In an industry where the deck is stacked against success, Patrick Lyons keeps drawing a full house.
Two men stepped from a cab and approached the entrance to Danceteria, a new-wave, New York nightclub. You could make this pair a mile away. A couple of well-groomed, well-heeled professionals in blue blazers and expensive running shoes looking for a hot time in lower Manhattan. It was nearly midnight and the street action was anemic. Even so, a burly fellow stopped them on the sidewalk and tightened his grip on the red velvet rope separating the two from the front door.
"Sorry," said the doorman, his sorrow edged with sarcasm, "but it's club policy not to let in gentlemen unless they're accompanied by ladies."
Satisfied to leave matters there, the doorman silently stood his ground, a hulking defender of the moral order and upholder of whatever higher principle keeps two paying customers out of a cash business on a so-so Tuesday night.
The taller of the two men, no featherweight himself, unbuttoned his blazer and squared a pair of red-rimmed Clark Kent glasses on the bridge of his nose. "I see," said Patrick Lyons, who knows a thing or two about getting into hot clubs. "It's just that, well, we're from out of town and we heard this place was really smoking. Thought we'd check it out."
Awaiting a response, Lyons let his eyes do a CAT scan on the doorway patrol. Something more than a waltz around the dance floor was on his mind. At age 29, Lyons is president of That's Entertainment Inc., a 240-employee, $6-million-a-year, Boston-based entertainment empire built around Metro and Spit, two clubs catering heavily to the Hub's hard rock, new-wave, neo-disco, drinking crowd. Clubs of this trendy ilk have a life expectancy of about six months; Lyons's are four years old and still attracting some 10,000 customers a week. More impressive, they remain at the forefront of the new music/dance bar/video explosion, a highly precarious niche in a notoriously volatile industry. One of the ways Lyons keeps them there is by checking up on his competition in other cities. Another is by keeping customers he has doubts about waiting on the sidewalk.
"Sorry," repeated Danceteria's sentry. "Club policy."
"Sure," said Lyons, eyeing the rope with an air of sweet innocence. "No problem. We understand." He did not move a muscle. "We didn't know the rules."
At that moment, a different voice spoke from the doorway.
"What townya from?" it asked.
"Boston."
"Boston, huh?" The man to whom the voice belonged -- even a tourist could have pegged him for the owner or manager -- tilted back in his chair and chewed on a matchstick. "Yankees lost tonight. Those guys are jokes."
"They'll still give the Sox plenty of trouble," Lyons said, knee pressed to velvet."Always do."
His remark triggered a brief exchange of opinion about the American League East, a useful cultural reference point for undercover field scientists. By the time all possible playoff options had been explored, both visitors, still unescorted, were through the gate and on their way upstairs.
The higher they climbed, the deeper they descended into the maelstrom of raw punk culture. On level two, where the music sounded like the start of the Indy 500, and the old warehouse walls looked like gigantic Day-Glo Rothko canvases, they stopped for a drink. Lyons was already hardatwork.
"Bartender just stole three dollars," he reported after his first pass at the bar. His companion, momentarily distracted by another female bartender wearing a brunette Mohawk hairdo, had failed to witness the crime. Impressed, he asked Lyons how he'd spotted the theft.
"Simple," he said. "I ordered one scotch and one beer. She charged me $5.75 and rang up $2.75." He frowned. "If that happened once it'll happen 30 times tonight. That's why I'd use polygraphs on my bartenders. And spotters." He offered his friend the beer. "The problem is, if one guy steals from you, the others notice. And if he gets away with it, they all figure, what the hell, I'll steal, too. Pretty soon you've lost more than your profit margin. You've lost the respect of your employees."
He turned back to the dance floor, where two T-shirted men with matching neck chains writhed away in a corner nearby. Foreheads bumping, legs akimbo, they pirouetted around each another like a pair of Hopi tribesmen praying to the gods to deliver a bountiful corn crop. Lyons studied them impassively, almost clinically, as if by measuring the narrow spaces between them he could draw a bead on the energy binding the whole dance floor together. He took a token sip of scotch and set down his glass. "They play good music here," he said, then added, "very progressive. Radical, almost. We should be doing more of that at Spit." He fell silent while his companion made a note of that.
"But I hate the sound system," he muttered, suddenly reanimated. "Notice how it bulges in the mid-range tones but the rest is flat? A muddy mix like that'll drive you nuts if you listen to it for more than a few hours." He grimaced. "Otherwise, I like this place. The look works, the people are hopping. I'd call this a very together operation."
He and his cohort hung around for another 15 minutes, then left with considerably more haste than they had arrived. When the evening ended, somewhere in the vicinity of 4 a.m., they had managed to case four dance bars and a comedy club, grill three cabbies on Manhattan's latest hot spots, sample a Lower East Side restaurant and an Upper East Side bar, and pay an obligatory visit to that celebrated citadel of chic, Studio 54. At Heartbreak, the third club they invaded, a woman passed around address cards for the club's mailing list. Both men dutifully filled theirs out.
"What did you put down for 'occupation'?" Lyons asked his companion.
