Getting In

What appeals to the arbiters of nightlife? Doormen scoop the stoop

Vanities

SINCE Studio 54’s snowcapped peak, the innest clubs have thrived on a carefully orchestrated clubhouse exclusivity. Even in a driving downpour, aspiring elites cluster against the ropes, perpetually raising eyebrows, waving index fingers, dropping names, and flashing business cards. Impending heartbreak beclouds every desperate visage.

“We’d rather have nobody in here than have the wrong people in here,” says Terry, doorman at New York’s Yupulated Surf Club. “I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s my job. There are some people that are just not gonna get in; it’s like we’re having a private party.”

After parking her MG nearby, a tan, calfy blonde strides up to the Surf with her Brooks Brothered beau. “Good evening,” Terry says, swiftly unhooking the rope. Limbo standees watch mutely, wondering, How’d she do it?

Simple, Terry says. “She’s cute, she knows she’s cute, she gives me the eyes, the tilted head. Even though she’s with her boyfriend, I’m a sucker for it.”

Bye-bye, bouncer, hello, maitred’isco.

Terry, a twenty-five-year-old actor by day, and his door-working peers can earn as much as $250 a night in tips and wages by playing sidewalk Amy Vanderbilt. But don’t reach for your wallet: noisily waving a hundred-dollar bill is a "death ticket.” Terry says, “Grown adults have the kneepads on. But the people that know what’s going on in New York have an air about them. They don’t force it on you.”

On the twenty-by-twenty cement patch outside the churchtumed-club Limelight, fedora’d Fred and earringed Billy stand center stage, safely within the ropes, whispering in each other’s ear.

“Sir, can I get in?” asks a “gold-chain type.’’ “It’s closed, ’ ’ Fred replies. He points to a suit-and-skirt couple behind the throng.

“What did I do?" shrieks the woman in ecstasy. She walks in briskly, eyes down, expecting at any moment to be recalled—a mistake. But no, she’s won the privilege of paying a fifteen-dollar cover and five dollars per drink to sweat out her mousse, jostling bumper to bumper as woofers throb.

“I make them wait, to see what kind of attitude they cop," says Fred. “Better they do it at the gate than inside.”

One man seems to have been waiting an hour. “Yes, and look at that potbelly sticking out of his unbuttoned shirt. He looks like an animal. A good maitre d’ can spot a fake Rolex on a guy in a polyester blend coming out of a rented limo at fifty yards.

“One night, three guys waited in the freezing cold for five hours. At 3:55, I let them in, and they paid fifteen dollars each for five minutes.”

He waves in a sloppily dressed Oriental man, palming him two free passes. Why? "He was on Hawaii Five-0, think."

Surf breaks for blonds, blue blazers, and Topsiders without socks; Limelight, for grooming, propriety, and urbanity. Area ferrets out a much more intangible antinormality. Chauffeurs sit on their limo trunks to watch the show.

“It’s a real screening process,” says Area’s doorman Joe, who sports a black leather beret and devilish grin. “You try to get a mix, people who make sparks fly.”

Unlike their peers, Joe and his cohort, Michael, ensconced in the threshold of Area’s anonymous warehouse facade, are dispatching from on high decisions to rope workers. ‘ ‘ Kevin, please let in the woman in the polka-dot scarf.”

A trendy lady in a bare-shouldered noir dress motions to Joe with her finger. “Who are you with?” he asks. She points to two sneering pseudo-Belmondos with wraparound sunglasses, kinky hair, and body shirts. Behind Joe, one of Area’s owners mutters, “No, no, no, no, no.” Joe calls out, “You’ll have to wait.”

Instead, he flags a woman in mausoleum mascara with an earring through her upper lip. Area comps a large number of sprayed, splayed, and shaved punks at the door to spice up and scale down the clientele. To dance beside them, paying weekday customers must muster more than mere necklace and tie.

“They’ve got to be interesting,” says pony tailed Michael, who’s wearing baggy pleated pants, a black cross on a rhinestone necklace, suspenders, and a heavy leather belt with Orings. “They’ve thought about what they’re wearing, and it’s a swinging outfit.”

The umpteenth limo delivers a Wall Streeter, who calls up, “Eight.” Joe replies, “Let me see them.” They dutifully emerge. Dull pinstripes and gowns. “They look wealthy,” says the owner. “Let’em in.” A lady in a skin-toned leotard does cartwheels from the back of a truck to the door, and is instantly admitted. A regular.

Midnight: the pressing futile now number a couple of hundred. “They look like they dressed at Woolworth’s during a fire sale,” says Joe. “Sometimes I tell them, ‘Save the money and go buy some clothes.’ That woman with the wide studded belt—she looks like a poodle. Another fashion victim."

One man tells Joe, “I’m a friend of Joe.” Another insists that he was supposed to be on the word-processed guest list.

“Sometimes you just have to laugh," says Joe. "Like the guy who cried the other night, so we finally let him in, and then he wouldn’t pay.”

Joe turns back to business. “Would you let in the gentleman in the yellow pants."

Four men in the crowd look down to see what they’re wearing.

David Handelman