Michael Hirtzer

Friday after midnight at Y Bar, the upscale nightclub in River North, and it’s packed with young women, many of them dressed voluntarily in lingerie and barely old enough to get into the club, and men, many of them older than 30, trying desperately to get their attention. One of the women, a waifish blonde who couldn’t be a day older than 22, is steaming mad. She wants to get paid $75 like some of the other women who showed up to the club in their underwear. She is wearing a lacy red bra—but with blue jeans. "I am not paying this girl," says Christian Banach, owner of Global Adrenaline, the promoter of the event, the "Midsummer Night’s Dream" party. She could take off her jeans and get the money or she could leave them on and get nothing. Banach, about six feet tall with an athletic build, his hair carefully styled into a blond faux hawk, seems to be on a first-name basis with a majority of the club’s clientele. He wears a black button-down, white jeans and white squared-toe shoes. The club has a dress code for the guys but, seemingly, not for the girls. One woman, sipping a drink at the bar is wearing a T-shirt, cotton briefs and hooker boots. Hanes Her Way, indeed. Other women had shown up in jeans, but many of them went to the bathroom to take them off, revealing sexy boy shorts, garter belts and corsets. Banach got the idea for the party from Playboy’s party of the same name. With this and all his parties, of which there are usually four a week, he says he seeks to create an atmosphere that is "sleek and sexy." "We want the people to walk away and remember the night," he says. The mad blonde in the red bra keeps her jeans on—and Banach keeps his $75. "Most of these girls won’t work for anything less than $200," he says with a smile.

It was just another day at the office for Banach, 28, who for the past several years has run the biggest nights at many of Chicago’s biggest nightclubs. His company, Global Adrenaline, will celebrate its tenth anniversary Labor Day weekend with a huge bash at Enclave, a night that features an appearance by porn superstar Jenna Jameson. Tonight’s star is a tall brunette named Bri Anna, advertised as a recent Playboy Cybergirl of the Week. There are dozens of men leering at Bri Anna from the other side of the velvet rope. She says little, preferring instead to dance on a table and snap photos. "That girl is the second dumbest girl I know," a woman in a soft pink teddy says. Most of Y Bar is roped off in small sections of private tables. A long hallway runs from the entrance, past two bars, all the way back to the bathrooms. The rest—at least seventy-five percent—of the club is roped off for people who buy bottles of champagne or hard liquor. Tonight’s special is bottles of Belvedere vodka for $150, about $100 off the normal price. DJ Jernell Geronimo plays trendy house in the corner. Banach promotes Fridays at Y Bar. His job is to attract the girls who, in turn, attract the guys, of course, and for his trouble, he receives a cut of the profits from admission to the club, a percentage of liquor sales or a consulting fee—the arrangement differs each night.

He offers the small payments for girls who dress in lingerie and, sometimes, an extra commission for those who get their friends to dress up as well. Some of them, he says, "We throw them a couple drink tickets, buy them a couple of shots and they’re happy."

"We typically don’t pay girls just to show up—but this was a theme party. We wanted to make sure there were girls in lingerie," Banach says.

The guys bring plenty of cash to buy plenty of drinks that start at around $11. It’s a remarkably simple system, and it works. The girls get their drinks and, sometimes, the guys get their girls. By a quarter after midnight, the club is near its capacity of about 300 people.

"We have a little bit of a line out there," Banach says. "They’d rather turn down money than have it be a sausage fest."

"When you’re a promoter it never really leaves you," Banach says. "You’re always working."

At the grocery store, shopping for clothes, driving down the street—Christian is always on the clock.

A party like "Midsummer Night’s Dream" takes weeks to plan. The date at the club needs to be set, the DJs and special guests like Bri Anna need to be secured. Decorations—in this case, parts of the club were encased in bamboo to give off a forest vibe—need to be set up. And, of course, the women. Curvaceous woman in lingerie don’t magically show up to the party. Well, some of them do.

"There’s a couple of girls that thought it was just a good idea [to wear lingerie]," Christian says. "There are certain types of girls that are more outgoing."

He continues, "We also target the more attractive girls. We’re not going to shy, not-so-attractive girls and asking them to come out. So it goes both ways. We also have access to good clubs and free drinks, and they want to be part of that too."

Banach had met the blonde in the red bra the week prior. "I had seen her out before. She always seems to hang out with different girls." He got her phone number, and proposed offering some cash to show up in sexy underwear. While it didn’t work perfectly this time, there’s always another party.

