I first met (Name Withheld) over a chicken fried steak breakfast at a strip club a few months back (breakfast at a strip club…thats a different story altogether).  To say he’s big is an understatement; his biceps are as big as my waist.

My first thought was this dude is a SHARP skinhead thug, the kind of guy who would start a fight with you for singing 99 Luft Balloons at karaoke.  I was wrong.  Yes he’s a thug (his words, not mine), but he’s much more complex than that.  He’s a family man that takes great pride in the traditions of his social club.  He’s intelligent, intimidating (my words, not his), and hilarious.  And if you cross him, he wouldn’t think twice about throwing you through a window.

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What do you do?

We’re a family of some brothers and sisters that hang out together, whether we work together in the bar industries or in clubs, bartending or bouncing. We’ve been through a lot of hairy times and from that a bond was started and it just kind of grew, and with membership and stuff.

 

So it’s a formal club.

Yes, it’s formal; we like to tell people we’re a social club. You know, some people might label us as a gang; some people call it a club.

 

Do you consider it a gang?

I like to call it a family. I grew up scrapping and brawling as a kid and if somebody disrespected my sister or my brother then they were going to have to answer to me.  I see it the same way now…you can’t fuck with one of us without it getting taken care of.

 

Social Club… Is that is a preferred term for what you’re in?

Especially for law enforcement reasons – we don’t want to be labeled a gang. We like to say social club. I mean, we have a charter. We have meetings. We have fundraisers.

 

 

Right.

It’s a little more “honorable”. If something were to happen, you disrespected one of us you wouldn’t get jumped by a bunch of people. It would be honorable combat one on one.

 

OK.

One of our rules is you can’t turn down a fight. You don’t have to win it, but you can’t say no. As long as it’s a legitimate fight, nobody is going to jump in on either side. We’re going to let our guy fight. We’re not going to let him get killed, but we’ll let him go and win or lose, until they’re done. And that’s the difference between other groups of people in (Location Withheld) where they just jump the shit out of you because of something you might be wearing or you might look a certain way.

We like to keep it honorable and respectful and that way, people look at us in a different way. We’re dangerous but we tip well when we go to bars, and we don’t harass people who don’t deserve to be harassed. I figure you keep people happy and you tip well and they’re less likely to call the cops if something were to happen.

 

So describe what your group does.

We don’t like Nazis, skinheads.  To be in the club you can’t be a Nazi, you can’t be a IV drug user and you can’t have a history of violence towards women or children. It’s really frowned upon and if that’s found to be in your history then it’s something you have to answer to.

So in that respect of being anti-Nazi, that’s kind of what leads you to be connected to SHARPs.

Yes we associate with them, we hang out at the same clubs and we call them our cousins.   If there’s a sighting of a bunch of Nazis in town and they’re harassing people we know, both of us get called down into that area and fight side by side.

 

Has that ever happened, you get a call,”There’s Nazis in town”?

[laughs] Yeah, seriously.  We’ll be hanging out at a bar, drinking, and the phone rings. “Hey there’s a bunch of these fuckers downtown.” And then we roll out. We’ll go down there hunting. Hunting Nazis.

 

From my viewpoint that seems insane that you get a call like, “Nazis are in town.” Right?

[laughs] Yeah…it’s true. We don’t go looking for trouble but if something comes into our yard we’re going to cut its head off.  It’s calmed down quite a bit except for a few isolated incidents.  There will be tensions, they’ll show up and there will be some fights.  You let them keep coming around and eventually they’re going to be everywhere. They have a lot of numbers and there are a lot of dangerous people. But we’re also organized, trained, and we’re a bunch of thugs and we’re not going to let them do that. We try to keep the shit off the street.  Things get a little crazy; we do cause a ruckus sometimes. We’re big guys who like to fight.

 

Is there a uniform for you guys?

There’s none.  No.  And I think that’s what’s different about us and the SHARPs. They have a certain look. You can see a guy walking down the street and say, “That’s a SHARP.” Not with us, though.

 

Shaved heads?

Nope.  A few of us big guys like to shave our heads just because we’re not pretty about our hair. The less-prettier we look the better. But we do have guys that have pompadours, or grease their hair, but there is no fashion code.

 

No fashion code?

You might get teased if you have pretty hair. You’ll get teased a lot. But it is certainly not mandatory.

 

It seems that fashion is part of being a SHARP.

Yeah.

 

Do you guys think they’re lame, or it’s just not your style?

Not my style.  The funny thing is, they wear Ben Sherman shirts.  They don’t make those for fat guys. [laughter] They only go up to an extra large. They wear kind of tight pants and tight shirts. And a lot of our guys are big dudes, and it doesn’t look very nice on any of us. So really, we wear looser, baggier clothing. It’s more comfortable, easier to fight in.

 

Wow.  I didn’t think of it that way.

Yeah. That fashion doesn’t work for us.  You don’t see a lot of really fat SHARPs.

 

So how many members do you have?

