my club perspective...

in the mid-to-late nineties, before i did the whole "become a lawyer" thing, i used to work at a nightclub.* and in my capacity as a receptionist/cashier/promotions assistant there, i had a hand in the administrative process of hiring new bouncers/security guards. that is why i am so surprised that the main suspect in the Imette St. Guillen tragedy is Darell Littlejohn, the bouncer from the Falls, the bar at which Imette was last seen. apparently, the bouncer was an ex-con with a history of violence. last night i was talking to my mother about how such a person could end up bouncing at a bar. maybe the club where i worked (the now defunct Life (at the Ki Club)) was an anomaly, but we did such extensive background checks, hiring an outside security firm to perform them, that an applicant such as Littlejohn--guilty of the instant crime or not--could not have been hired.

i guess i could see how a small bar might not spend the time and resources to do background checks on employees. but the Falls is not a small "one-off" bar; rather it's part of a chain-of-sorts that includes Dorian's (hello, Robert Chambers) and Barna (on Park Avenue South). to me, this gives the Falls' owners little excuse for not checking out their employees pre-hiring.

see Clublife for a more extensive take on the situation.

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* as any of you who know me are well-aware, having been regaled (read: bored-to-tears) time and again with my "i used to work at the coolest club" stories.