Redeye - Out through the In door November 15 2006

“Don’t you know who I am?!?” goes the incensed cry echoing citywide. Almost every night, the indignant and undignified all demand full recognition from people they rarely offer even grudging gratitude. They all want to get their best foot forward even if they can’t bother putting on a good face; of course, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and Benjamin Franklin’s faces are always most welcome. Do we know who they are? Yeah, they’re usually bitches thinking their thong or wallet is the only one that matters.

More interesting is the guy being yelled at. It’s the club bouncer — the guy everybody wants to act like they know but rarely gets to know. So RedEye celebrates the security by sharing insight borrowed from this column’s favorite velvet-rope wrangler, Todd Terranova.

A Vermont-via-L.A.’s-Sunset-Strip transplant, having worked the Whiskey-a-Go-Go, Kaya, Eleven50 and now Lotus Lounge to name a few, Terranova wanted to be an accountant. But when they told him he had to work days and couldn’t demand clients show him their tits before they could enter the office, he decided to become a bouncer instead. Besides, would an accountant have gotten to get drunk one night with Johnny Depp, Al Jourgensen and the Red Hot Chili Peppers; had sex over urinals, pool tables and in beer coolers; or crushed eye sockets and gotten stabbed — all for either $6 an hour or $1,500 a night?

And Dilbert probably gets fewer opportunities to break up/turn down group lesbian sex during operating hours. For the sake of the public health, there must be a line, which unfortunately stops right before “penetration of the finger kind.” And that’s just a Tuesday; imagine what Terranova’s weekends are like.

Despite what you might imagine about bouncers — that they’re all dumb apes in it for tagging endless trim — it’s actually a much more delicate, demanding job of balancing the needs of 1,000 friends-for-five-minutes with those of the club and with those of your own. Every once in a while, you see Pink’s tits, Nikki Taylor’s ass or tell Jewel she’s a stuck-up bitch; see a man shot dead, find yourself knee-deep between skinheads and a black gang or even be forced to run for your life. But mostly, you spend nights sizing people up more than anybody has to get shaken down.

Lawsuits have taken away the fun, says Terranova. Nobody can take their knocks anymore, so a good bouncer is a wise judge of character and knows how to defuse a situation. Don’t believe, however, that would prevent at least the world’s most disorienting, demeaning open-handed slap if you’re a deserving bitch.

Just remember when you step up to the door, you need to bring some respect to the bouncer if you want recognition or else you’re just hanging yourself with the velvet rope. Win ‘em with kindness, or at least a $20.

RedEye celebrates going out and going off. Send comments to redeye@creativeloafing.com, but hand-scrawled hate mail is preferred.