Building JoonBug was a fascinating, engrossing experience, and there were all kinds of moving parts, from the tech side, to the finance side, to the social and entertainment aspects of working in nightlife. And peppered throughout those experiences were, of course, celebrity encounters! My team and I met and mingled with some of the true glitterati of that time, many of whom are still famous today. It was almost always a transient, happenstance kind of thing, a fun or exciting or just plain weird moment in time. These are just a few that stand out in my memory.
Biggest Fan
During my college years, but technically before JoonBug, I often went to a lounge called Spy Bar and tried to get in. It was the hotspot, the hardest place to get into, and the best place to be seen. I had a few hits, but mostly misses, trying to get past the velvet ropes. Spy Bar was a celebrity hotspot, so “ordinary” people had a tougher time getting in than they might have at a large mega club, where doormen were looking to pack the giant venue out with an eclectic crowd.
One particular evening, I was out with my uncle, who was also my good friend, since he’s only about six years older than I am. We were walking around SoHo, not dressed to go out or anything, just wearing jeans and sneakers and hanging out. But as we walked by Spy Bar, we took a chance and tried to get in. It was very late, so there was a chance that it might work out.
Or, not so much. The doorman was Stephan, this French guy with big, curly hair almost like an Afro. He took one look at us and basically said, “There’s no way,” following that up with a few choice insults about our clothes, all the usual things they would tell you to make you feel not so great about yourself. Somehow, his accent and suit made the insults that much more biting!
But if you’re as much of a nightlife addict as I was back then, you learn to let it roll off your back (mostly). We walked away from the velvet ropes, when I noticed another guy walking down the street just a few feet ahead of us. The first thing I noticed were his shoes, which were green suede loafers, interesting looking. He also had on tight leather pants and a blazer, and had a ponytail. And all of a sudden, it hit me: this was Dave Gahan!
Dave Gahan was the lead singer of the band Depeche Mode, which was basically my favorite music in the universe. I was completely obsessed with them all throughout middle school, high school, and college. I had all of their CDs and remixes, knew all of their songs, so this celebrity sighting hit me like a ton of bricks. There was basically no one that I would have been more excited to see walking down the same street as me.
“Hey, Dave!” I spontaneously yelled out, almost as if I knew him. There was no one else on the street but him and us.
“Yeahhhhh?” He turned, as if expecting to see a familiar face.
I’d like to say I was cool and collected, but to be honest, I immediately started babbling like a doofus about how I was his biggest fan! He listened patiently while I went on and on about how much I loved his songs, totally starstruck. When I kind of wound down to a halt, he told me how much he appreciated it, and held out a black-nail-polished hand to shake mine. Surreal!
From there, we all walked together for a couple of blocks, and he told us where their next concert would be and encouraged me to come. I could not believe I was just walking and chatting with this guy, and tried to soak in the moment, while my uncle, who was also a Depeche Mode fan, was completely silent. Maybe in shock!
After a short time, a cab came by, and Dave hailed it, shaking my hand again and saying goodbye. He drove off into the distance, while my uncle and I went back to our places. Once I got home, I woke up my roommates - they were Depeche Mode fans too - and told them everything… and didn’t wash that hand for two weeks!
It’s Britney, Bitch
Suite 16 in Chelsea was another smaller club, fitting maybe a hundred patrons in a very tightly little area. It was very exclusive and very hot. Noah Tepperberg and Jason Strauss, now co-CEO’s of Tao Group Hospitality, opened Suite 16, and from the start, they always got very big-name celebrities there.
One night, we went to Suite 16, not working for JoonBug but just as patrons, having fun. This was during the time when Britney Spears was meteorically famous, hugely successful and a household name. As we sat in the back, where there were a few small tables, a Britney Spears song came on, and a blonde at a nearby table stood up. I glanced over and realized that it was Britney, right there, in the flesh - just a table or two away. Keep in mind, there were only maybe four tables in the room, so it was very close!
