Persistence
2004-02-16 5:57 a.m.
I have a strange habit of asking a lot of people. While apologizing today for doing just that, I�d taken a minute or few to think back.Filled up a wine glass (been avoiding beer and liquor due to all the drinking I�d done Saturday night), lit up a Newport and flipped through the mental crates. I think I�d decided to dig back on the subject due to my nostalgic morning flipping through my thousands of photos earlier today.
And with that thought process came the fact that I used to throw 2 parties a week. It was around the end of Freshman year (HS), when I started growing out of the hard core thing and began to really like the whole hip hop DJ thing. So we started throwing parties. At the time it was once a month, but we just couldn�t seem to get the numbers up. Some loyal heads, but mostly empty halls.
Since my mom wasn�t home very often, and we�d finally gotten a house we were going to stay in for more than a year, I�d decided to start making my basement into a party room. At least until we got enough money together to renovate the house. And that�s when I REALLY started to learn the ways of gathering crowds.
In order to get people in the door regularly, in order to afford better DJ equipment and some of my HS tuition, I had to start getting people together regularly. So I made it a weekly thing. And every week, all week, I�d call everyone personally. Seriously. A list of 30 � 150 names written out in spider webs of who knows who. Flipping through my green leather address book and calling each an every one to see if they were down.
As it goes with all impersonal promotion, you can only expect a 2 - 5% return. 1000 flyers gets 20 - 50 heads. But 150 personal invitational phone calls would get me about 60 � 200 heads. So there I went, with large promises and a �say anything� attitude like a poor salesman. Of course my product was an easy sell. Come to my place for a $5 party with plenty of vices, live breaking and at least 5 house and hip hop djs.
Need a ride? I�m sure I could get one from someone. Need a babysitter? Handled. Whatever they needed to hear, I gave it to them, and in return I�d ask them for crazy shit. Skip your cousin�s wedding. Forget about your friend�s graduation. Have your birthday at my place!
These days I don�t plan things often. I�ve no 9 to 5 and hence to real schedule. My watch is mostly for decoration, as I don�t look at it much. For this reason, I even bought some funky watch from Japan that�s really hard to read at a glance. But when I DO plan things, I still default to a 40% return (5% for the impersonal marketing, 40 � 200% for personal persuasion). Ask for 10 hours of someone�s time and get 4.
It�s all done light heartedly and mostly in jest. Most people I know in Chicago know this about me. They know that I may be stretching my request, but that I mean well, and that I MIGHT not come through, but I�ll try REALLY fucking hard. That�s how I�ve made the majority of my friends. Big requests and working my ass off to return the favor.
After all, when you make plans and promises to a lot of people, you�re doing so expecting things to fall through. If I promise to trade favors with 20 people, I expect to be busy following up with 5 of them. It�s a number game, and no where near as impersonal as I�m making it out to be. It�s actually very personal, and tends to be beneficially (not sure if that�s a word, but it is for now) taxing.
Of course, I�ve always hidden this dedication. My crew, and all my guests for that matter, never knew that the reason I was so close to everyone at every party is because I�d personally invited every single person or someone they knew well. All that work. All those calls. All that love paid for itself ten fold with �friends� all over the damned city.
Of course, along with all that selling, came a lot of persistence. Not only in what I was doing, but in working extra hard in getting the people I REALLY wanted there. Some girl I had an interest in? Special treatment. My boy is trying to get in with xyz crew? Special treatment. Dude just broke up with his girl? At least 3 girls would get personally introductions pre-party.
Along with that persistence came a habit of persistence. I can annoy some. I tend to be really bad with new friends who I have an unusual amount of interest in. When you�re annoying somebody with grandeur for someone else, it�s not so bad. When you�re bugging them with your own interests it can backfire. That�s probably my issue here in NY. I�ve learned to avoid my ways out here, entirely. No extra attention to anyone.
But like the persistent DJ I once was, when I make new friends outside of NY, my persistence takes control.
Ok.. That�s enough of personal breakdown. I guess this is mostly just my means of �thinking� out loud while I give myself yet another look as to how and why I function. I tend to be incredibly self critical.
On that note, I went to an ILL house party in Redhook on Saturday. Luckily not a Valentines Day party as my girl, as usual, was not feeling going out. I don�t let her fear of enjoyment get under my skin anymore.
So my boy A. asked me to bring a crate, but it was too cold and too damned far to drag records around. Glad I didn�t. It was a good setup, but even A. ended up just playing shit from his IPOD all night. The place was incredible. MY apartment is about the size of their bathroom. 2 Floors, 20 foot ceilings, and a bunch of adults having a good ass time. I had a fucking blast.
L. brought her girl M, who was pretty attractive except for the fact that she was about 4�10. Nothing wrong with her height at all, but that makes me more than a foot and a half taller. I literally had to bend down or kneel to have a conversation with her.
Everybody came through and we all had a fucking blast. No problems. No fights. All love and there were actually some decent BBoys there. Not just a bunch of acrobats and uprockers. Some actual style. I almost never see any real style out here when it comes to the breaking circle.
OK, I need sleep. Gotta get my hair did at 930 am, and it�s already 6. Gonna need an hour or so of sleep since it�s the hair stylist joint, which means it takes like 3 hours. I�m still amazed I go to a fucking stylist. Never in my life imagined it. But yo, a hook up is a hook up, and I�ll take $400 scissors in professional hands over $30 clippers any day.