It's barely past midnight on a recent weekend outside Crobar, the equally celebrated and vilified mega-club on 28th Street, and Gilbert Stafford, the club's main doorman, is troubled. He looks out over the sea of faces hovering around the sidewalk trying to grab his attention, and realizes almost all of them are male.
"Oh great, look at all that cock. It's like a goddamn Errol Flynn movie!"
For many young, wealthy club-hoppers, Crobar is the pinnacle of New York nightlife, with its inviting size (it can cram in 3500 people) and just mildly elitist door policy. It's a club that clearly wants you but isn't prostrating itself for your business.
Stafford is a New York nightlife fixture, manning doors and crushing egos for 20 years.
"Gilbert's animated, he's been doing it forever," says Rob Lalli, Crobar's general manager. "A lot of people come just because he's here."
Tall and handsome, with short-cropped white hair and a flair for flamboyant fashion (tonight he's wearing a black Kimono shirt, matching pants, a scarf and a black overcoat, and using a wooden cigarette holder to smoke), the 53-year-old doorman is not easily forgotten—or forgiven.
"It amuses my mother that I don't get the shit slapped out of me on a daily basis," he says. Though, certainly, assault is an occupational hazard when you are responsible for delivering so much rejection. He's been shot at three times, and three years ago (at another club) had to get six stitches in his face after a man threw a beer bottle at him.
"I had told him no," Stafford says. "He was wearing shorts and looked like he just finished working on his car. He tried flashing a wad of cash, but it just wasn't appropriate." Obviously, the man disagreed.
No violence breaks out on the Saturday night/early Sunday morning I spend with Stafford outside Crobar in late September. For four hours, between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., the "general admissions" line continues to grow, snaking half a block down, with nearly 400 people waiting upwards of 90 minutes to get in. For the most part nobody is turned away from that line, which means, in theory, anybody can get into Crobar if they wait long enough.
Of course if lines just aren't your thing, or you think your fabulous self deserves VIP treatment, then you must deal with Stafford.
"My function is to take care of the guests of the owners and to deal with those who shouldn't be kept waiting."
Who are they?
Stafford says they include nightclub veterans, the beautifully dressed, the moneyed set, and of course the just plain beautiful people.
However, VIP status is somewhat arbitrary, which means there's always a crowd waiting by the steel barriers and 300-pounds-of-muscle bouncers, trying to get Stafford's attention. And every once in awhile, with his long finger, he points to somebody, and the barriers part.
One boy, wearing a tight blue t-shirt perfect for showing off his well-toned chest, calls out to Stafford, with a puppy-dog look on his face, "Please let me skip this line."
Stafford thinks for a moment, then waves him in. A bouncer parts the steel barrier, and the boy walks by, kissing Stafford on the cheek and thanking him.
Stafford watches him head into the club, then by way of explanation adds, "Nice ass!"
Another young man a couple of minutes later isn't as lucky. He asks Stafford to let him in, but he's also chatting on his phone, a big no-no.
"Who are you standing with?" Stafford asks.
"Myself," the guy replies, with a hopeful look on his face.
"No surprise there," Stafford says as he turns his back on him.
Later, he spots a mohawked fellow with eight different piercings on his face and tattoos up his neck and skull.
"See this guy," Stafford says, pointing him out to me. "He's cool." Stafford calls out to him, "Who are you with?" and then invites him and his friends inside.
It's part of his job to spot those that are a bit different, that can add flavor to the mix inside. Most of the people who come to Crobar "seem to have shopped at the same mall," as Stafford puts it. The crowd has a high percentage of suburbanites, young people with nice paychecks—or even nicer parental credit cards—and a bit of attitude.
A little past 12:30 a white limousine bus pulls up right in front of the club. Inside are at least two dozen men in their early twenties.
Stafford throws his hands up. "I'm so not dealing with this. 50 drunk guys." Indeed most of the men stagger out of the bus, some of them get a bit rowdy. One jumps onto the bus's hood, seemingly dry-humping it. The bouncers quickly tell them to get back on the bus and find somewhere else to party. They're gone several minutes later.
Meanwhile, the general admission line has stalled as the club fills up.
After waiting for nearly an hour at the back of the line, a group of girls decide to try there luck up front with Stafford. Vanessa, 22, a student from Mount Vernon, and her group of friends are celebrating another girl's birthday, and they didn't envision the party taking place outside on a dirty sidewalk with the steam from a nearby hotdog cart choking them.
They head to the front and try to call out for Stafford, but he doesn't hear them. Several minutes later, they get a brief audience with him. One girl nervously tells him, it's her birthday.
"Oh darling, what a boring story. Go to that big black guy and tell him your sob story," Stafford says pointing to a bouncer towards the back of the line. The girls realize they've just been given the kiss of death. They dejectedly head off.
When Stafford heads into the club later in the evening he is greeted by dozens of friends, acquaintances and random opportunists, hoping to butter him up to get past him in the future. They exchange kisses, hugs and laughs. John McGinley, an actor on the show "Scrubs," bumps into him. The two have met before and are friendly.
"You look great," McGinley says, looking over his black outfit. "Really, great."
Crobar truly is a massive club. The main dance floor is crowded with at least 2,000 sweaty, half dressed nightcrawlers. Critics say its overwhelming size detracts from a sense of flair and style, drawing a largely homogenous group.
In a recent Rolling Stone article, Choire Sicha laments the death of New York City as it once was, where "the cool kids used to flock to the Mudd Club, Area and Limelight—places with personality." Of Crobar, Sicha notes it is a "soulless, hangar-sized enormo-dome…full of gelled-up guidos and khaki-clad tools."
Stafford is largely a throwback to that earlier era of clubbing. He started out at Area (as a bouncer), and shares Sicha's frustration with today's mundane club scene.
After 20 years in the business, he will soon call it quits. He has written a novel that he is now trying to sell and is also working on another book and a screenplay.
With the club nearing full capacity around 2 in the morning, it's time to get ultra-selective. Stafford looks over at the general admissions line and notices there are about 25 guys all at the front without a girl in sight. He tells the bouncers to make all of the men, who had been waiting for over an hour, get off the line.
Many huff away.
"What a waste of time. This fucking sucks," says one of them, a 25-year-old, who had already been drinking pretty heavily.
Kai, a California native who is visiting New York with his friends, stands around the street for awhile. Though pissed he says it's understandable. Too many guys does not a good party make.
I ask him what he'll do now.
"Probably just line up again," he says. "There's no other choice." And then he and his friend walk down the block and get back in line.
Later I ask Stafford if he would ever stand on a line that long to get into a hot club.
"I wouldn't stand on a line that long for free sex," he says. "If I get rejected from a club, I say bye."