Nimbly, she stepped up onto the table - obviously, she was there to have a good time, and what better way than to dance to her own song? She started showing off her dance moves (which were insane) and as everyone in the room realized what was going on, they started going crazy cheering for her and dancing, too. It was like a 5 minute, private show - really cool, totally unexpected. Maybe a little weird, but whatever.
After Britney was done dancing, she climbed off of the table, and the party quieted down to more normal levels, which of course, was still fairly loud. The whole venue was packed as always, and everyone was dancing and drinking and having a blast.
After a while, I glanced back over at Britney’s table to see what was happening. She was still partying and drinking, but she tapped her bodyguard or bouncer or whoever on the shoulder, and I saw her tell him that she had to go to the bathroom. The guy looked around, slightly helpless looking. It would definitely take some time and effort to push through all of those people and get to a restroom.
And… I guess she didn’t want to wait. So she literally went, in the middle of the club, at her private table. You read that right. She just squatted down kind of underneath the table, peed on the floor (again, this was right next to us), and then got back up, got on the table, and started dancing again. Even for the world of clubbing, this was pretty crazy. The incident never made the news or anything, but it was the talk of the New York nightlife for a while!
My(a) Mistake
One of JoonBug’s most lucrative contracts was with a hotel and casino in Atlantic City, called Borgata. They had a nightclub called MurMur, and JoonBug got a contract to do all of the club’s promotions, celebrity events, and stuff like that. We also did digital stuff for them, and some parties as well.
During that time, through a friend or something–I’m not sure how it happened, exactly– I was put in touch with the singer Mya, who was super famous and taking the whole music industry by storm. Her first album went platinum, and she worked with names like Missy Elliott, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and all kinds of other huge names.
So, I reached out to her team and asked if she would like to appear at the club and get paid for it. They said yes, so I called the guys at Borgata and they said yes, and I asked how much they could pay. They always had a huge budget, and got back to me with a fairly large number, something like fifty grand.
That all sounded good, right? I got back to my contact, and told them that the club could pay Mya twenty grand. They mulled it over, and came back with another “yes.” It was only one night, twenty would work, they wanted a hotel room and some other odds and ends on a rider, typical stuff.
I was very pleased. I had booked a big event for both parties, and the difference - some $30,000 or so - would go to JoonBug.
So we booked it and got to work on the promotions. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this event was promoted to the hilt. We promoted it on our side online, but Borgata’s team promoted it too. They splashed ads all over the hotel and everywhere, really doing it up. It was winter in New Jersey, and we anticipated a fantastic crowd.
On the night of, I showed up at the club to check in on how things were shaping up. It was about 10 o’clock, only an hour to go before the show. Everything was beautiful and exciting, and… there was no one there. No one. In the whole club.
Okay, maybe I’m going a little far. The JoonBug staff, the club staff, and about ten patrons were in the club.
To this day, I have no idea how or why this was the case. The manager hurried up to me asking what was going on, saying there was nobody there and what was he supposed to do. I was feeling panicky and confused as well, when suddenly, Mya herself appeared on the stage. We froze. There was scattered applause from the (mostly) empty room.
But I have to say, she was a consummate professional. She did a whole set, for like an hour, knocking song after song out of the park. And it was just crickets. There were literally not enough people there to meaningfully clap or cheer. It was a total bust.
I felt bad about it, but what could I do? Afterward, the JoonBug staff and I tried to put it behind us. After all, there was always plenty to do for other events and contracts and all the other details of running the business. But a week or two later, I got a call that told me I would not be allowed to shrug this one off that easily.
It turns out that Mya’s father had somehow found out that I got paid 30K, while Mya made twenty. I don’t know exactly how he heard about this. Maybe he called the guys at Borgata, or something like that. Whatever the case, that was the start of a weeks-long period of hounding, complaining phone calls. He got my cell number, and over and over I got calls and messages from him berating me, telling me I shouldn’t have done what I did, that it was bad business, that I should have only taken this or that percentage.
Usually, it’s celebrities that have to tell non-celebs to back off - but in this instance, I had to be the one to say, “Stop calling me or I’ll call the police!” Eventually the guy gave up, but it was one celebrity encounter I’ll never forget.
