My wife's expression can only be described as "dubious" as we pull up to Treasures strip club. I've told her I'm here on assignment. Yeah, right, she says. I've told her I want to learn about Vegas' VIP/bachelor/bachelorette party scene. Uh huh, she snorts. I tell her I'm going to be going out on the town with Christina Trainor of The Real World Paris (Sagittarius, porn name [first pet plus childhood street]: Snow-B Greenfield) and likely won't be done until dawn. Get out, she orders.
Christina works for VegasHotSpots, a VIP hosting company and website. And, while she's certainly chaperoned bachelor and bachelorette parties about Sin City, tonight it's just a quartet of guys from California in town for some fun. In other words: nothing to hide, which is why they've allowed me to be the fly on the limousine's ceiling. Inside the gentlemen's club's gourmet restaurant, are James, Chuck, Dan and Tim. Also at the table is Antoinette, a young woman and employee of the club.
James and his friend Tim, a large, beefy guy who later describes himself as James' safety, making sure he won't have too much fun, have been on Vegas weekends before but are trying a VIP service for the first time.
"A group of guys, a group of girls, they want to come play. They want to make the most of the time that they have here, they want to end up at the best and the hippest spots," says Mark Olson, VegasHotSpots marketing and PR director. "They may or may not know somebody, they may know somebody who knows somebody at one place, but they know they're going to be here. They're coming in on Thursday, they're going home on Sunday, they want the best. And they want to make the most of their time. And they want a good value for it, too."
Or, as James puts it: "I don't want to worry about greasing the guy at the door."
While bachelor and bachelorette parties are easiest to market, says Olson, the majority of the business seems to be in the custom and VIP area. "There's so much nightlife, and there's so much to do here, and at the same time there are so many people coming here to consume it, it's been a natural by-product of those forces together that have created the custom and the VIP hosting business."
VegasHotSpots is one of a handful of companies catering to pleasure-seekers. Like any maturing industry, it's also starting to see expansion and specialization. One company switching from hands-on to hands-off is BachelorPartyVegas.com, run by Cree Crawford. Obviously first set up for the bachelor and bachelorette party business, Crawford has just developed an access package, Vegas-Passport, full of VIP passes to the hottest clubs in town, "to allow the masses to feel like VIPs, but without the host," he says.
"I wanted to expand even more," Crawford says. "There's a lot of people who come out with just couples, a lot of people who come out for college reunions, birthday weekends, for sports weekends. I really wanted to create an opportunity, not just for bachelor parties, but for all people in groups that are coming out."
On the other side of the hosting industry is "Vegas Ed" Main, who operates an advice group for Vegas visitors on Yahoo, as well as working as online moderator for the N9NE group (Rain nightclub, Ghostbar, Skin) and launching VegasEd.com to promote Vegas in feeder markets such as Chicago and Dallas. Main provides advice to the party folks who want to hit the hot spots but maybe prefer the frugality of a taxi to the luxury of a limo.
"I'm about delivering information," says Main. "I'm kind of the middle man."
But no matter whether people want to hand themselves over to a company like HotSpots, ensure their own VIP treatment with a Passport, or simply figure it out for themselves with Vegas Ed's help, the goal is the same: getting everything possible out of Vegas "in as efficient a manner as possible," Christina says.
The waitress clears the dinner plates and offers the men dessert menus while Christina outlines the battle plan. It's pretty straightforward: dinner at Treasures, bottle service at the trendy Rain in the Desert nightclub, then winding up at Drai's for its after-hours party.
Requests can range from "crushing it" like James and his friends—trying to pack as much as possible into one night—to sedate rounds of golf to ... well, it is Vegas, after all.
"Midgets and donkeys are always popular with the bachelors," Crawford jokes.
But even the best-laid plans of mice and tourists can go astray. First problem arises when James and his posse realize they're finishing up dinner in a high-end strip club—but the half-naked ladies are in another room.
Christina goes off to talk to the management. Presumably, it's not a problem to have the men enter the club, but when you've paid in the neighborhood of $100 or more a head, you don't expect to be sitting next to some schlump. The men's request also means the carefully orchestrated schedule is thrown off, and a call to the limousine service has to be made.
