STUFF:
Filler crowd?
Gershfield: It's like a place that needs to have
500, and you have 300 filler crowd... 200 are going to be your social core that
you know well. They depend on you for their nightlife needs... they're
your VIPs, etc. The others are your fillers.
Dauber: To an extent, it comes full circle.
Everyone gets 30 Facebook invites a weekend, and you ignore every single one of
them. You call your friend and say, "What are you doing this weekend?" Your
friend says, "Well, I heard this place is good." It's grassroots word-of-mouth
marketing, just online.
Collins: Most people know
the core nights of the city, the ones you want to go to. If you want to go out
on a Tuesday... you have a certain person to call to get you on the list. So
it's coming back to, you know, trusting word of mouth more than anything.
Winter: Another problem right now is the
recession. VIPs or the so-called industry guys, not only don't want to pay the
cover, they want their drinks for free. Some people are like, well, I can go
somewhere else... and I don't want to mention names, but some places are doing
bottles for $125, and they're running these advertisements. Some venues are
advertising buy-one-get-one-free bottles.... It's insane.
Dauber: There's a lot of inter-marketing, and
people are trying to cut each other off that way. It's also the larger market.
And people aren't jetting off to Miami every weekend; people aren't jetting off
to New York every weekend.... A certain crowd has moved out, and a more urban
or localized crowd moved in. We're still busy.
STUFF:
So you think the people who were jetting off to Miami or New York to party are
now staying here and going out more?
Dauber: If we're talking about numbers, I think
this summer was actually better than summers past.
Tsourianis: The summer was actually really great.
Stavrianopoulos: We haven't slowed down. I think
one of the dynamics is that it's going back to when we started. There was no
bottle service or anything back then.
STUFF:
But bottle service is illegal here. You can't call it that here. What is it
called in Boston?
Tsolakis: It's called "table service."
Tsourianis: Because you can't be holding a bottle
-
someone has to serve you.
Stavrianopoulos: You can only serve a customer
two drinks at a time. So theoretically you'd be selling them 22 drinks at a
time. So that's the legality of it. This city is concerned about that.
Dauber: I think a conflict, too, is trying to
work within the laws. They're obviously pretty strict in Boston compared to
other cities. That definitely restricts the creativity and ability to market
and create themes around certain events because of certain liquor laws. There's
no happy hour in Boston, as you know.
Winter: It's a puritan city.
Stavrianopoulos: They're really strict about
capacity and certain things, and obviously the hours that we all can serve to,
compared to other big metros.
Winter: None of us really want to speak on it,
but the city is working against us. For so long, we wanted to develop a panel
with a licensing board, with the fire marshals.... We try to run everything in
accordance with ABCC [Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission], and we'd like to
run a panel with them so we can all get on the same page.
STUFF:
What would you like to see change as far as the nightlife laws go? What would
be helpful to you, your business, and the city?
Winter: We've always talked about this. We, first
of all, don't have transit past two o'clock in the morning. We'd love to stay open
until four in the morning. And then they'd have transit; people would go out
later. That's what they do in New York. That's what they do everywhere. But if
we stayed opened until four and transit started then, it would eliminate drunk
driving. I saw two accidents last night on the way home.
Gershfield: It should be 3 a.m. closing time.
Stavrianopoulos: Wait, I don't want to work until
4 a.m.! (Laughter)
Tsourianis: Yeah, I'll look like I'm 100 if I
have to work that late every night!
Dauber: I'm fine with the time, but I do agree
about transportation. And I think just having an open forum or communication
with the city officials more often.... They kind of look against or in a bad
way...
in a negative way... at promoters or DJs or venues promoting their parties too
much, and I think we do to the best of our ability make sure people have a
great time in a safe environment. But there's always going to be that drunk
idiot, you know; there's always going to be that one person who ruins it. Those
things that occur...
Gershfield: I don't honestly understand why we
can't extend closing time an hour.... On New Year's, we close at
three and liquor shuts off at two. I'd be fine with that. It gives you an extra
hour for people to sober up, maybe drink water, and spread it out. Instead,
everyone is out at two o'clock, bam, and all of a sudden, you have 5000 people
hitting the streets at once. Of course there are going to be issues!