Fight Club
Andre Birleanu Model at One Nightclub JoonBug
Some time after the Mya incident, I had another event with Borgata that went, well, awry. I’ll put it that way. I was friends with this guy named Andre Birleanu, a Russian-Romanian fashion model guy who at the time was actually on a reality show for models, making him sort of a pseudo-celebrity.
Reality TV was new and really big back then, so reality stars like Andre were drawing crowds just like real celebrities. I thought it would be a good idea to book him for the club, but it was a hard sell. The club was very iffy about Andre, because he had a reputation for being very erratic on the show, very difficult to deal with and unpredictable.
I kept reassuring them that it would be fine. “Look,” I said, “I’ll escort him there myself, I’ll stay with him the whole time, it will be fine. It will be under control.” In my mind, the drama was way overblown. The manager, Eric Millstein, hesitated for a while, but eventually agreed. The buzz would be great.
And it was. We got to the club, he partied, I supervised, it was all very peaceful and fine. To be honest, he was more or less on his phone the whole time, talking to his girlfriend who was also a model (and kind of a weird girl. All they would do was say, “I love you,” to each other over and over). But it was definitely a success. Drinking, dancing, having a good time, check-check-check. Everyone was happy, from the club guys to the JoonBug team to Andre himself.
By about three in the morning, it was time to get going. Andre had had a little too much to drink, but he was doing all right, and I walked with him out of the club, through the casino, and toward the hotel itself. I was congratulating myself on seeing this opportunity and making it happen in spite of the opposition from Borgata, when a random guy from the casino came running up and spoke to Andre.
I think it was a fan. Maybe it was a hater. Whatever the case, Andre snapped back, and in a fraction of a second, I went from congratulating myself to standing rooted to the spot, watching the model and the gambler throwing punches and kicks while a crowd gathered around us.
My hands rose involuntarily and slowly made their way to the top of my head, where they rested as if to keep my brain from exploding. I seemed to see an instant replay of the club owners warning me, “If anything goes wrong, it will be your responsibility.”
Then the hotel security came running, and Andre was fighting not only his fan/enemy but the team of security guards, who basically beat the crap out of him. Someone called 911, and an ambulance showed up, carting Andre off somewhere. I was left to make my way to my room, where I sat and prepared myself to kiss the Borgata contract goodbye.
And that's how it turned out. The next morning, Andre showed up with a wheelchair and his apologies, a long-winded, erratic list of excuses, arguments, remorseful statements, and non-sequiturs. That Monday, I got the call that we had lost the contract. It was like the end of the world back then. Now, I look back and realize that overall, we had had a good two year run, and it was really fun, too.
I Thought I Saw A Pussycat?
Later in my time running JoonBug, I got a call from a good friend who had a favor to ask. “Listen,” she told me, “I have a really big celebrity friend who’s in New York and wants to go out tonight. Can you make arrangements?”
Her “celebrity friend” wanted to get dinner somewhere and then hit 1Oak, which was a really, really popular club and very hard to get into. I said sure, that I would make reservations and then meet them at the club around 11.
As I got out of the cab and looked for my friend, I realized she was standing next to Nicole Scherzinger, the lead singer of Pussycat Dolls. This mega-popular girl group started out as a burlesque group but transitioned to the pop scene, which they dominated. All kinds of famous names were associated with the Pussycat Dolls, including Christina Aguilera and Carmen Electra, but Nicole was unquestionably the star at that point.
We all greeted each other and headed to the front of the line, past the velvet ropes, to a table with bottles and everything. Nicole was coming out not just to party, but to treat some of her old high school friends from Long Island. A number of them showed up, and the night went by with everyone partying hard and having a great time. With Nicole’s performing skills, it turned from a group of friends drinking and dancing into kind of a spectacle, and that spectacle only came to an end when one of her friends literally passed out drunk in the banquette.
Nicole was horrified. She turned to me and was like, “Shane, you have to help me! He has to get back to his house in Brooklyn, but he’s not waking up!” As she worked and tried to bring him to his senses, I came over and together we started to basically pick up this passed-out guy, lugging him bodily through the club and outside, where we hailed a cab. He started to wake up a little, delirious and literally drunk off his ass.
