By day, he is a self-employed graphics arts designer specializing in motorcycles and street bikes. On a moment's notice, he jumps in his car and heads to the Hopewell firehouse, where he is a volunteer firefighter. But every Thursday and Saturday night, Chris Myers is at Princeton Tower Club, from before doors open until after most partiers have collapsed into bed.
"If there was ever a job to have," said Myers, who works as a bouncer, "it's working at a party."
Myers, a native of Hopewell, N.J., runs a consulting service that covers security for all events at Tower. His is just one of the many services eating clubs rely on to maintain a safe environment for their guests.
"They're unbelievable," said Nik Ajagu '05, president of Ivy Club, which hires its bouncers from the graduate school. "We never go on tap without them."
Security costs make up a large portion of the eating clubs' budgets. On a typical weekend night, Tower spends $400 on bouncers — which is roughly equivalent to the cost of entertainment, president Eric Czervionke '05 said.
Tower is one of the few clubs to hire bouncers unaffiliated with the University, which Czervionke said "allows them to make rational and unbiased decisions at the door."
Most of the bouncers on the Street are graduate students, patrolling the clubs late at night as an extra means of income while they work toward higher degrees in religion or chemistry.
The double life can lead to some interesting crossings of path.
Nicholas Racculia GS, who worked as a bouncer at Tiger Inn for two years, said having students he knew from the Street in his economics precept was "the strangest thing."
"I'd see them all partying, and then they were in class asking intelligent questions," he said.
Bouncing as a job
For Racculia, working as a bouncer was a nice change of pace from his daily life.
"Graduate student life isn't the most exciting life," he said. "You put yourself in a situation quite different from a typical graduate student day."
But for others, the job might just turn out to be something longterm.
Myers and a few of his friends started working security in 2000 at Cap and Gown Club, where he knew the head chef.
Three years later, the group has grown to nearly 40 men, and Myers is in the process of registering it as a company.
They have been hired for events at TI and Colonial and Quadrangle clubs, and during the summers they work for local bands and bars at the New Jersey shore.
And though Myers still holds a day job in graphic arts, he could see eventually switching to security full-time.
"Working at a party's kind of hard because you kind of just want to hang out," he said. "But where else would you rather work?"
Life of a bouncer
A typical night for a bouncer starts at 10:30 p.m., when the men working that night arrive and meet with club officers to go over what to expect.
"Tower can be as wild as a top [night] club or as calm as a nice mellow coffee shop," Myers said. "It all depends on the day."
Gaining admission to a club always requires a PUID, but sometimes a pass or club membership is required. The bouncers have strict instructions to turn away intoxicated students, and they also patrol the interior and exterior of the club.
The bouncers stay until at least 3 a.m., averaging about nine hours at the Street each week.
In addition to the unusual work hours, the job has some other downsides, including being forced to sit through hours of DJ Bob.
"Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's repetitive, sometimes it's super-loud and your head's pounding all night and your ears are ringing the next day," Myers said. "But it's all part of the job."
Bouncers are also the ones who deal with drunken students, escorting them out of the club when necessary. Myers estimated that Tower has two or three minor confrontations a month.
"If we're treated kindly, that's fine," he said. "Once somebody crosses paths with us in a negative way, chances are, it's not going to be pretty."
Myers admitted that he, at about 5'10, is not the biggest guy, but added, "I have three or four people at my beck and call to do what I need to do."
Despite the occasional encounters with belligerent guests, the job has its share of perks. Being sober at the Street leads to some interesting experiences.
"It's people-watching at its prime during the early hours of the morning," Myers said.
One night, Racculia's fellow bouncer caught someone climbing into the window of the TI kitchen. As the bouncer pulled the student out by the legs, another person outside started pelting him in the head with frozen tater tots — which he had apparently just stolen from the kitchen.
Myers reported similar experiences of students trying to sneak in "through every orifice — windows, crawlspaces, any place a human body will fit." But he makes no exceptions in following the officers' instructions.
"We're not here to negotiate; we're hired to do a job, and we abide by what the club wishes," he said.
No exceptions
Even club presidents are not above the law, as Czervionke found out earlier this year. The week before he was elected president of Tower, his intoxicated friend was turned away from the club's Cancun party. Czervionke argued with the bouncers, but to no avail. He then borrowed the president's keys to unlock a side entrance.
But when he opened the door, two bouncers were waiting for him. Busted, Czervionke had little choice but to turn around and head home.
"It wasn't a big deal except for the fact that I had gone outside with no shirt on, it was the dead of winter and I was now bounced out of my own club," Czervionke said. "I feel that if the club is safe from people like me, then we're in pretty good shape."
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