Where are you from?
Flash – here. All the haole-japanese neighborhoods: Kailua, Kahala, Hawaii Kai.
Matty – I was born in Orlando, and then I was there through 4th grade, 5th grade through college I was in Georgia, then traveled around for awhile and then ended up here. Spent a little time in montana.
What brought you here?
M – My brother was the in the military and he got stationed out here. I hadnt seen him in 8 years, so I figured after my last winter in Montana I figure id go to Hawaii to hang out for a summer…
F – That was a long ass summer.
M - …and here I am.
How long have you guys been promoting?
F – since 96…
M – He’s really old.
F – …as a full time job since 98.
M – I have been doing it for about 6 years fulltime. I worked with flash for a long time but in different capacities, basically starting off as the: Paint Everything in the Wave Waikiki Black Bitch.
F – He wasn’t even head bitch.
M – I also had the title of: Pull All the Staples Out of the Wall Bitch. That sucked. The Wave wasn’t like concrete walls, it was carpet wall that you could actually staple into, everybody could put up flyers or posters or any kind of decorations. You either screwed it in or stapled it. There would be a square foot with hundreds of staples in it. I’d have to pull them all out.
F – when matty wasn’t around I just put staples In the wall.
M – He would call me up and say, “Hey I need you to pull all the staples out of the wall.” Then I started working for Flash as a cashier at the Pussycat Lounge, maybe a year into my bitch work. Then I came to him with an idea to do a party called “Glitter and Glamour,“ a monthly party at the Pussycat Lounge. That was the start of us being business partners. I met Flash through my brother, he used to promote a lot of afterhours spots around the island and that’s how he knew Flash. When I moved out here, my brother called Flash to see if he had any extra work, and the first job Flash ever offered me was the hotdog guy outside the Wave but I turned that one down.
Do you guys have jobs besides promoting?
F – No.
M – No, we’re fulltime. The promoters that we consider legit, that’s what they do for a living.
F – The guys that might do one night a week, have a day job, but our day job is promoting. If you look at any of the G-Spot’s or the Artist Groove Networks, all the guys that have been in the game for awhile, this is their full time job.
What kind of car do you drive?
F – The best car in the world, that would be a SAAB.
M – What kind of SAAB is that Flash?
F – 93 Aero Turbo. What kind of SAAB do you drive?
M – Well, I drive a SAAB 97x 5.3, sittin’ on double deuces, 22’s son! It’s a limited edition, fully loaded. Its kind of a big deal. If you’re interested in getting a good deal, please call James Burger. [laughs] Call James at 735-2488. Tell em Flash and Matty Boy sent you.
Alex – Shameless promoting.
M – Yeah, we’re promoters!
What time do you typically wake up?
F – I wake up at about 8 in the morning.
M – I’m up at about 8:30 – 9 o’clock.
Alex – What about a typical day after Skyline?
F – I’d say about 11.
M – Its variable for me, it all depends on how big we went the night before… 11 or 12 o’clock.
What’s your favorite clothing line?
F – Jeddidiah, Ezekiel, Sabervision. Smith is so 2006.
M – I love Diesel jeans, I cant get away from them, Diesel is a good cut. I’m a big fan of RVCA and MADA, I wear a lot of that stuff.
F – Etnies! Im wearing Etnies right now.
M – Im wearing Etnies slippers.
F – I do like Puma too.
How’d you come up with the name “Flash and Matty Boy”?
M – My mom gave me mine.
F – His mom gave me mine too! [laughs] Boring story, I was a barback at a stripclub, [my coworkers] decided one day I needed a nickname, I had the same name as the general manager. We all wore radios all the time, so they said I ran around the bar real fast, so they named me “Flash”. You know, it’s a strip club so everyone has fucked up weird names, so nobody had a problem calling me that. That was when I was 18 and it kind of stuck.
M – Flash and Komo started calling me “Matty Boy”.
F – Really? I thought you said your name was Matty Boy.
M – No, everyone started calling me that out here.