We shoved him into the back of the cab, and prepared to get in after him, when–of course–he raised his head just enough to liberally, generously throw up. All over the inside of the taxi.
Nicole froze, and so did I. But the taxi driver suddenly came to life, turning from kind of a vague presence in the front seat into a whirlwind of rage and indignation. He was an Indian guy, and yelled in crisp, clear, accented English, “You throw up in my cab? Get out! Get out!”
Nicole’s friend rolled back in the seat, moaning, and Nicole begged the driver not to kick him out. Reaching into her tiny purse, she produced a wad of bills, waving them at him and pleading incoherently, “No, please, we’ll pay you! He has to get home!”
After a few crazy minutes, we were wiping up the mess as best we could and then climbing into the now-disgusting backseat with the still-mostly-unconscious friend, making the drive to Brooklyn. At first, there was silence, and then Nicole apologized for getting me caught up in this scenario. The thirty-minute ride went by with some awkward small talk, and we finally got her pal back home. Then we took the cab back to 1Oak, where it seemed strange to realize that it was only about four in the morning, and everyone else was still partying and having a great time like nothing had happened!
The night ended, and everyone decided to finish up with some brunch at this hole-in-the-wall Mexican joint in the Meatpacking District. It was famous in its own way, a place you could go early in the day for greasy food and tequila shots. Diane, whom I was dating at the time, had not been able to make it to the club the night before, but I took her to brunch with me and introduced her all around, while Nicole told her the story of the disastrous cab ride. I think Diane found the story funny–but she didn’t seem to love it so much that I had been hanging out with one of the Pussycat Dolls all night!
That brunch got even more interesting when the restaurant started a round of karaoke, and a Pussycat Dolls song came on. Everyone looked at Nicole for a second, and then it was just a clamor of voices urging her to sing.
She did us one better, and (like Britney before her) got up on the table to perform her song, complete with a dance. The other restaurant patrons caught on to what was happening and started cheering, raising shots of tequila, and dancing along. Nicole did two more songs after that, and then hopped down. Diane and I ended up hanging out with her, walking around SoHo, for a little while after that. Although we never ran into her again, it was a fun time, a good memory, and definitely more than a few laughs.
Diddy Up
One of the truly most amazing nights I had during those years was the time I ended up hanging out with Diddy, who went by Puff Daddy back then. My girlfriend at the time, was good friends with a girl who worked at Sean John, Diddy’s fashion label. I think this girl was also dating him at the time, but whatever the case, she invited my girlfriend and I to go out with them to Bungalow 8.
Bungalow 8 was the pinnacle of places to go in New York City, truly impossible to get into. It was a very small venue, holding maybe 50 people at most. I had been there once or twice before, and I was really looking forward to going again, this time with Ariana and Puff Daddy.
Puff Daddy actually picked us up in a kind of party van, and we all chatted and got to know each other a bit on the drive. I found myself telling Puff Daddy about JoonBug, what we did and what we were about, and it turned out that he had actually done event promotions at one time, so he was interested in JoonBug and had a lot of questions about how we were changing the game for promoters and club owners with email marketing, things like that.
When we got to Bungalow 8, we went past the normal club area, with the banquettes and bar, to a section I had not known existed: a small mezzanine that looked down on everything else. This was the ultra-VIP section. And when we got up there, it turned out that Rihanna was there. She was famous back then, and is even more famous now, and it was crazy cool to find myself sitting there between Rihanna and Puff Daddy, talking to them both for like three hours, having some drinks. Puff Daddy had business advice to share, and by the end of the night, wanted to invest in JoonBug.
That was super exciting for me, and we shook hands on it, hugged, and my girlfriend and I thanked everyone for a great night. There was just one catch: I never actually got his phone number or gave him mine.
I woke up the next morning, turned to my girlfriend, and said, “Can you get me Puff Daddy’s phone number?”
Yeah, that just never worked out. But it was still a crazy-cool evening, definitely one of the best nights out ever.
