Getting The Party Started
The night has finally come. After a summer’s worth of legwork, the boys of 7 Promotions, a blocking group comprised of Jon R. Ardrey ’05, Rob J. Flynn ’05, Al A. Gore ’05, Ryan P. Lannon ’05, Derek R. Melvin ’05 and Noah P. Welch ’05, are about to drop the perfect party on fair Harvard. Perfect, meaning not crowded, not exclusive, not ending at 1 a.m. So perfect, in fact, that its founders christened it “The Party.”
“We would always throw parties people liked. We knew we were good at it,” Welch says. “We wanted to take matters into our own hands.”
Preparation begins long before the boys leave for the Matrix, the downtown Boston club where the magic will happen. At 7 p.m., Flynn, Lannon, Welch and Melvin struggle to polish themselves up for the night amidst a choir of cell phone calls from friends acting as ticket-selling “foot soldiers.”
“Collecting is the worst,” a freshly showered, towel-clad Melvin says. “Maybe I’d give out less tickets to sell next time, but this way, it becomes the people’s party.”
The Party uses a grassroots system of marketing, with each member of the blocking group enlisting the aid of several friends from Harvard and beyond to distribute tickets around Boston. “People have really come through and supported us,” Melvin says. “But the challenge is getting the word out to people that aren’t in our circles.”
Each foot soldier who sells 20 tickets gets into a special VIP room stocked with free champagne. “The VIP thing is a little controversial because we want this to be a party for everyone,” Welch says. “But we wanted to give something back to the people that really helped us out.”
Flynn, Lannon and Welch play varsity hockey, but Melvin resists the common assumption that theirs is a “hockey group.”
“Some of us are in athletics. Some of us are in final clubs. We do a lot of different things. We want [The Party] to be something for everyone: Harvard, BC, freshmen, our friends from Brighton—it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to be ‘too cool’ to come to our parties.”
The guys take a moment to figure out door coverage. They’re responsible for covering all bases, even the most miniscule. Once they decide to split the night into half-hour shifts, it’s time for some more foot soldier collecting. Welch gets off his cell phone and takes off on a ticket run to the Quad.
Waiting at a stop sign in his ’95 Jeep Grand Cherokee, the Brighton native spots a friend and fellow foot soldier standing in front of Claverly. They exchange tickets and money through the window, and Welch attempts to convince him to ignore his cold and come to The Party.
“No one buys tickets until the last minute,” he says, now driving down Mass. Ave. “Two or three days ago I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’”
At the Quad, foot soldiers come at Welch from every angle to conduct transactions. He is visibly relieved. “Word is getting around. I’ve been invited to six pre-games for my own party,” he says.
Back at the Square, Lannon, Flynn and Melvin struggle to hail a cab on Bow and Arrow Streets. “Next time we do this, we’ll rent a limo,” says Lannon.
“Who’s gonna see us roll up in a limo at 8:45?” says Melvin.
The three walk to JFK Street and Mass. Ave and catch a cab from the stand. Upon arriving at the Matrix, the guys are forced to wait as a promotional event for presidential candidate John Kerry lets out from the neighboring Roxy Club.
“Standing in line at our own party,” Flynn remarks.
The guys head inside and immediately get to business, getting debriefed by club staff, setting up the register and surveying the territory. Uncrowded by partiers, the main room is surprisingly cozy in a retro-futuristic way, like the Jetsons’ living room.
As the others handle affairs at the cash register, Melvin takes the reins.
“I don’t want to play Beyoncé if [the DJ in the smaller room] is playing Beyoncé,” the DJ in the main room says, pushing for more house in the rotation. Melvin convinces him to stick with hip hop. At the last minute, a club official raises the price of the case of VIP champagne by $100, so the guys, now all present, opt for a cheaper open bar choice.
A small line forms at the door just before 9:30 p.m. Slowly, a bevy of tube tops and leather skirts trickles onto the dance floor. C. J. Manning, a friend of the guys’ from Brighton, asks, “If I go home alone, will you cut my balls off?”
By 10:30 p.m., The Party becomes a party, as cab after cab drops off clusters of scantily-clad young women at the red carpet. Most of the men have yet to arrive.
“The guys are slow, but the girls are fast as fuck,” says Ardrey.
“That’s because those girls don’t go to Harvard,” replies Melvin.
By around 11 p.m., both men and women are packing the dance floor in droves. Despite the overwhelming, sweaty air of revelry, the guys of 7 remain preoccupied, frantically running around handling administrative details and greeting party guests.
Eventually, hundreds are spinning in a sea of pounding beats and neon lights. Pounding beats and neon lights. A sea of them...the details become less important.
The next evening, the boys focus on physical and mental recovery. Lannon slumps in an armchair in his Dewolfe suite, a museum of sports and beer memorabilia. “I finally relaxed around 11:30 last night,” he says. “You just run through everything in your head—every worst case scenario.”
Melvin, leg up on the couch, knee as an armrest, echoes these sentiments. “Omar Optimism and Pistol Pete Pessimism,” is how he describes his state of mind. “Lots of ups and downs. Like last Wednesday, we thought it was going to be 45 people.”
Overall, however, The Party lived up to its name, though it’s unclear how much the other Harvard kids had to do with this. “The 15 girls that were in line at 9:30, they hit the floor right away. That usually doesn’t happen at Harvard,” says Melvin.
They complain that too often, Harvard social events are about agendas, not about fun. But last night, says Flynn, “everyone was there specifically to have a good time.”
“I learned so much about this campus and how people do things,” says Melvin.
“They fucking procrastinate,” interjects Lannon.
“One: they procrastinate,” agrees Melvin. “Two: you have to do a sales pitch to get people to party. They’re just so busy. They have to make a special effort. I took each person there as a compliment.”
From his perspective, a successful party follows a simple formula. “Good people, good music, good drinks,” Melvin says. “If those things line up, it works.”