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The music in Paul’s Casablanca -Lounge Bongste on a recent night while sweaty dancers under a disco ball maneuvered. Outside, a line of potential partygoers looked at the entrance longing. A green velvet rope was almost everything that separated them from the good times that were inside.
That rope and Fabrizio Brienza.
As the ‘door’ of the lounge, in Soho, Mr. Brienza is in charge of picking customers from the line to come in. Only a choice that comes little in.
“I have the atmosphere of the place together,” said Mr. Brienza, who worked at Paul for five years and estimates that he leaves hundreds of people who do not fit in that atmosphere in busy weekends. Who is only defined by him.
Mr. Brienza is located in the front line of gateway in a city that thrives on exclusivity and leads to power brokers around every corner.
In New York, Co-op Boards Those who can buy apartments decide, and Restaurant organizes the control that gets the best tables or another table-on the most popular places in the city. Admissions officers choose which parents can send their children to the most chicest kindergarten schools. Even fishing reachers have their own seat and select which high-end chefs get the prime catch.
Mr. Brienza is one of a handful of so -called doors that decide which partygoers come to drink and dance in different night clubs and lounges.
At the age of 55 he is one of the most experienced gatekeepers in the city, who opened the rope for Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, the supermodel Paulina Porizkova and even Anna Wintour. A few weeks ago he turned football players from the New York Giants.
He is also a kind of dinosaur. In an increasingly economically stratified city, the nightlife is shifting from dozens of vast night clubs to a proliferation of social clubs that only members with four or five figured admission prices.
Coming in Paul’s can also be pricey. There are no coverage, but it costs $ 1,000 for two people for “FLESSEVICE” – VIP treatment that guarantees a table, comprises a bottle of alcohol and offers a waiter to serve it. Mr. Brienza collects some of those customers themselves. Those who do not want to pay outside and take their chances.
His method to choose customers is just as difficult for him to define as for outsiders to distinguish. “If you have a good atmosphere and are a nice person, I will take care of you,” he said.
During a recent night he looked almost colossal in a customized white fur coat draped over his 6-foot-4 frame, floating over the line that had formed.
His face remained expressionless. He turned his back to the small crowd, looked at his mirror image in a window and turned back. He shuffled from foot to foot and tapped his python skin boots on the sidewalk. He licked his lips. He suddenly closed his eyes with a woman to the back of the line. He nodded. A guard withdraw the green rope and she slid inside.
Prince, Madonna, ‘Miami Vice’ types
Mr. Brienza grew up in Campobasso in South -Italia and loved nightlife from a young age.
“Everyone looks better at night,” he said.
He found work as a model throughout Italy until he scored a two -week job in Miami for Versace. He decided to stay and eventually get the American citizenship.
It was the 1990s and Miami peaked, Mr. Brienza said: “The best place in the world.”
“Retired people, models,” Miami vice “species, drug dealers, girls, old Cuban boys,” he said. ” Prince owned a nightclub, Madonna was there, Sylvester Stallone was there, Sean Penn had a bar. “
One night he did a favor for a friend who asked him to stand outside at a party and to ensure that the guests tried to come in, belong there. Someone tied to a new nightclub was at the party, saw him work and offered him a job to become the ‘door’.
He went to work at Club Liquid owned by Chris Paciello, a rich Miami Nightclub Impresario Who at the time ran some of the most popular settings in South Beach.
Mr. Brienza was not a bouncer who manages unmanageable customers and deals with other security problems; The club already had some. He was just the door.
The work was overwhelming in the beginning. Mr. Paciello stepped in and gave advice: Think of the club as your house, Mr. Brienza remembered that he said while one evening they examined the enthusiastic crowd. Ask yourself: who would you let in your house?
“Everything became clear in my head – then I understood the assignment,” said Mr. Brienza. “And so you create the atmosphere.”
Mr. Brienza mainly stayed in Miami until the early 2000s. After a short period in Los Angeles, he moved to New York in 2004 to use the new energetic nightclub scene of the city.
He worked at all hotspots: pink elephant, house, guest house and various night clubs in the Plaza Hotel, Maritime Hotel and Soho Grand Hotel. He was co-owner of Happy Valley in Flatiron with his cheetah print banquets and a neon illuminated staircase. They are all closed.
