Glitzing the biz

For only $49.95 (plus tax) you can be a nightclub god

By Marke B.

› marke@sfbg.com

"Where will your nightclub dreams take you?" the Web site demands of me. "Fame? Fortune? Beyond?" Pictured above the words are a ginormous McMansion, a sleek, late-model Jaguar, a booth filled with aspiring Maxim models, and a fistful of crisp, leafy Benjamins.

The Web site is Nightclubbiz.com, and anyone who's ever tried to run a club in the nonvirtual world of cutthroat competition, crowd fickleness, liquor authority crackdowns, and a nose-diving economy is churning with bitter, ironic laughter already. But I'm entranced. My own nightclub dreams usually don't extend beyond 10 hours of vigorous aerobic exercise, a couple of tipsy hottie's digits, and a fistful of drink tickets (well, that and world domination), but if clubbing truly can bring on the bling, then I simply must know more. Luckily, Nightclubbiz.com is ecstatically happy to provide.

The "more" here includes more than 22,000 Web pages of business advice about "the nightclub venture — an irresistible prospect of chicks, cool music, booze, searing profit margins, and unsurpassed popularity." It's everything a consternated male-midlife-crisis victim or gullible retired couple living in Phoenix with too much IRA on their hands needs to know about the "exciting commitment to engage in the social entertainment sector of hospitality." Property-lease structuring, operations-cost forecasting, viable-demographic determination, inventory- and cash-control systems, and "why many nightclub laser light shows suck!" are all fully explicated. There's even an annotated chart of the human brain labeled "Which facets of the human mind does a nightclub environment affect?"

The best part is that all this inside knowledge and searing-margin potential — gross revenues of $1.3 to $4 million! — can be yours for a mere $49.95 (plus tax).

So what do you get for your PayPal coinage? Besides unrestricted access to the entire Nightclubbiz.com database for one year, you get a live one-on-one session with a nightclub venture startup counselor who possesses "a hands-on operational background" and "advanced problem-solving abilities" (shudder). Or, for $149.95 you can be privy to a "Nightclub 101 Power 100-Minute Crash Course" that includes all of the above, plus "100-minutes of power learning, insight, and problem-solving" and "ample time to put together a real working concept." How could you go wrong?

Despite the blandly hysterical marketing speak and impersonal, Borglike design of the site, much can be gleaned about the self-inflated wiz behind the Nightclubbiz.com curtain, Dave Hollingworth. Besides the fact that many of the 22,000 pages contained in his affordable package are personal testimonials about his own credentials (turns out Dave himself's the one who answers the phones at Nightclubbiz.com's HQ), he also includes a priceless "My Life Outside the Biz" page that hilariously confirms many of the suspicions I've held about him all along: "As mentioned in my article 'meeting chicks in a nightclub,' one of my favorite pastimes is just that: females. Sure, I like racing, boats, and most performance water sports as well, but females are something you can never get bored of; at least for me. Outside of nightclub operations, people are generally something I avoid, but females? Females are not people — they're God's greatest species."

Dude! I'm so in! *