It’s an endless hustle. On a typical Saturday, Banach will sleep off Friday night’s partying, then hit several spots, trying to attract people to his club night. On a recent Saturday, Christian went to the model show Glamourcon at the Crowne Plaza O’Hare hotel, where Playmates and other pin-up stars meet and greet their fans. Going to such an event works for two reasons: he might find a few models to work his night and he might find a few of their fans to come, too.

"We take for granted all these girls that we know," he says. "Those guys are paying to get in and take a picture for $25, and they’re our friends. We see them on a weekly basis. It’s definitely a good perk of the business."

After spending a few hours there, Banach and Big Steve, one of his friends who runs the door at most of his events, went to Woodfield Mall, where Christian bought a jean jacket to complete his costume for that night’s rock-star-themed party at Sound-Bar. "We did a little promoting while we were there," Christian says of that evening, squeezing in an hour or so of relaxation before going to the club.

By any estimation, Global Adrenaline is one of the most successful club promoters in Chicago. Run down a list of clubs, and Banach and crew has turned it out: the now-defunct Nocturnal, Transit, Crobar, Vision, Entourage. The current roster includes Thursdays at Spybar and Enclave, Fridays at Y Bar and Saturdays at Sound-Bar. "We’ve run a good business over the years," Banach says from his loft-style office in West Town. "We didn’t always know what we were doing, but we treated people the right way." He threw his first party in March of 1997. Upset by the music selection at suburban clubs like Palindrome and Zero Gravity, Christian rented out a banquet hall in Northwest suburban Wood Dale, his hometown. He hired B96 DJs Marski and To Kool Chris and charged $12 at the door. More than a thousand showed. "We met some girls, made some money. I was 18 years old at the time and I was like, ‘Wow, this is fun.’" Banach had recently graduated from Driscoll Catholic High School, where he played right field on the 1997 Illinois State Class A championship baseball team, and was attending the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, on a baseball scholarship. Even before he tore his ACL, putting his baseball career on ice, Christian was feeling out of place in Minnesota. His classmates favored snowmobiles and keg parties. Christian longed for the club scene back home. "I really wasn’t a big fan of Minnesota," he says. He spent only one semester in St. Paul, transferring first to the College of DuPage and then to DePaul University, where he graduated in 2002 with a degree in marketing. All the while, he kept throwing parties, using the same simple formula: hire well-known DJs who played popular dance music and invite lots and lots of girls. He threw his second party at Concord Place Retirement Community in Northlake, and then threw a string of teen events at Club Fever in Rolling Meadows, at one point bringing out then-Crobar resident DJ Psycho Bitch. "At the time, it was fairly unheard of to bring a downtown DJ to a teen club in the suburbs," he says. Almost since the beginning, Christian’s best friend, Shane Hansen, has helped run Global Adrenaline. An unofficial partner, Hansen is the marketing manager, handling branding and all of the decorations, which is one of Global Adrenaline’s trademarks—they decorate every party. Always in search of a good time as well as ways to improve their own parties, the two have travelled to Ibiza and Las Vegas. In 1998, they attended their first rave party, Planet Bass, in a warehouse near Mercy Hospital. The party gave them the inspiration for their biggest event yet, "Stardust" at the Kane County Fairgrounds in St. Charles. A "hybrid event," "Stardust" featured mainstream B96-style DJs as well as DJs from the rave scene, like Frankie Bones and DJ Funk. Banach says the party might have alienated some club kids and ravers, who did not want to commingle, but "ultimately, the bulk of people did come together, and it was a huge turnout." The idea was to create an atmosphere with the glamour of the club scene but with the music of the underground. "For us, it made sense. We didn’t like going to a rave. It was always really dirty and they didn’t dress up at all. I wasn’t into the glowsticks and teddy bears," he says. "On the club side of things, I liked dressing up, the attractive women and the social aspect of it—it wasn’t strictly about music. But the B96 jocks weren’t as cool as the Tiestos, the Oakenfolds." Christian made sure to book DJs from Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin, attracting partygoers from each state in addition to the clientele he already had in Illinois. "It has a huge turnout—bigger than most of the raves that were going on at the time and bigger than most of the B96-style parties," Banach says, adding that about 4,000 people attended the party. He threw another "Stardust" party in the south suburbs at the Harvey Expo Center, before he started throwing a string of "iCandy" parties, each one with a different theme for women. There was "Hard at Work," where girls dressed up in hard hats and tank tops; "Hardcore Hospital," with kinky nurse uniforms; "Hot For Teacher," with schoolgirl uniforms; and "Booty Camp," with tight military garb.