Tsolakis: I think people drink that much so
quickly because they have very little time to party, so they are pounding and
pounding versus spreading it out. If it was spread out it would be better. And
people are coming out later now...
Collins: We have people come
in for drinks before a show around five, they see the show and then are out by
12 and then drink till two. And we do after shows every single night with the
band.
DiGiorgio: It would be nice if we all started a
little earlier, though. Why does everyone have to go out at 12? Why can't we
start a little earlier, even 10 o'clock?
Tsolakis: I think we have one of the worst
after-work crowds in this city. In New York, workers are going out after work
and creating a scene. On Newbury Street, where I am now, it's dead at five or
six.
STUFF:
Why can't Boston have happy hour?
Stavrianopoulos: It's the blue laws; it's the
puritan laws that have been carried out in this city.
Tsourianis: If you want to do a discount, the law
is that you have to extend that discount for seven days. Well, why am I going
to do $4 cocktails on a Saturday? Some bars are trying to get around that by
offering free appetizers, but then your chef is mad about food costs.
Dauber: You make less on food, and you can't
connect the promotion with liquor.
STUFF:
In an ideal world, where unicorns and butterflies and princesses ruled the
city, what would you like to see happen? With the laws and the nightlife?
Boscarino: I would like to see more entrepreneurs
be able to open spots. There are a lot of restrictions on the amount of liquor
licenses that are issued. I think a few large groups, like Lyons and Jillian's,
they run most of the venues and stuff. I think they're all great organizations,
but I'd like a little more leeway for the little guy. In Boston, you have to
have a lot of political connections.
Barry:
I'd like to see more positive interaction between us and the city
and come to the same terms on things.... Rather than [them] always being
worried that we are not going do something right when we do everything we can
to do things the right way.... Better communication between us and the city
would definitely help.
Stavrianopoulos: I think nightlife should be
embraced a little bit more. Maybe it's going to take groups like us to get in
front of city officials and talk to them. And start communication. But cities
like New York, Miami, LA, Chicago... they embrace nightlife. It's
part of their DNA. And they're making money on it.
STUFF:
When you say they, you mean not only the businesses but the government?
Stavrianopoulos: Absolutely, the government and
the cities. It's accepted, it's advertised, and it's promoted. You go to New
York City, and there are things on the street posts about different events and
festivals.
Boscarino: There are huge festivals!
Stavrianopoulos: Yeah, and we can't really do
that stuff. We just tried doing this Downtown Crossing thing, and they limited
us...
in entertainment. We want to bring live music to outdoor venues and do things
like that, and I think it's going to take some time. But I do think they city
is growing and changing with all of these movies, and new projects like the W
Hotel going in... it's changing.... It's just a matter of getting in front of
people's faces and in their ears to make change happen.
Gershfield: I think the one thing -
and this is not important to us anymore - it used to be a market that we
dealt with... but I don't understand... we're fine without it... but all
18-plus nights have been eliminated. We want to be a world-class city, we want
to be a college city, and they totally alienate that entire age bracket!
Dauber: Yeah, you can walk into the all-age
concerts being 10 and walk within two feet of a bar and be completely exposed
to the alcohol. At a Red Sox game, too, you can walk right by a bar. There are
people passing you with beer everywhere. There is alcohol being served
everywhere. But you walk into a nightclub and you're not 21, and you get kicked
out?
Gershfield: You know, you're 18, you can [be in]
the Army, you can vote, but you can't go to a club? When you're not even
drinking? You know, these kids are already drinking, already getting drunk and
going to dorms or house parties. At least they'd be under a controlled
environment for it, that we provided. They're not coming in to get drunk;
they're just coming for dancing.
Barry: I don't think there was ever a law
passed.... It's pretty much the city.... The 18-plus license
was abused at a certain time, or they feel it was abused. So now,
without permission, you cannot hold an 18-plus night unless it's a private
event.
