Blagging your way into a club

 

For too long the art of ligging, blagging, bullshitting your way into a club has been the preserve of the rich, well connected or good-looking. Normally only the most well-connected clubbers make the treacherous journey from pavement to dance-floor unobstructed. You don't know the meaning of kudos until you've swanned passed a queue of cold, bored people and breezed into the coolest nightclubs in town. Ever the democrats, the Guerilla Guides team have tracked down the key people to tell you the inside skinny on getting into any club any time.

 

First of all thou shalt learn the Ten commandments of getting into venues for free:

 

1.      Thou shalt know who the promoter is.

2.      Thou shalt find out the name of the clipboard Nazi (the cooler-than-thou guardian of the velvet rope desperately clutching the clipboard with the hallowed guest list. [Remember in club heaven, the guest list is gospel and bouncers are God.]

3.      Thou shalt know who’s DJing

4.      Thou shalt be confident and dress the part

5.      Thou shalt not come with a bunch of guys

6.      Thou shalt know who has guest lists at the club

7.      Thou shalt take pity on those who have paid to get in

8.      Thou shalt get as far away as possible from the bouncers after gaining entrance

9.      Thou shalt attempt entrance to the VIP area

10.   Thou shalt not hang around the door looking smug

 

These psychological “convincers” separate you from the crowd and mean that there’s at least a 50:50 chance that the following blags will work.

 

Have the right attitude

 

Despite what they were told at “bouncing school”, standing at the entrance to a club freezing one’s arse off while lots of younger and often better looking people have a good time, is neither fun nor glamorous. Bouncers and door keepers are not normally having the best of times, so be friendly and courteous. However, don’t forget that you’re special! Walk to the front of the queue like you deserve to be waved in ahead of the hoi polloi. To share in the fun, all you need the gift of the gab. The bores on the door can only say no, and if they do then it's simply a case of on to the next blag.

 

Ok enough already…on with the killer content…

 

Impromptu Blags

 

• Eyes Wide Open Casually walk up to the front of the queue feeling in no way socially inadequate that you weren’t invited in the first place. Don’t be tempted to even glance at the schmucks in the queue. They are laying bets that you won’t get in, metaphorically sharpening their knives should you fail and have to walk that long lonely path back to the end of the mother all queues. As you approach the doorman look him straight in the eye and tell him whose guest list you’re on. Then subtly move in so you can see the names on the list. Now anyone with halfway decent eyesight should be able to pick out a few names. At this juncture, like in comedy, timing is everything. You mustn’t alert him to your miserable effort to read the list. Bouncers are not quite as dumb as they look and are trained to spot this one a mile off. So the key word here is surreptitious, not overt. We recommend a casual sweep of the area with the bouncer’s keyboard at the centre of the semicircle. Always try and get two names, as occasionally bouncers will look at you in disbelief as you use their cousin’s/girlfriend’s name to try to get in. If this does happen, laugh and say actually you’re someone else; you’ll be surprised how slack these guys can be.
• Sacrifice one of your own. Get one of your mates to go to speak to the clipboard Nazi and say he’s on the list. This should give him enough time to glance at the guestlist and memorise a few names. These can then be “reused” by the rest of the group.
• The Stamp Factory. Again a team effort. One of you gets a stamp on the hand, then, before the ink's dry, passes it back to people in the queue behind, all of whom have got wet hands so that it goes further. You can get four or five imprints out of it before it goes fuzzy.
• The Early Bird Arrive very early when the club has just opened. Make sure you’re seen by the bouncer, get his name chat to him and ask him if it’s okay to pop out and pop back later. He’ll invariably say yes

 

For that special occasion

 

True guerillas don’t rely on luck. As Marines say the three most important things in battle are preparation, preparation and preparation. Moreover if you’re trying to impress on a friend how famous/rich/cool you are, the utmost humiliation is being scraped away from the front door like something unpleasant on the sole of a bouncers shoe. Why bother relying on your dodgy eyesight and the bouncers stupidity to get in when you can guarantee it. The above suggestions are only for rank amateurs and should only be used in extreme situations.

 

• Call up the promoter say you’re x calling from [insert suitably esoteric management company] and that you represent a hip and up and coming artiste who’s in town for the weekend and would like to visit his night. Ask him if you can fax over a guestlist for three. Make sure that the celeb you pick isn’t too famous as they’ll twig.
• To ensure a club is a hit, promoters have a reciprocal arrangement with model agencies and the fashion Mafiosi in general. This formalised arrangement normally takes the form of promoters, desperate for that edge, faxing blank forms to model agencies to entice their protégées to suckle on the lewd debauchery of nightclub life; free of charge of course. Here, as a guerilla, is where there is an opportunity to exploit.

 

Create a suitably impressive press release announcing the opening of a new hip and happening private members club/super club to all the top model agencies and add that bookers should fax back a guest list for the opening night on their letterhead paper. You’ll be surprised at how many will respond, especially when you throw in the bit about George Michael, and Prince Dj’ing. Once you have this list of stunna’s you can now call up to let them know that the shindig has been cancelled whilst retaining the ever useful prop of the model agency letterhead.

 

An alternative is to send in a pug ugly photo of yourself to the agency. Assuming you don’t have the amazing misfortune of being hailed as the new next big thing they will probably send you some condescending rejection letter highlighting how much of a loser you are and, that even if you had only dreamt of being a model you should have woken up and apologised. But hey the last laughs on them: you have that valuable guerillas tool the letter head.

• Call up the venue owner before hand and say you want to hire it. Go down and see it and more often than not you can get him to put you on the guest list for that night
• I find that in a long and varied career of blagging the best way to get in free is just to call up the promoter and attack him in one of three ways:
• You’re a hack and you want to write a feature on his club. There’s a nothing a promoter likes more than the idea that he’s hit the big time. As you say this golden mantra you can almost taste the saliva as it dribbles down the side of his mouth and hear his inner thoughts of “Yeeha, New York here I come”.

Or

• Hi, I’m calling from x promotions in New York (sounds slightly more glamourous than New Delhi). We manage x of x band and he’s heard rave things about your night and is going to come down with a few friends”: This classic blag is one we’re loath to divulge if only because its so effective. 

 

Or

 

• Hi I’m calling from [name of famous magazine] and I’ve only been sent one ticket for [x event] were to devote some serious spread on this event the photographer insists he brings his assistant...

 

(Almost) Ten people you should never try to blag your way in with

 

• Stutterers: When they finally spit their spiel out the event is over.
• OAPs: by the time they’ve shuffled thru the door the bouncers have had time to figure out that in all likelihood they are not a heavily made up Tom Cruise researching the role of raunchy OAPs.
• Small children: They tend to suffocate when placed in a gym bag
• Honest people
• Born again Christians: They just can’t resist the urge to preach on the way in and out
• Heavy perspirers: They look seriously dodgy and they have tendency to want to rub up against you.
• Loud mouths. They can’t resist the urge to give the bouncer the finger/laugh at how stupid they are just at that critical juncture after the entrance to the hallowed portals/Have to tell everyone in side that they’re all suckers for paying to get in

 

Things to do after you’ve got in

 

• Kiss the ground in appreciation that you bought this book
• Hold a millisecond long vigil for the poor guys outside looking in
• If you have a press pass head straight to the VIP/Press area and indulge
• Start breathing normally again
• Get as far away as humanely possible from security
• Enjoy
• Criticise the night for being crap and say that you would never pay to get into a place like this.