» Amazing…
business, london, nightlife, society
Suit Bars – the edge of humanity
I have a confession to make; I wear a suit 5 days a week. Yeah I know, but we can’t all end up doing what we want to be when we were five. My careers advisor told me they already had enough space cadets. Despite this, I’ve made a fairly strong informal application to join their ranks. Anyway, dirty, pit-on-earth suit bars…
You know the vibe, you walk in, it’s mobbed. Normally this is a good thing, everyone loves a busy bar/club but not when it’s 5 deep at the bar with generic ignorance with a general musk of arrogance and aggro lingering in the air.
You can deal with it a bit, get a drink, find your friends…engage in human interaction. Then it hits you, sometimes right in your face, sometimes through passing conversation: everyone in the place is a walking dollar sign (or should I say a non-dollar correlated currency in the current market?).
If the suit bar was an internet forum, it would be one gigantic, everlasting thread: money. Whilst there are superficial differences; holidays, houses, cars, suits, strip clubs, deals, promotions and trophy spouses – it’s all the same direction. It’s all about demonstrating value in currency, nothing else exists.
The saddest thing, the most soul-destroying thing is that girls actually go there to “bag a banker/lawyer/bricklayer pretending to work in Private Equity”. You don’t believe it? Well it’s not a secret, watch the dancefloor when “Golddigger” – Kanye West comes on, this is overt quasi-prostitution.
This is an actual conversation I had recently:
Girl: Hello! Good music in here isn’t it?
Me: Yeah, for me, Black Eyed Peas is pretty much the pinnacle of music. I just don’t think there’s much we can do to top it.
Girl: Oh, no way! It’s my favourite to. So are these guys (pointing to my friends) your team, like are you there boss?
Me: Yeah, these guys are my minions, I’ve actually outsourced dancing to a small team as well, they are currently ripping up the stage…
Girl: No way! You have two teams? So you’re a banker right? You must be loaded?
Me: Yeah I basically live in a house built of money, I actually throw away money just because it takes up the space where I could put gold.
Girl: Wow, can we go to your place because I live with my parents in Hertford and they said that I couldn’t come back until I found a rich guy to fund my cocaine and topshop addictions.
Brilliant
Hell yeah. I mean how annoying are blokes who feel the need to tell you their job involves ‘handling billions’, eh? Really gets on my 17th/18th Century romantic nerves…
x
That is exactly what I’m talking about! It’s only made worse when combined with a relentless Oxbridge superiority complex…can you imagine two worse ingredients for a night out?
Yes. Those who applied to Oxbridge, got turned down, had to go to a lesser redbrick and can’t quite shake off the inferiority complex…
Hey, fuck you. I was turned down from wanky oxbridge and ended up at a very tasteful 60’s concrete monster (nota bene: not a poly).
I invariably find I am actually smarter than anyone who went to Oxbridge though…
I didn’t apply to Oxbridge and I am, inevitably, smarter than both of you.
This guy has loads of NYC stories about suit bars (he’s one of them):
http://www.leveragedsellout.com/
To be honest, I don’t mind suit bars if the place is non-smoking and I manage to not spill too many drinks over myself (i.e. it’s a good night if you avoid a dry cleaning bill)… And some of these places can be less crowded than the non-suited variety (they’ll keep some of the riff raff out too – bonus)…
There are certain advantages also for those of us that wear suits five days a week… it’s one decision less to worry about in life – what shall I wear out after work?
And so what if girls want to bag a banker? Who am I to stop them… It beats the hell out of the conversation killer that usually ensues when a “normal” girl asks what I do…