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-MAY AYMAN N O T G L DDIN Y MARY A E N B BY JA GRAPHY O PHOT
elloooooo tu veux venir ce soir au jangal? Infamous night we are backkk baby!” is the last of 177 (at a rough count) unanswered Whatsapp messages from my former club promoter. Clubbing, specifically at nightclubs such as L’ARC, Maison Blanche, Titty Twister and many others that require a cover charge, table booking or reservation, is a prevalent pastime for many AUP students, but one that is only accessible to most through the network of club promoters. These relationships can be mutually beneficial: you get a free night out and the promoter gets paid for bringing you. However, as some clubbers have experienced, the cost of this relationship can sometimes outweigh its benefits. My current promoter, Louis Corvez, has been working for over two years in Paris, starting at L’Aquarium and then later picking up work at Mona Lisa and Titty Twister. Corvez, in his mid-twenties and a native Parisian, explains the two ways he makes his money: first, he’ll post on social media every week with the event information and will contact his more affluent customers to see if they want to reserve a table. At the end of the night, he takes home 10 percent of whatever they spend. He also has several girls, myself included, who go out with him frequently, and
he’ll be paid by the club for the number of girls he’s able to bring in. He cares more about the number of girls he can bring in, quantity being the priority, and once they’re inside he just wants them to have a good time. What he enjoys the most about it, he says, is being able to spend fun evenings with his customers and to know that he’s given them a good evening. “I get paid to party, which is also pretty cool,” he adds. The relationship we have is a good one — friendly, fun and strictly business — but is by no means the universal experience. “There’s no such thing as a free drink,” Beatrice Spencer, a junior at AUP and somewhat veteran of the club circuit, tells me. She started going out in much the same way and for much the same reasons as I did. Keeping up a social life in Paris, especially when new to the city is both difficult and expensive and the promise of a night of free drinking and dancing with new people is an attractive one. Her first night out occurred when the friend of a friend extended an invitation to come out with her promoter. Following her launch into the world of Paris nightclubs, Spencer quickly became connected with more promoters, usually through her friends. “I wasn’t the one calling them,” she tells me, “that’s not who I wanted to be. You go through
