Say Goodbye to Hollywood

As much fun as it’s been writing this blog unfortunately life has intervened and I’m going to have to step away from it. I’ve become too busy with other pursuits and will have to stop writing and scale back the promoting to mainly special events. I’m actually quite happy about it but it’s bittersweet. Thanks for all the emails and messages, I definitely appreciate it.

I started this blog because I wanted to pull back the curtain of Hollywood nightlife and show you that the emperor has no clothes. I wanted to show you that if you think Hollywood nightlife is superficial, racist, and corrupt on that side of the velvet rope, on our side it’s 10 times worse.

I’ve been going out in this town for damn near a decade. I saw Jay-Z sing “bubblin’ in Dublin’s” in the actual Dublin’s…where he was apparently “bubblin’. I danced with tweaker girls at 4am at Coconut Teaser. I got thrown out of a Playboy party at the Century Club. I rolled into Concorde with some USC sorority girls.

I remember going to the opening night of Opera. It was absolute mayhem as I walked up. As I waited for my friends to park I saw a guy I had been introduced to a week earlier. He was one of the managers of one of the other then hot clubs in town. The other manager introduced me to him and told me after he walked away that the guy was a hardcore coke addict. And 40. And sleeping on friend’s couch. I saw him walk up to the door past everyone outside Opera, give the bouncer the half handshake / half bro-hug and stroll in.
























Just then I heard the one of the girls standing next to me say “Who is that guy? He must be important”

And that, my friends, is what I want you take away from this blog.

Hollywood nightlife is all smoke and mirrors. That dude isn’t really a producer. The club with the line outside is empty inside. The girl who tells you she’s only been with 3 guys – that first time that she didn’t like, her high school boyfriend, and you – was also seen blowing the bouncer last week. The “VIP” in bottle service lives with his parents. The 9 is really a 6 with 2 hours of prep time. And most importantly, the so-called “important” person is a 40 year old cokehead.

See these places for what they are….places where pretty people go to fuck each other. That’s it.

Making it into a hot club doesn’t make you someone. It doesn’t make you “cool” or “in the know” or a “tastemaker” (someone please tell me what that fuck that word is supposed to mean). If you derive your self esteem from being able to get into Club X on a Tues. night, you are a douche who has the mentality of a high school girl. And if you are over 30 and think this way, please get into a paper cut fight with Magic Johnson.

“Parties are intended to be celebrations, and celebrations should be only for those who have something to celebrate” – Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged

Growing up my hero was Michael Jordan. Late in his career he wrote about the problems with the NBA, mainly that the accolades (the $80M contracts, etc) came before the achievement. “Status symbols are meant to be just that - symbols. A flashy car should represent the underlying achievement, not replace it.”

These places, especially during the week, are often filled with the utterly useless of our city. They should not be admired. They should be ridiculed.

It’s a problem that infects our broader culture. What Bill Maher once called it, “the Guitar Hero culture. Everyone wants to be a rockstar, no one wants to learn the chords.” And Hollywood is ground zero for it.

Don’t get me wrong. I love nightlife. It can be a lot of fun and it has its place. As much as I poke fun I think it’s great to go out with your friends and have a great time, have a few drinks, and meet some attractive strangers. I’d go so far as to even defend it as a good place to meet people. Let me tell you, it’s a hell of a lot easier to go to a place filled with attractive girls and find the few interesting, smart, or substantial women there than to go to a place where supposedly more substantial or intelligent women go (let’s say, a professional mixer) and try to find the 1 attractive girl (let me clue you in….there aren’t any). I even have a friend who tried going to church to try to meet a normal girl …and he was fucking atheist!

I’ve met some great people in nightlife. I’m happy to call many of them my friends. So even though I’m stepping away from the blog and promoting, you’ll still see me out sipping on my Crown and Coke, chatting up some model / actress (aka “mattress”) and making fun of her every time she says “supposably”. And I’ll still be having a good time doing it.

But remember, if you start bragging to me about getting into some club I’m going to remind you that it’s no different than that unibrowed Persian guy telling you about his BMW (that his dad bought for him).

Talk about the achievement, not the status symbol. Tell me when you actually do something.

Otherwise please get the fuck out of our bottle service. :)

Love,
Xander