He was a fixture From New York City’s nightlife. The village voice called him a “door god” and “a piece of Italian bread that rosrans crashes under his dolce suit.” For a publication by Miami, he summarized his methods such as: “Scumbags out; cool people.” He played himself in one mockery“The porter.”
He is still working on it, armed with war stories from all nights with alcohol-driven crowds.
There was the time that an intoxicated woman injured the eye of a guard with her fake fingernail. And the time that a man had picked up the heavy pole on a velvet rope and threatened to beat someone with it. Mr. Brienza developed a talent for spotting horrors.
“I see a person and I can tell their background in three seconds,” he said. “If a man is cool or not cool, it is in the way they move.”
He added: “I am almost never wrong.”
He occasionally let people sob by refusing them access.
“It’s not that hard to let a girl cry. They love the drama, the crocodiles tears,” he said, his Italian accent that adds an extra syllable to “crocodile”. “If inside is incredible and everyone looks spectacular and the people who, say, appear on average or below the average, I closed them.”
‘The daughter of someone big’
Outside of Paul’s, small groups ran from three limousines and came in line during a cold night in March.
Mr Brienza’s phone Zoomded Constant.
“I have a large hot group of girls who come out to celebrate,” read an SMS message. “I would like to take them to your place to dance and have a fantastic time. Let me know what you can do.”
The atmosphere varies from night to night, Mr. Brienza said. The crowd is generally a collection of gays, straights, a lot of financial brittle, many skaters, the billionaire, the tech bro, the hot girl, the non-so-very-hot girl, but she is the daughter of someone big, “he said.
“I like to keep it mixed and eclectic,” he said. “But I have to play with what I have.”
On this night the line included a manager at Instagram, two boys who had been Barhopping, a man who worked in software development, two women in cracked downy fur coats, six women in cocktail dresses and a man in a leather trench coat.
There was also a 20-year-old man on earth tones of Kaki-Broek and a Roll-Neck sweater with a friend.
“Finance Bros,” Mr. Brienza summarized them by looking at them. “We love the financial bross because they keep the nightlife alive. They are the ones with the money. But the look – the Patagonia -Vest and the backpack and the Kaki pants – are very square, nice people.”
The two men did indeed say that they worked in Finance. The wait was worth it, they said.
“This is as close to New York Nostalgia as you can get,” said one of them, Morgan Shepherd.
After an hour they decided that their chances on arrival would be better if they had women with them. The tactic worked: As soon as their girlfriends arrived, Mr. Brienza entered the group.
On the occasion, Mr. Brienza will chase the customers away.
“I say they won’t waste their time. It’s not going to happen tonight,” he said. “Bada Boom.”
But he often says no to anyone. Instead, he refuses access by ignoring people. Eventually they take the hint and leave.
Among those who walked away were three big men who had arrived in a dark SUV, they exchanged calm words with Mr. Brienza, then turned on their heels and walked away. They were a member of the New York Giants, Mr. Brienza said, but did not want to pay the steep compensation for fless service and did not want to wait in line.
“A big football player from the New York Giants – they earn $ 20 million a year,” he spotted exaggerated. “Cheapest people in the world.”
Mr. Brienza likes to remind himself of the heyday of night clubs in New York, the era of super models and meetings of celebrities. At the time, the owner of one club even tried to impose a height line: only tall people could come in. It was a way to ensure that the club was filled with models.
“Then suddenly a year, no more celebrities – only influencers,” he said. “I can’t be influenced. It lets my skin crawl when I hear influencers.”
Yet he knows that night clubs in New York started to fade in popularity. The super models have been replaced by tap stars. Mr Brienza tries to concentrate more on acting and has already roles in Various films and shows. He knows New Yorkers Don’t go out as much as before And Don’t stay outside as they do as they do. Young people are a moment Drink less alcohol than before.
In the early hours of the morning the line began to shrink for Paul’s, while he was to a handful of people, including Cameron Guckert, who arrived alone.
Mr. Guckert stared at his Converse Hightop sneakers and only occasionally looked up to Mr. Brienza who brought in people, both before and behind him. In the end, not long after 2 hours, Mr. Brienza opened the rope for Mr. Guckert.
“He was there for two hours,” Mr. Brienza said and shrugged.
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