Chapter #3 My 30s and What a Party it was

I guess you could say I was primed for the this role. I was that kid in high school that used to invite a couple of hundred kids over when my parents would head out of town and throw these raging 8 keg parties.  You have seen this in movies, of course I would get into trouble and the the neighbors would complain, and sometime the police would break it up, a couple of weeks of being grounded didn’t really bother me.

via Giphy

That led into college where of course I was in “The Party” frat, Sigma Pi at Northern Illinois University.  From there it was a party almost every weekend at my apartment in Greenville, North Carolina, and so on and so forth just about every weekend in my 20s I had some kind of party, a boat party, or club.  It was what I enjoyed doing on the weekends. One could say I was a specialist at this point handling alcohol and hanging out with party people.

There is not a lot to tell you about my 30s except that it was the best damn time of my life!  I was killing it in Chicago I had anywhere from 4-6 nights a week going at any one time and pretty much shaped the club scene for a decade in Chicago.  I don’t think anyone in the Chicago Club Scene from about 2003 to 2013 would tell you otherwise.  If I put my name on a night it was an overnight success, if I left a venue the place fell off the map. It was real power and with the power came the $$.  I actually personally brought the infamous Crobar Chicago back from the dead twice on Fridays and once on Saturdays over that stretch. I was a partner in huge Halloween Events that would sell out and a part of New Year’s Parties that would boast numbers of upwards of 5,000 people.

Life was amazing and I was pulling in about $20K to $25K a month in revenue, had the best table in the club just about every night of the week, pretty girls following me everywhere, and I had a beautiful girlfriend. I was taking about 7 or 8 vacations a year and things were going well.  Even though it was one heck of a party, I always knew to draw the line and make sure the business side was covered. In this business you are really only as good as your last party.  I busted my tail all day promoting via phone calls, then it was text, then it was Myspace, then Facebook.  You still can’t beat a personal phone call if you’re trying to get someone to come to a party, that applies even today.  I always tried to outwit my competition with the latest systems, promotion tactics, and theme parties.  I wanted to be the best and I was the best.

I used to tell people “I am on permanent spring break” and “every night is a different story.” I should of kept a dang journal of all the crazy stuff that happened in those years, it would have been a heck of a book.  Honestly, looking back I think I lived every man’s dream for 10 years!