I vividly remember a night a few years back inside the long gone Clear Ultra Lounge. A friend of a friend was explaining to me the dos and don'ts of playing the nightlife game in Dallas.
"You can save up your money and get a bottle over at Ghostbar or Suite one night," he said in a drunken haze. "Or you can go out every night of the week, get to know the door guys and the bartenders and you are in."
Mingling with the Dallas elite on the nightlife scene is indeed a tricky proposal depending on the night and how many girls are in your party.
There are several options to getting in to the right club on the right night. If you want to impress a client or guarantee admission on a night when a big concert is in town, "bottle service" is the best option. This gets you a table inside your 'ultra lounge' of choice be it Candleroom, Cameo, PM Lounge or Rio Room.
Glass Lounge, the latest and greatest addition to the Dallas scene, is always sold out on the weekends and filled with some of the most beautiful people you could lay you eyes on. It joins the bar at the Ritz-Carlton, Nick & Sam's bar, Sfuzzi and Dragonfly at Hotel ZaZa among others as 'a place to see and be seen' in Uptown.
So how does one get into any of these upscale lounge/clubs without forking over upwards of a $1K to get a bottle? How do you get on the vaunted "List" to bypass the long lines? It is not the easiest thing to do and will take a tad bit of game-planning if you are new to the game.
On the off chance that you do not have or are not a part of a big group of beautiful women, there are several options.
If you are starting from scratch, show up early (well before midnight when the party crowd arrives) to gain access beyond the velvet rope. While this is certainly not the way you want to plan every weekend, this is the opportunity to network and 'over-tip' the club staff in order to gain the valuable contacts.
This is where the game changes gears to the next level. By virtue of the new social media world involving Facebook and Twitter, it is possible to learn which club is hot on the right night (if you are trying to maintain a semi-normal existence) and your new contacts can help you get on that list. Then you have accomplished looking the part of being cool on the theatrical stage that is the Dallas nightlife scene.
On the other hand, you could just go out every night of the week!