A worldly 25, Christina has spent long hours in nightclubs to qualify for her job as hostess. She began serving cocktails at the Hard Rock, collecting business cards from anyone tied to the nightclub industry. Working for the ultraexclusive Foundation Room was the next step. Her appearance on MTV for a season wasn't necessarily helpful. "It's a good thing because everyone knows my face," she says. "It's a bad thing because everyone knows my face."
Because of the early hour, there isn't any action in the VIP room, but in two shakes of a stripper's tail, Christina has arranged for entry, as well as tables high on the second floor, overlooking the main stage below.
Not every VIP party consists of gentlemen's clubs and dance clubs, however.
"We've done groups where it's topped $1,000 a head," says Olson. "That one was a private house party where we had 31 or 32 guys, two bachelors in the group, and they came to us and said, 'We want the whole thing taken care of, and we want it ultradiscreet, we want a lot of security, we want to know that everything's going to be fine, we want a lot of cost control, but we want a pretty off-the-hook Vegas experience.'"
We take our seats and are soon joined by Antoinette and a couple of her co-workers. I'm surprised at how well-behaved James and Tim are being. Both married, they tell me that while they enjoy the company of women, they never enjoy the company of women. They're in town to let off some steam, enjoy being pampered and having their egos massaged, and that's all. It'll be a guilt-free trip home.
Of course, that's James and Tim. Chuck and Dan are nowhere to be seen, and Christina is off again, trying to track down her errant charges. They're quickly located, a little disheveled from lap dances but none the worse for the experience.
We're hustled outside, but the delay has meant our limo is now stuck in traffic somewhere in the morass of vehicles that's the Strip every night. No matter, limos ain't like water, and there's plenty to spare. We caught another.
We're soon pulling up to the Palms. As we make our way across the casino floor to the club, it's clear that Christina's 15 minutes haven't elapsed yet as heads turn in her wake. One or two braver individuals even go up and ask her if she's who they think she is, and then immediately want to know if Chris was as much of a prick as he seemed on the show.
There's the briefest of pauses at the velvet rope as Christina talks to one of the staff, and then we're off, escorted to Rain's highest level where a set of reserved couches, chairs and table await. An iced bottle of vodka with all the accoutrements soon follows. Rain's famed skyboxes are all around us, from any of which could tumble a stoned Tara Reid or drunk Leonardo DiCaprio.
The key to the whole VIP party business, like everything else in Vegas, is relationships. It's a subtle quid pro quo between host and club.
"We like to go to the venues," says Olson, "and say, 'Here's the deal. We can guarantee you a high-quality clientele, conducting business in a legitimate, upfront, well-documented fashion. And we can fill your club with the kind of people that you want to have in here: classy people, well-dressed, they spend money, they conduct themselves properly, you're not going to have a problem with them.'"
We're not settled in for too long, though, before the inevitable request comes: They want to go down to the ground floor. Christina and I roll our eyes in sync; we know what's to come.
Christina goes from high-end VIP hostess to something more like a Girl Guide troop leader, admonishing everyone to stay close together, no wandering off. I wait for her to demand we hold hands or tie a rope around our waists. The crowd on the floor is as thick and sweaty as every night, but we manage to make one complete circuit without losing anyone, and the men have a newfound appreciation of their VIP status—and the extra breathing room it brings—upon our return upstairs.
Christina asks if there's anything else she can get them. Girls, comes the answer. Asian girls, especially. James has been dishing flattery out to Christina all night, so this request is hardly surprising. What is surprising is that Christina disappears back into the crowd downstairs and comes back minutes later, six Asian girls in tow.
"I pulled that one out of my ass," Christina confides in me.
They're part of a bachelorette party, 17-strong, from San Diego, but Christina has assured them that all they have to do for some VIP treatment is come upstairs, sit with the guys and have some free drinks. No hookups, no hookers.
"We're not in the business of breaking the law," Olson says. "If there's stuff that they want to do ... guy says, 'Get me a girl, I'm looking for whatever,' there's the Yellow Pages, there's the listings, we don't want to know about it, it's not part of our trip."
And don't think there's going to be a smooth night if the partiers don't directly involve the host in purchases. If the host or hostess even sees a mirror and powder, "The limo stops. They're asked to leave the vehicle, and there is no refund," says Olson.