Pay Up!
There were other times when I dealt with celebrities, but not because we were hanging out–just as a matter of business. There’s one incident in particular that always makes me laugh when I think about it.
It was the first year we did New Year’s Eve at Marquee, which was a really hard contract to get. We had worked and worked to negotiate it, and it felt great when the deal finally went through. On the night of, Wass was working the door for the club, while I worked the door for JoonBug. We worked through the night from the beginning to the end, early in the morning. And about that time, a guy came walking up who looked familiar.
He was a white guy with dreadlocks, and as he came up to the velvet ropes, he said casually that his friends were all inside, and would it be okay for him to go in, too.
“No,” I told him. It was a little bit of a ridiculous question, to me. This was a huge, massive event at one of the most sought-after venues ever. There was no way someone was just going to walk in, even at the end of the night. “This is a ticketed event. If you don’t have a ticket, you can’t go inside.”
He closed his eyes briefly, as if to show that he was being patient with someone who didn’t really get it. “Look,” he said calmly. “I’m Adam Duritz, from Counting Crows.” (At that point, Counting Crows was still kind of relevant.) “My friends are all inside. It’s three in the morning. Can you just be chill, and let me in?” He raised his eyebrows and gave a little smile.
Okay, guy. “Look,” I said in return, “I don’t care who you are.” Actually, by that point I knew exactly who he was–and I liked Counting Crows! “It’s a thousand dollars per ticket to get in, no matter what.”
Looking back, I’m really not sure what made me say that. Maybe it was his attitude, or maybe I was just getting an attitude myself, but in reality, the tickets to the party had only cost about two hundred bucks each.
Adam looked unsure. “Bro. Are you really gonna make me pay a thousand dollars?” He said incredulously.
In for a penny, in for a pound. I stuck to my guns. “You’re a celebrity, what’s a thousand bucks to you?” I said carelessly. Then, for good measure, I added, “This isn’t a charity, here.”
He stood there in the cold, looking at me. I could hear his phone ping a couple of times in his pocket. Probably his friends texting him from inside!
“Fine.” He grunted. Pulling out a credit card, he swiped for the thousand dollars and brushed past me into the club.
And that would have been that, except that someone else must have noticed all of this go on. Because the next day, the New York Post ran a story on Page 6 all about Adam Duritz of Counting Crows paying one thousand dollars to get into a JoonBug party. This caused a lot of hilarity and got us some very funny press, as well. That (plus the extra eight hundred bucks, of course) made it a surprisingly profitable little episode!
A ‘Uge Opportunity
On that note, Marquee was also the venue where we did a party for none other than Donald Trump. At that time, he was starting an Expedia-like website called GoTrump, for booking luxury travel options online. It seems like an odd concept now, but Ariana got the contract, and we booked Marquee for the launch party. This was a strategy for JoonBug that paid off “bigly.” With a client as famous as Trump, we were able to get into Marquee in the first place, and from there, we were able to continue doing events there which were extremely lucrative.
We booked for a Tuesday night. Marquee already had a standing Tuesday night event, called Tuesday Baby, Tuesday, which was very well-known and usually packed out. We talked with the promoters, a guy named Danny A and a few others, and agreed that we would take the first part of the night and they would take the later part of the night.
Once we arrived at Marquee, I was happy to see that things were looking fantastic. They had it all red carpeted, there was a step and repeat with the JoonBug logo and the GoTrump logo, and to cap it off, my mom and grandparents were attending, along with some of Ariana’s family, as well.
Then Donald Trump arrived, and everyone was shaking hands, taking pictures with Miss America, Miss Universe, and all kinds of celebrities that were there to party. The place was jumping, and I remember Trump had provided cases and cases of his own vodka, called (of course) Trump Vodka. That vodka was displayed everywhere, and a fair amount of it ended up gifted to JoonBug afterward–a festive addition to our offices
By ten o’clock, the party was really going well. Unfortunately, this was also the moment that the doorman, an Israeli guy named Gil, for the Tuesday, Baby, Tuesday party arrived. Without mincing words, he told us that we needed to leave. Before we could respond, their staff started trying to literally pack up our stuff and kick out our patrons.