What’s your hangover cure?
F – There isn’t really a hangover cure, I wish there was. But, Gatorade is a big one. But also, before you even go out, I pop 3 asprin, and then when I get home I drink lots of water and pop 3 more asprin. Then drink lots of Gatorade in the morning.
M – I always do the Gatorade thing and after drinking Jack in the Box, lots of water, a couple ibuprofen, go to bed, when I wake up im usually still hurting so I drink more water.
F – The best hangover cure is just to puke.
M – It sucks if you’re head’s just really pounding and you cant throw up.
We heard you used to own 1739 (Galaxy) , what happened to that?
F – Well, we weren’t making any money. We opened with no money, we closed with no money. But I learned a lot.
M – As long as you don’t close with less money. You’re still in OK shape.
F – Im pretty sure we still owe my dad money.
M – Check’s in the mail. [laughs]
F – My dad calls it my college education. I was an owner but my area of expertise was the bar, I was only the bar manager. So I wasn’t really involved with the promotions at all. I didn’t have anything to do with hiring of talent, or flyers, or getting the word out. I was promoting to anybody and everbody, but I wasn’t printing flyers or anything like we do now. Most people didn’t have email or myspace or websites or anything like that.
Alex – Oh you mean in the 1930’s?
F – Haha, no it was around 96 to 98.
So was the wave your first promoting job?
F – Yeah, technically. Well the Pussycat Lounge was my first job as an independent promoter. That was just on Tuesday night, but then about 4 or 6 weeks in, Jack offered me the promotions director job.
What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen at one of you’re events?
F – I’d rather not say… [laughs].
M – Off the top of my head I can’t really remember. Wait I mean…should we?
F – Uh yeah, no! Half the stuff will get Matty in trouble, the other half will get me in trouble. When I did Pussycat, I used to have a website, one of the first, if not THE first promoter-club website. Websites back then were way different and the whole thing about my website was I would take pictures of chicks showing their boobies and put them on. See this is before digital cameras and you would take the hard copies of the pictures and scan it and then put it up. Well it got to the point where it was so popular that the ladies, you know, strippers and hookers and stuff, would just come up to me all night long saying, “Take my picture, take my picture!” That was pretty sweet [laughs].
What was the website?
F - Well when I started doing the Wave more I did both the Pusscat site and the Wave site, and for awhile I did both till I integrated the Pussycat site with the Wave site. Which later on I regreted. Other than that I would say sex on the bar at the Wave, in the women’s batheroom at the Wave.
M – Hey, what were you doing in the women’s bathroom?
F – Uhhmmmm… sex in the office… a lot. There was stupid human tricks that we would do at the Wave every April Fools. One guy, who worked at a piercing shop, he had his dick pierced and he hung this big weight from it. We did this other thing, speaking of hanging, with Sanctuary Salon. We put on a big fashion show and this guy did the, “hang from the ceiling from hooks in his back” and these two chicks jumped on him and started pulling him and spinning around. That was pretty crazy.
M – Its pretty much sex and drugs, you know, theres a lot of stuff.
Do you guys get wasted at you’re events or is it all business?
F – We actually don’t, we used to, well I used to. But lately its become so much of a business that you’ll drink and you’ll drink to a certain point and then you stop. You might think we’re wasted but we’re not. You still have to pay people out and you gotta like, fuckin close up shop at the end of the night. So we learned how to control our drinking. You also build up a tolerance to drinking too.
M – Theres also with Flash and I, we blance each other out I think. If we see the other getting kinda out of hand, the other person backs off a little bit.
F – But a lot of the time, the real fun starts after. We’ll go to Pearl, or lately we’ve been going to Senor Frog’s. Sometimes we’re faking it too, you know, just pawning off to someone else. We know a million tricks that make it seem like we take the shot.
A -
Haha, I think we need to learn how to do that. We just take them all.
M - At The Wave, Flash, you were hammered by 9:30 [laughs] showing up and terrorizing the spot, then leaving.