The bachelorettes from San Diego had experienced a different sort of criminal activity. They had met some guy outside Rain who had promised them the weekend of their dreams. For $20 a person, he'd get them into the club, give them special VIP treatment and even arrange for a stripper for them the next day. He did get them inside, but then vanished, $340 richer.
Operators like that go by different names: "gun slingers," "bottom feeders," "things not fit for publication even in this paper."
"Just like the old adage: If it seems too good to be true, it is," Crawford says. "When you think about it, it's at a minimum $20 to get into these clubs as per general admission. If you add that in, and then these people are going to walk you in, it gets kind of pricey."
"It's common sense," Main says about handing a stranger cash, "but I think that common sense and Vegas sometimes don't go together."
Olson has even stronger words: "That's bullshit. First of all, it's just wrong." Olson says it's unfair to others in line, even when one of the gunslingers does manage to get customers through the door, whether by bribe or personal relationship with the door. He also doesn't like that the gunslingers aren't operating as legitimate businesses. "It's poaching."
Poaching isn't the only scam out there. Main tells of people printing fake VIP passes out on laser printers and selling them on eBay. The excited buyers arrive at the club, only to find out that the same pass they paid $30 for is handed out for free by cab drivers and will only get them to the short line—on a slow night.
"Check their credentials. Check references," cautions Crawford. "It's so easy to check references."
Not checking references and not using common sense can have unforeseen results, says Main. "This guy was going to propose to his girlfriend that weekend, and basically because he gave someone 200 bucks and he took off, she realized she couldn't marry someone like this," someone who got taken so easily, he says.
Upstairs at Rain, room is made on the couches, drinks are poured, pictures taken. The girls are just as excited to meet Christina as they are to be in the VIP section.
It's 2:24 a.m. and Christina gives a 10-minute warning for departure. Her red-streaked hair is pulled up with a clip, but otherwise she looks as fashionable now as when the night started. Me, I'm sweaty, tired and feel like I've inhaled a pack's worth of secondhand smoke.
"If you need to go potty, go now, ladies," Christina tells James and the gang. It's 2:35, and we're off for Drai's, the after-hours Mecca in the basement of the Barbary Coast.
Naturally, no one hits the head until we're back downstairs and in the casino, where James ducks into the men's room. Christina groans in frustration, chanting "I am the shepard" five times. We've adopted three of the girls from the bachlorette party, the rest choosing to stay at Rain and get in touch with HotSpots in the morning, as Christina has promised them a stripper—possibly free—to make up for them getting ripped off.
"People like that give us a bad name," she says.
The ride this time is a stretch Hummer, tricked out with flashing lights, its own laser show, music videos and a thumping sound system. "Now this is what I'm talking about!" shouts James. No other moment tonight sums up the VIP experience so succinctly as this: the giant limo cruising the Strip, ferrying us from one hot spot to the next, full of impressed friends, excited girls, a note-taking journalist and a celebrity with her head out the window so she can make a cell phone call.
"Locals here, especially locals in the nightlife and nightclub industry," Crawford says, "we forget the novelty of how special it feels to cut the velvet rope, and it really doesn't take a lot for management to allow that to happen. It makes everybody's experience just that much better, and I think that's really important for us to remember. It's so special for some people."
Not only are stretch Hummers incredibly decadent and comfortable, I learn, they also tend to get their way in traffic. With a bit of fancy maneuvering that would have garnered honks and raised fingers if done with a regular car, we pull up to the front of Bourbon Street.
Lines mean nothing to us as we stroll from the door to the stairs. People are lounging or dancing, DJ Michael Fuller from the Foundation Room's Monday Godspeed is spinning, and James and the boys are in a corner booth cleared out just for them in the packed-to-the-ceiling club. Yes, even temporary membership has its privileges.
For Californians, they're relatively awake and alert. Despite the hour approaching four bells, I'm surrounded by crazy, excited people. But Christina's job, and mine, are over. We split a cab back to Treasures, where she's left her Jeep Wrangler, and from there it's home for me. Those clichéd rosy fingers of dawn are coming up over Sunrise Mountain as I hit my bed. Somewhere at McCarren, a plane has just touched down, releasing its cargo of soon-to-be-hitched partiers and VIPs-for-a-day. And in a handful of hours, Christina will do it all over again.