A Message from our Founder Lak Vohra:
The hardest thing to do in show business is getting people to show up for your events. It’s like writing a book. That’s easy. Getting it to print and getting people to buy is another chapter for the ages. Before I introduce my next guest and friend Dustin Gartenbush allow me to digress a minute. Indulge me.
I got my first big break starting PartyDigest.com 30 some years ago when I ran into Sofia a gorgeous Greek socialite at the now defunct Coco Loco nightclub where Julia Roberts played with the legendary restaurateur Sevino Racine (he does magic tricks now I heard!) at a ladies luncheon and the next day Sofia, enamored by me, brought me to meet her husband John Tsiaoushis who was about to launch the Shark Club, a sleepy pool hall in Northern Virginia into a local chain. I helped John expand into Centerville VA and he brought caged dancers and cigars and with my prodding set an opening date and the next thing we were dancing away into the Style section of the Washington Post. I knew I was on to something when the great Washington Post gossip columnist Roxanne Roberts asked me to lunch to “pick my brains” and we settled on an Italian trattoria that had recently signed up with me. When she paid that hefty lunch bill, I knew I had arrived. John T expanded and I rode the wave until sadly he went to jail for mortgage fraud selling one of his houses to three owners in one day at separate real estate closings.
Along the way came Pat Barton of the Washington Party Group who became a client - never met him in person - he would just leave checks in his suburban Virginia mailbox for me to go pick up! Pat B made the front of the weekend section of the Washington Post an overnight sensation. Then came Mark Phillips a legendary wine promoter who ran Wine Tasting Association who threw great wine parties until the ATF knocked down his Alexandria, VA door for selling rare and expensive wines from his basement cellar at dinner parties without a liquor license. Charlie Adler, his underling at the time, became my next client and we would go around the East Coast together sharing a hotel room and building his wine promotions business. He now runs TasteDC. Still around after all these years. Many other promoters in DC, New York City, Boston, Vegas and Miami came and went but it was par for the course. The Miami promoter brought elephants - and noise complaints - to his South Beach mansion. The early 2000s were crazy! Loved working with Franco from Cafe Milano in Georgetown (he loved selling tailored men’s suits on the side!) and not to forget Reggie Aggarwal who the Washington Post termed the “bouncer to the high-tech community” by hosting legendary parties for CEOs at the Ritz-Carlton in Tyson’s Corner, VA and ended up taking his company public not once but twice. He called me the night he picked the name for his company (Cvent). I told him it was a terrible idea for a name! The rest is history. He became a client but I had to move a small mountain to get him to pay! Nice guy!
Killing Kittens, a UK-based orgy promoter, came calling next in my heydays partying st 37 Wall Street and I ended up promoting a high-end Hamptons orgy with diplomats and Wall Street types who till this day buy my Hamptons Cigars! Promoting sex parties was branching out! Soon I was promoting The Green Door in Vegas, Club Defy in Miami and a local Jax dude named Mitch!
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