So what exactly happened to The Wave?
F - It got knocked down.
M - Yeah, it closed about a year and a half ago.
F - They were going to turn it into luxury condos or something.
Do you guys plan to stay in Hawaii or branch out?
F - We are already branching out to the outer islands.
A - Right, Release every Friday on Kauai.
F - Right, and theoretically we could branch out even more, even to stuff on the mainland, but Hawaii is always going to be home base.
M - I think promoting is mainly based on your following and your clientele. It’s hard to go to the mainland and do one-offs without those key people. I mean, Flash and I have brainstormed with a few ideas, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen. It could, but I think it’s more of a risk.
F - If we had the same connections somewhere else, with a bigger market, I don’t think we would be afraid of it. We would do stuff there all the time, probably even move there. If we had a linear move to a bigger market, we would be making a lot more money.
Where do you see Hawaii’s nightlife in the next year?
F - It’s definitely changing. It’s been going on every year for a while, where the slice of the pie and the amount of people going out is finite, and the promoters are multiplying. For a while they were no new venues, but lately there’s been an onslaught of venues and the same amount of people, it makes it hard for anyone to make money. Everyone is fighting for Fridays and Saturdays, you know. There isn’t really a weekday that you have to go out.
M - Well Senor Frog’s on Thursdays I heard is pretty good. [laughs]
F - But yeah, there has been a lot of cannibalism of promoter’s crowds, where a bunch of promoters are battling for similar, if not the exact same, crowds. It’s hard to do that. For example, for a while there weren’t that many 18+ events on Hawaii, now there are tons. That’s a sign, I don’t want to say of desperation, but it’s trying to expand the market. I mean the new thing is Open Bar that used to be at one or two places. Now on any given weekend there are 3, or 4, or even 5 different places with a fuckin open bar. That’s like; desperate times call for desperate measures. Everybody’s battling and it’s hard.
M - For a while Flash and I were the only people to have, and to introduce, VIP service to Hawaii. We developed it, to a certain degree, and took all the risk. We stuck to our guns and now that people see that it works, everybody is trying to copy that business model. That’s what separated us from everybody. Now every one and their brother are like, “I wanna sell bottles too!” Which is cool, because it’s a natural progression. What upsets me is with all these up and coming promoters, they don’t seem to be using any of their own creativity. They’re not introducing us to anything new. I would be really excited if a new promoter came to us with a concept we haven’t seen, or a format or style of party. Everybody’s just kinda doing the same thing that were doing.
F -
In any kind of business, once someone does anything that’s innovative and successful, everybody’s going to copy it. And I’m sure if someone else came up with something innovative and successful, we would copy it to some degree also. It used to be, you know I’ve been doing this for so long, that having go-go dancers was a crazy concept. I remember the 1st anniversary of Pussycat, I’m pretty sure I was the first to use go-go girls, and then I consistently had go-go girls, and like that was a new concept... Now if you think about it, it’s like the standard…..you have to have that. We’re always looking for the next big thing, and I’m surprised, to some degree that other promoters aren’t. You know, Monkey Bar is successful so I’m going to do something like that, or this promoter did this so I’m going to copy that. No one is trying to do anything new, or to stand out. That’s what we are always trying to do, but it’s not easy, otherwise everyone would do it. To come up with ideas that no one has tried is hard.
Would you guys every think about doing an Open Bar?
M - I don’t think so. We look at it, like we said, as a certain degree of desperation.
F - We have done it before, but for an invite only VIP event.
M - Yeah, you know, you don’t pay cover and the drinks are free…..it’s an appreciation thing. We particularly do it with liquor brands, when it’s about them and their brand. I have thought about the Open bar concept for a bit and we have some ideas to develop upon it. Where it’s not a sign of a venue needing more business, but a new concept, something to take the cheapness out of it, make it feel a little more VIP.
F - Yah we’ve done it, we aren’t opposed to it, but it needs to be done right.
M -You can’t just open it up to everybody and say open bar.