Winter: There were so many issues. After a
certain time, the ABC Commission would come in; they'd catch like 24 people
underage drinking.... We'd do bracelet systems, and of course they'd cut
it off and figure out how to give it to their friends. And the ABCC started
saying that there were issues out on the streets after clubs shut down, and
they'd always blame it on the under-aged kids... especially in the Theatre
District.... I bet you if you looked at similar police reports now, you'd find
the same complaints in Mission Hill or Allston. That's where the students hang
out now...
Gershfield: I don't want the 18-plus. I don't
need it. As a city, I feel bad... that this is a city that they
alienate that age group.
STUFF:
So what does work here? What are some of the positive things happening in
Boston?
Stavrianopoulos: I think it's been nice that we
have some new blood that's coming into the town to help with new properties.
Like Rachel [Moniz] from the Liberty Hotel... she came from San Diego. She
thinks outside the box, which is nice. I think that's why they're successful
over that way. A lot of guys are coming in at the Ames hotel.
Boscarino: A lot of the New York guys [are]
coming in. I welcome the new ideas. They'll realize there are limitations, but
the more people coming in, the more that can change...
STUFF:
What are you seeing...
the
younger kids coming up, what do you see as their plan of attack then?
Stavrianopoulos: I don't even think we've fully
come up yet. I really don't. I think we're the ones that are going to be
pushing and driving this city, to be honest. And hopefully, keep pushing it and
changing the views of people in the city. So we can do things that we want.
Gershfield: It really helps that we have a lot of
these celebs coming in. Our celebs always just used to be the athletes. Now we
have actual, you know, people, all these movie stars.
STUFF:
How does that help
the business?
Barry: It helps a lot.
Gershfield: On the PR level it helps a lot.
Dauber: We'll get mentioned in the paper beyond
negative news. It used to be a dirty word, to get a mention in the paper. They
would write about fires, stabbings, etc.
Barry: Now, it's this celebrity was here, oh, you
know, I guess it's a nice-enough place.
DiGiorgio: It actually helps even when I get
calls in from LA, and they just see certain stars - "Oh, I saw
Ben Affleck was there." I get a lot of referrals because of other people that
have come in.
Gershfield: Like mentions in the "Inside Track."
Winter: (Laughs)
Gershfield: My little starfucker. (Referring to
Winter)
(Laughter)
Tsolakis: I just had Katie Holmes in, and people
actually ask "Where did she sit? What did she eat?" And they want to sit where
she sat and eat what she ate.
Dauber: We had Paris Hilton, and we could
probably ride that wave for another year. "Didn't Paris come in?" "Yes, she
did!"
Winter: Wasn't that the night after... Rumor?
Dauber: That might be a fact.
(Everyone laughs.)
Dauber: But I think you have the better
documentation. I have the nipple picture.
Barry: We were in Star Magazine!
Dauber: I mean, things like that, it creates buzz
in a positive way. We have all these movie stars coming into Boston, doing
their thing, and putting money back into the city.
STUFF:
So what's next? How
has nightlife in Boston changed, and what do we have to look forward to?
Stavrianopoulos: I think big
mega-clubs will continue to die down. You won't have those 5000-person venues
anymore. We are turning to smaller, more upscale venues.... Boston is on the
verge of two giant things. First, the W and the Ames coming to town. But also
that new movie studio.... People from LA are going to want to be here.... We
have seasons here! And where else can you get a better cast of characters that
a group of Massholes all put together? (Laughs)
Gershfield: House music
became more and more cool and hip-hop less cool, and you don't need glow sticks
and a big dance floor like you used to.
Winter: But those were the
best years. There were no fights! Everyone was hugging each other, glow sticks
in hand, saying, "I love you, man."
Collins: Oh God, yeah....
(Laughs) And when people used to come over from Europe, on the planes, the
first thing you saw right before the movie was a picture of Seth Greenberg with
a giant bottle of Moet. It said something like "Seth Greenberg, M80, the
world's largest seller of Moet." Those were the days.... It was not like it is
now; things are strict.
Dauber: Boston nightlife is
evolving so quickly and dramatically. Movies are being filmed here; world-class hotels
are being raised. You'll see Red Sox players sitting next to models,
sitting next to movie stars. Music, art, and fashion are all
combining. There is a whole new side to the city's nightlife. And it's
just getting better.
