Sarah Hendricks stands at the bar of Ruby Skye with her friend holding a free beer and munching on the provided appetizers. It’s a Tuesday night, but there’s still a decent crowd for this private party. She gets into a conversation with three other girls at the bar and asks them, “Are you being paid to be here too?”

“Umm, no,” one responds.

The inception of a great party holds mystery akin to the chicken and the egg. Was the party so great that the people came or did the people show up, hence making it a great party? Don’t let these big, philosophical questions ruin your good time as you sip your $10 pomegranate martini. But before you settle that hefty bar tab when last call rolls around, consider that the high-priced good time you just had helped line the pockets of more than just the usual suspects.

From socially plugged-in DJs to well-compensated and well-dressed girls whose job duties include showing up and sipping drinks, the business plan of a great night out is far more complex than “if you throw it, they will come.” And when the lights come on, everybody is partied out but only some have been paid to do it. Are you on the right side of the party payroll?

Hendricks shrugs and smiles at her friend. They were promised “free drinks and food, plus $80 to just show up and hang with our girls” from 9 to 12. Hired by Suzanne Special Events, a party planning company based in L.A., she was told to think “what would you wear on your first date with Brad Pitt?” when dressing for the evening. She wears a black and white cocktail dress and black heels.

As far as leaving with the feeling of a job well done, Hendricks is uncertain about the effectiveness of her presence. She doesn’t feel she had a major effect on the ambiance, but it was an easy way to make $80 and have fun.

While some are paid to passively party, the pros know the big bucks are in the bottle. The shot is the ultimate good-time commodity, a barometer by which wild abandonment is measured. Those hell-bent on a good time will line ‘em up for their friends; lemon-drops for the ladies, Jack for the boys and tequila for just about everyone. A hearty “cheers” and a swallow and you’ve just enjoyed the most expensive four seconds of your evening so far; a shot of decent tequila costs at least $7.

“Wanna buy a shot?” asks Robin Walsh as she sidles up to the couple by the fireplace with a tray of sickly sweet looking red shots in Dixie cups. The man is amused by her and says, “I’ll buy them if you drink them.”

Walsh looks at the six remaining shots on her tray and chirps, “Okay!”

Walsh just started doing promotions for Bacardi in March. She gets paid $25 an hour to show up at bars and sell shots, give away promo gear (think: those obnoxious blinking pins, Mardi Gras beads, XXL men’s t-shirts emblazoned with liquor logos) and have a good time.

“I love it. It’s great,” she says. “I like to mix and mingle with people, just running around and being myself.” Plus, she says, “You start getting regulars that come in and you can bullshit with them.”

“We want girls that are pretty and personable,” says Sam Binger, former marketing manager for Bacardi who used to schedule all the company’s promos in the East Bay. He says the goal is to promote the product, and if the girls are having a good time, the product looks good.

Laura Rodgers worked as a Bacardi promoter for about a year while in between jobs to make extra money. She and one of her best friends, Lylly Ratto, always worked together, often going to their favorite bars. They were a good team; both flirty, outgoing, beautiful blondes who always showed up in matching outfits when they had a promo scheduled.

“We would drink, like, an entire bottle of vodka before going to the promos,” Rodgers says.

They worked at local bars for two hours a gig and still had time to go out with friends afterward. A couple of times they worked charity events staged at golf courses where each hole had a different activity. Once, the girls were posted at the sixth hole serving margaritas and martinis. They manned their station with gusto, partied with the golfers and called a friend to drive them home at the end of the event, taking a bottle of vodka and a bottle of tequila home as party favors.

“While not encouraged to drink, if the guys are going to drink they’re going to want the girls to drink too,” Binger says.

Rodgers hasn’t done a promo since the Super Bowl and stopped doing promos regularly when she found her current full-time job. “It gets old, dealing with drunk people,” she says. “You’re being judged pretty much based on looks.”

Still, rationalizes Ratto, who now works as a manger of Abercrombie & Fitch in Emeryville, “It was fun. I enjoyed having a job where I could get fucking wasted. We met a lot of people, we got paid to drink. It was the easiest money I’ve ever made in my life.”

While being paid to play is a short-lived, quick-cash gig for most, those with talent and a groove for business can turn those late-nights into a long and lucrative livelihood.

Jeff Fare has been a DJ and party promoter for six years. What started as a hobby fueled by an affinity for rare vinyl and rowdy dance clubs has blown up into a full-time, multifaceted career.

Knowing how to make the most of his two-night workweek, Fare usually DJs in at least two clubs a night. Last year, he was spending an average of one week out of the month on the road – although his style is more business class than tour bus – to Miami, New York and L.A. His trips are always paid for, from the airfare to the entertainment, and he still walks away with a substantial paycheck.

It’s Saturday night around 1 a.m. at the Arrow Bar on 6th Street in downtown San Francisco. The music is pounding, bodies are smashed together on the tight, low-ceiling dance floor in the cave-like bar. A girl who looks about 20-years-old stands on a chair in nothing but jeans and a translucent lace bra. She looks as though her goal is reckless abandonment, yet she can’t help but sneak a self-conscious peek at the sparse group of onlookers she is generating. The majority of the amped up crowd won’t be distracted, topless young girls or not, from the show behind the DJ booth.

Fare, known as Jefrodisiac at the office, is also topless, and his jeans, riddled with holes hang desperately on his jutting hipbones, threatening surrender at any moment. He finishes off his tequila, neat, which the bar keeps coming throughout the night. With headphones and pants half-on, he switches out records with one hand and encourages the crowd’s worship with the other. He has a team of two others behind the decks with him, one on a laptop, the other riffling through his records. Fare’s entourage comes in especially handy tonight, as they relieve some of the tequila burden. He holds up an album cover to the crowd, they scream in approval and he rips the entire thing in half, throwing the remains into the crowd. It’s rock star 101, but why mess with success?

At the end of the night that success is translated into cash. On a good weekend Fare will clock out early Sunday morning $3,000 richer. Much of that hefty paycheck will go to rent, restaurants and more records. But a cover charge or a $10 drink? Never.

CONACT FEHER AT EFEHER@SFSU.EDU
AND CROMELIN AT CATCROM@SFSU.EDU