F - Particularly if it’s not to promote a specific product. There’s also liability issues involved. But it’s interesting to us that almost everyone is doing it, that’s fuckin crazy! No one’s making money on that. That’s the starter that people need now to get the fuckin night going.
M - The way we look at it, when they decide to stop the open bar for a particular venue, that could potentially make them suffer. You know your selling point is gone and now you’re just doing the same old crap that you started with.
F - It’s also like, what’s your new selling point?
M - Is it new talent or a new venue. What’s happening now is a venue will operate for about 6 months, close up shop, and then a new venue will open and start the cycle over again. I mean that’s cool, but Flash and I are more about longevity and long term. We want people on the mainland to say, “I want to go to Skyline, I know about it, I heard all about it.” They know the quality they're getting.
F - Plus sometimes at Open Bar, you can only get something like vodka-cran. Our crowd wants a specific thing; they don’t just want vodka, they want Grey Goose. They are going to ask for the more expensive premiums, even if the others are way cheaper. They don’t care if we have $2 Alize, because they want Grey Goose, or whatever. So it’s like a lot of that stuff, for us, wouldn’t work anyway.
M - Also, I think it might attract a different crowd that we might not need or want.
F - That’s another thing, when you do stuff like that, you get the crowd that want $2 crown shots, that’s not really a great crowd, for us.
So I know you two just had a great New Year’s Eve event, which party night do you like better, NYE or Halloween?
M - Definitely NYE, for sure. I always have way more fun on New Years, I don’t know why. Dressing up doesn’t really excite me anymore.
F - Halloween is a funner night.
M - Funner huh?
F - If you’re not working, I mean Halloween is just a funner night.
M - Funner [laughs]
F - NYE I think is a funner night if you are promoting.
M - I think it’s more fun. [laughs]
F - No it’s think it’s funner.
M - It’s the most funner night.
F - Okay, I think it’s the funnest. I mean NYE fits what we do perfectly. NYE is a night that enables us to take over an entire hotel for a party. We couldn’t do that on Halloween, or any other night.
M - Yah, for our crowd NYE is great, plus we can just go out on Halloween and have fun. I think that might be our game plan from here on out, enjoy Halloween and then hammer a good NYE home.
F - I like dressing up though.
I know you two are friends, would you recommend going into business with friends?
F - Honestly, for the most part I would say no, because I’ve done it before and it got ugly. My Dad told me a long time ago,” You expect to get screwed over by strangers, but you don’t expect to get screwed by your friends.” You know you never see it coming. It’s better to work with somebody and become friends, than to go into business with a friend. That’s what most people do because that’s what they are comfortable with. Sometimes that shit can get ugly.
A - That’s true
F - But I mean I don’t see doing what I do with too many other people. I think with all my friends there aren’t to many of them I would want to get into business with. You’re friends are you’re friends for a reason, and people are your business partners for a reason, usually those people aren’t the same.
Fair enough. So most people don’t know that your actual company name is SKYLINE BITCHES LLC. Why did you decide to name it that?
M - I don’t remember how we came up with that.
F - I do, we used to always say come to Skyline bitches!!! Also we get checks cut by the Sheraton, and we’ve always thought it was funny that there’s some 100 year old lady that has to write it on our checks.(laughing) It’s also on our credit cards.
M - Yeah it’s come to bite us in the ass a couple times, with more legit companies, when we are dealing with business people who aren’t in the industry.
F - Even some who are.
M - Yah, not the most mature route [laughs] But or legal business name will be changing.
F - We keep saying that but we still haven’t done it.
M - It’s also funny when you go to the bank it’s like, “ Oh are you guys the bitches?” Yeah that’s us. They always smile when they type it in too.
Haha you guys are crazy. Anything you wanna say to wrap things up?
F - Yeah check out Cancun every Thursday at Senor Frogs, Release at The Point in Kauai on Fridays, and of course Skyline every 1st and 3rd Saturdays at the Hanohano room, in the Sheraton Waikiki.
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