Everyone’s life story includes their nightlife stories. Nights out are stuck in our memories, and excerpts are released to friends over dinner, or anecdotes are told to people we’ve just met to find common ground. If you didn’t witness the excessive spectacles of New York City’s “golden era” of nightlife in the early 1990s, or if you never had a chance encounter with Jack Nicholson at Los Angeles’s Spider Club or danced while Tiësto D.J.’d at the Avalon Hollywood, you’ll probably listen to these stories with amazement, like Charlie Bucket touring Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.
In those stories, I played Willy Wonka. In the 1990s, at age 30, I was the director of New York City’s five largest nightclubs: the Roxy, Tunnel, Limelight, Palladium, and Club USA. Within another 10 years, I’d opened six venues in Boston. In the early 2000s, during the heyday of Los Angeles nightlife, I owned two of Hollywood’s most popular clubs, the Avalon and Spider Club.
