Behind The Big Scary Bouncer

Everyone thinks bouncers are just big tough guys designed to ruin your life if your underage, right? Wrong! Bo gives us some insight into what its truly like to be a bouncer in the city that never sleeps.

Behind the Big Scary Bouncer

Every underage college student has been here: they arrive at school and immediately put some of the money they saved up towards a fake ID. Many blow between $75 and $150 for a pathetic looking piece of plastic that for them is a gateway to the world of nightlife. Finally, after six weeks, the ID shows up – if it ever does in fact show up – and the students go wild. Everyone dresses up to look of age, and they traipse up to the trendy bar they have been dying to try. But wait, it’s ritual that they stop ten feet away from the door to give each other pep talks to “act confident” and make sure they have their fake addresses memorized one last time before they hand their IDs over to the bouncer at the door. Little do they realize that the bouncer is watching them and can hear every word they say because again, they are merely ten feet away from the door. The bravest member of the fake ID clan steps forward and hands the ID over while making eye contact with the big, scary looking, bouncer. He takes one look, sees that it’s obviously fake, and tells her to scram.

That big, scary looking bouncer’s name is Bo Hailey, who currently works at Mickey Spillane’s, a sports/gay bar located at 350 West 49th street in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. Hailey has only been working at Mickey’s since January, and explains that he just sort of fell into it; being a bouncer has always been a backup job for him. His day job is with a mortgage company, but he explains his night job can be a great time.

He started working as a bouncer about ten years ago at a bar on the east side, which he explains was very different than it is now, specifically when it came to fake IDs. “It used to be, years ago the cops would come by and pay us [bouncers] for every fake ID. If you collected the fake IDs the cops would come by at the end of the night and we’d get $25 for each ID,” Hailey explains. Back then he had an incentive to nab the fakes: 1. He received money. 2. It made the cops’ job easier by keeping the minors out of the streets. Although there was one state’s ID that he always had trouble with: New Jersey. With frustration in his voice, Hailey describes how the old New Jersey IDs were literally a piece of laminated paper that anyone could make at home. What made it even more difficult was that everyone came from New Jersey to Manhattan for a night out, so he could never tell if a New Jersey ID was real or not.

Nowadays, fake IDs are a whole different story since they scan just as good as the real ones. There are a few that are still recognizably fake, and when Hailey comes across those, he laughs, and insistently questions the ID holder. This brings to the forefront a stereotype of most bouncers: that they’re dumb. “It’s so stereotypical of people to think that a bouncer is just some big dumb guy. I went to college. I have a degree. What really gets me is the guys who show me their ID and the picture looks nothing like them. I’m just like ‘dude, really,’” Hailey explains. He recalled one recent incident of a man who was in his early twenties, but had an ID that said he was born in 1971. Hailey said it was so obvious that it wasn’t real, and even though the man kept insisting it was, he was still refused entrance into the bar. Moral of the story – never insult a bouncer’s intelligence.

In addition to letting people into the bar, one of a bouncer’s main jobs is to keep the patrons inside safe, and sometimes that includes kicking people out. Hailey explains that he tries to be as nice as he can be, but when some people reach a breaking point they have to be dragged out. “I feel like a babysitter almost, because I deal with people when they’re at their drunkest,” Hailey says. He feels like a superhero too, though. Every week he helps at least one person into a cab, or helps them figure out where they need to go. He takes pride in helping visibly intoxicated patrons because he could be saving their lives.

Hailey’s love of protecting people started years ago when he was a personal bodyguard, and he claims the training for that has helped him immensely with his bouncing job. He explains that there is no certified bouncer training and that’s a major problem. “When guys start doing it [bouncing] they think it’s all about beating people up, and being tough. It’s not about that. It’s about defusing the problem before it happens,” he says. Hailey ends up defusing more problems at Mickey’s since there’s usually a rowdy crowd, but he prefers the calmer nights of working at Vodka Soda, a gay bar located at 315 West 46th Street. He says the patrons there are more cool, calm and collected, because it is more of a safe haven for them; if they make a wrong move and get kicked out it can be hard to find another accepting place for them to hang out.

Compared to body guarding, Hailey is content with bouncing and says he will probably never go back down that route. “I got tired of body guarding because all of the people I worked for were assholes,” Hailey says. Although the job was difficult, he did bodyguard for a list of impressive celebrities including Charlie Sheen, Spike Lee, and Joan Rivers, but his favorite celebrity to work with was Carmen Electra. “My wife is still mad at me to this day for Carmen,” he chuckles. Hailey also had his “fifteen minutes of fame” moment while guarding Electra. During a commercial shoot for MTV, eight years ago, she specifically asked for him to play her guard. All Hailey had to do for the shoot was stand next to her, and when a fan gone wild tried to grab her, he gets pushed away while Electra hides behind Hailey. He says the shoot is one of his favorite memories from his guarding days.

Being a bodyguard paid extremely well. Hailey worked for a company, and was assigned a different celebrity pretty often. He remembers making as much as $2000 a day sometimes, depending on which celebrity. More money was made when he was guarding a higher profile celebrity, but as he guarded more well-known celebrities, the more dangerous his job became. There was one instance where Hailey was on the job at The Palladium on 14th Street, which no longer exists, and two body guarding companies were on the scene. Problems started because neither company knew about the other, and Hailey threw someone from the opposite company out. The man tipped someone to get back inside, and upon gaining entrance again the man shot Hailey. Thankfully, Hailey was wearing a bulletproof vest. “That situation is exactly why I quit body guarding,” he says, “I have kids now, I didn’t want them to grow up without a dad.”

Hailey’s family is the most important thing in his life. He has two daughters, ages 17 and 11, and one son whose age is 5. With his 17-year-old daughter approaching the age of the fake ID, he’s a little worried; he just wants her to be smart and safe when making decisions. He’s also sure she won’t be stopping at any bars he works at.

To help get him through the night, and to laugh a little along the way, he always remembers something his grandmother told him: alcohol is truth serum, so people say and do what they really feel when they are drunk. He’s seen people do some crazy things, and sometimes he joins in. He says, “To be a bouncer you have to be a people person.” He has met some great people through this job, and it’s because they looked through his tough exterior.

Hailey doesn’t fit the bouncer stereotype: he is not stupid and always waiting to cause a fight. He has a college education, and tries to protect everyone. So before any fake ID wielding college student try to trick him, they better think twice; for they will only see the “big and scary bouncer” and never stop to realize that behind the tough exterior is just a man trying to make the bar a safer place.