Everyone started arguing all at once, with Trump and his guests insisting that they had the venue for the entire evening, and the other promoters demanding that everyone get out so they could do their own party as scheduled. I got into a fight with the manager of Marquee, trying to persuade him not to make everyone leave, while he kept saying they had to do their regular Tuesday night party.
It was a real fiasco, and even worse, it looked like our chance to continue working with Marquee (and anyone connected to Donald Trump’s guest list, which included a whole lot of people) could all fall apart right then and there.
I tried getting Noah Tepperberg on the cellphone, but he wasn’t there, and in the meantime, everyone was arguing with everyone else until, eventually, the people at Marquee just kind of folded.Thankfully!
They agreed, grudgingly, to let everyone stay who had already gotten inside one way or another, and stopped admitting additional people (even though they wanted to keep letting people in, because they wanted to charge at the door).
So that was a pretty interesting fun night– tense for a while, but it ended smoothly with everyone having a great time, including my family and Ariana’s, too. JoonBug was truly well on its way, with Marquee on our roster of star-studded venues.
Rock n Roll
Scott Wilen Stone Temple Pilots and Mike Diamond - Snitch NYC
Out of all of my celebrity stories, this one’s the best–which is why I saved it for last. Back in my high school days, as I’ve said, I was a huge fan of Depeche Mode, but I was also a big fan of Guns N’ Roses. I particularly loved Slash, because I always wanted to learn to play guitar, and Slash was just the ultimate guitar player in my book. I also listened to Stone Temple Pilots quite a bit. They had an amazing lead singer, Scott Weilan, whose vocals were just incredible.
So, fast-forward some years later and JoonBug is in full swing. As it happened, a guy named Mike Diamond, who was a musician but had also been a doorman for places like Chaos in New York, decided to open a small bar a couple of blocks away from our offices. It was going to have a rock and roll theme, with the idea being to create a sort of musicians’ hangout, like the East Coast version of the Viper Room in LA.
My girlfriend at the time, Ariana, was good friends with Mike’s girlfriend, and so he invited us to the pre-opening of the bar, which was called Snitch. Mysteriously, he told us that we had to be sure and make it, because there would be a surprise. “You can’t miss this,” he insisted.
I’ve mentioned quite a few small, exclusive venues, but this one was truly tiny. I guess it would probably hold about forty people, tops, and it had a very small, tiny stage with just a couple of instruments and maybe enough room for four people. If you didn’t watch out, you’d fall right off of it! In front of the stage were four or five banquettes, so close you could literally spit on the stage.
Ariana and I got to the bar and found seats at a banquet, where we hung out with drinks and enjoyed the atmosphere for a while. I noticed that Mike seemed palpably nervous, and we kept asking him what was up, but he wouldn’t really answer. He just kept busy, handling the venue and the guests.
By eleven o’clock, I was tired and ready to go home. It had been a good night. But Mike wouldn’t let me go. He grabbed my arm and ordered me to wait just a little longer. It was almost annoying, but he insisted, “You have to stay,” so I sat down again and waited a bit.
He was right. It was well worth it. Twenty minutes later, all of a sudden, I hear Scott Weilan’s voice singing, the lights come on, and on that tiny stage are Velvet Revolver. Duff and Slash, from Guns N’ Roses, had formed a new band with Scott Weiland as the lead singer, and that night they did a 2 hour set with classic Guns N’ Roses songs, Stone Temple Pilot songs, and new songs.
It was the most incredible concert I’ve ever seen, basically like MTV Unplugged, but ten feet away. Ariana and I were looking at each other, in total disbelief and excitement. I can’t describe how cool it was, and to top it off, at the end of the night we got to meet Duff, Slash, and Scott Weilan.
So there you have it, my all-time-best memory of all the celebrity encounters I’ve ever had. The only thing missing was Axl Rose, but I did get to meet him another time and kick him out of my friend’s apartment at 5 AM on a Monday morning –but that’s a blog post all its own, for another time!