Banach held the first iCandy at the now-defunct Nocturnal on Lake Street. That party attracted the owners of Transit, who invited Global Adrenaline to hold court there beginning in 2002. That lasted about a year. Banach then moved to Entourage and finally to one of the current homes, the megaclub Sound-Bar.

It’s not exactly rocket science. Get a bunch of well-endowed women to wear skimpy costumes and watch as the men flock and the liquor flows like, well, wine, or at least like Jagermeister.

Global Adrenaline, if anything, is criticized for one of its biggest selling points: catering too overtly to weekend warriors from the suburbs. Banach says his clientele is loyal. At first most of the crowd was from the suburbs, though much of that same crowd now lives in Chicago.

"Our core crowd—the girls tend to skew a little younger, in the 23-26 range," he says. "The guys are 25 and older. They’re out of college now, been at their first job for a couple of years. A lot of my friends and regulars were in the suburbs, and now they’ve all moved downtown. They have nice condos and drive BMWs."

Having been successful holding events at many of Chicago’s largest clubs, Global Adrenaline has now turned to smaller events, like the "Midsummer Night’s Dream" party at Y Bar. While certainly many cannot afford to buy a $100-plus bottle of liquor, Christian and the rest of his crew work to make everyone feel comfortable by occasionally inviting clubgoers to sit at the private table he reserves for each event, for that "‘Cheers’ mentality," Banach says.

He hires three-to-five hosts for each event, including mainstays like Janelle, a petite blonde who is the resident photographer, and the burly but friendly Big Steve.

While Banach has made enough money to have his staff on a proper payroll (Hansen is his only full-time employee; four others work part-time), keep the lights on at his office and buy a modern, two-bedroom Tri-Taylor condo, he says, his profits have been squeezed by a nightclub economy where cover charges, more often than not, can be avoided. Visit any club Web site and deals can be found, allowing for example, free entry before midnight.

"No one wants to pay a cover charge anymore," Banach says. "It’s a little unfortunate."

Which is one of the reasons why his company—official name: Adrenaline Y2K, Inc.—has branched out into guerrilla marketing. The day after the party at Y Bar, Global Adrenaline would be out distributing MasterCard promotions at the Chicago Air & Water Show. They have done similar promotions at the Taste of Chicago and U.S. Cellular Field.

Another venture is a localized version of MySpace called MyNightLife, which offers club and restaurant recommendations. That Web site is live but has not been rolled out officially.

"We know the nightlife scene but we also know marketing," Banach says.

While he doesn’t have an official business plan for Global Adrenaline, Banach says more guerrilla marketing is in his future as it becomes harder to turn profits in the "oversaturated" club scene.

But the core business is still parties. He’s already planning the largest event of the year—New Year’s Eve, of course—on which he makes as much money in one night as he does all year. This past week, he agreed to a two-year deal to host the party at the Hilton Chicago.

He’s doing well, especially considering that his goal from the beginning was simply to throw a party.

"We figured it’d be great to throw our own party," he says, "hire the DJs that we’d come to know."

Back at Y Bar, it’s almost closing time. Guys use last-ditch attempts to pick up some company for the night. "Come over and sit by me," they say. "Is that your man?"

DJ Billy the Kid, now behind the CD turntables, stirs up the crowd with a tight mix of new house tunes, including a remix of Sheila E.’s biggest hit, "Glamorous Life."

A guy wearing a headset, striped shirt and a suit jacket, walks over to Banach and hands him a check.

The lights come on and Banach leads a procession toward the door, with a buxom blonde at his side. Some of his friends go next door to Sound-Bar, but Christian hops into his car, driving past the recently opened Martini Park, where a crowd spills into Erie Street. Christian valets in front of Moda and the bouncer waves him in. The club is dead. It’s nearly 3am, closing time, and most of the clientele is wasted.

"I’m not really feeling this," Banach says.

He takes one last sip of his drink, grabs his girl and speeds off into the night in his black BMW.

(2007-08-28)

Also by Michael Hirtzer

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Hip-hop is Princess Superstar's first love, but that didn't stop her from trying her hand in the grand tradition of ballroom serenades. See her gentle come-on, "Fuck Me On the Dancefloor"
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