Probably got like 30 people.  There’s no interest in going big, cause then you’re on the radar and people really know who you are.

 

Once you’re in, can you leave?

Yes. Any time if you decide, “Hey, right now I don’t have time to commit and hang out”. There have been people who have left honorably.  People who have kids, or get a job. Like, “Hey right now I got to concentrate on being a dad”. It’s like, “Hey man I wish you luck and I’ll see you around”. We’ll show up at their kid’s birthday parties. That’s really big for all of us. When one of our kids has a birthday, we all show up. We’ve gone to the ice skating rink with somebody’s daughter and ice skated around like princesses. Just to keep our families happy.

 

That would be an awesome sight. [laughing]

What goes on at a meeting?

We talk about what’s going on, anything we are going to do, any plans that we have coming up, any issues we have to deal with.

 

How often does that happen?

Twice a month.  You have to attend meetings to be a member. You can’t just be a member and not show up and not be a part of it. If you don’t have time for it, you can back out. There is no blood in, blood out. You don’t get beat in or beat out.

 

You don’t get beat in?

No.  You don’t raise your hand to a brother unless it is necessary.

 

Would you ever let a scrawny non-fighter in?

Yeah. We do. Actually we have a guy who is totally scrawny. I mean, there are other reasons why people are in the club…maybe they’re good at collecting data- everybody has a function and purpose in the club.  Not everybody is a brawler. Most everybody is but not everybody.

 

So what are the special purposes some of your members have?

Some people are fabricators who can make things. I don’t want to explain what kind of things you’d want to fabricate and make, but, everybody has a skill. I would say a majority are people who know how to fight, but we like them and want them to be a part of our family. We don’t pick people like, “Hey, he could give us this.” It’s like, “Hey I like this guy. That’s a good dude. I would want him to be in my family.”

 

You don’t pick them like, “Ooh, he could build us a great website.”?

No, no. But you know what? That would be awesome. [laughter]

 

So who can be part of your social club?

You pretty much got to be invited in.  No stranger can be, hey, I want to be a part of you guys. When people ask, because we all wear the same shirt…so you can tell who we are, and people are like, hey, what’s that all about? My favorite line is, we all shop at the same store, [laughs] or, we’re a bowling league. [laughs] We have so many bullshit answers to not tell people exactly what we are. Because those people who know who we are, they know who we are.  We’re just a bunch of guys who like to hang out, drink beer and whiskey, eat food, get in fist fights.

You can’t Google us and find out anything about us. We aren’t a national organization or a club that are in other states. We’re just kind of a bunch of thugs who like to hang out.

 

How did your club start?

A bunch of the founding members were working at a club together and one of the guys got jumped and beat up by a big group of people. From there the guys who hung out all the time  thought, you know, we should give this a name.  From there it just kind of grew and then they came up with rules and, you know, “hey who are we? what do we stand for?”  Over the years, it just gotten more and more organized, with rules and who can hang out and who can’t.

 

So what are some of these rules?

You always have to carry a knife.  It’s more personal If somebody steps up to you, you’ve got to have it there. You can’t turn down a fight. You don’t have to win but if somebody challenges you, you have to take it. You just got to carry yourself respectfully and be respectful to women and children. No violence toward women and children. Really, it’s typical rules.

 

Typical core social club rules.

Yes.

 

How would somebody join the club?

Let’s say if somebody wanted to join the club, the member they know would have to sponsor them and bring them to come hang out. After they’ve been to a few functions you can formally be a prospect. Everybody has to vote, says “Hey this person has intentions to be a prospect.” Everybody has to agree. This guy is cool…

 

Unanimously?

Yeah.  If a person’s got a problem, how are they going to trust each other on the street, hold each other’s back? Then they just get questioned by a panel. We’ll ask them some questions about why they want to join the club, what they bring to the table. Whatever questions we decide to ask them. Then that panel will vote whether they will accept them.

 

Wow, so, very organized organization…

Yes, so you don’t get any weirdo’s or any people who are spying. Trying to find out any information.

 

Have you ever had to kick anybody out?

Yeah.  People who washed out for a few different reasons…if you rat on a brother or steal, obviously it’s got to get dealt with.

 

“Washed out.” What’s that mean?

They might get their asses kicked and we say, “Hey, you can’t hang out at the bars we hang out and if we see you again you’re getting your ass kicked again.” That happens.

 

So an ass kicking is part of the ‘washing out’?

Yeah. Let’s say I were to tattle on my brothers…let’s say I fuck my friend’s girlfriend. I wouldn’t see it coming. I would just show up and somebody would just punch me in the face. Or, I’d get called into the circle and say, “Hey, what you did was unacceptable and you’re going to have to fight me. I’m calling you out. You can either be a pussy, and not be with us anymore, or you take the fight and we’re going to hug afterwards.

 

They take an ass whooping, and it’s back to normal afterwards?

It’s not necessarily an ass whooping. It’s a fight. They defend themselves and punch back. So it’s not like you stand there and got to get punched.  We’re going to box, whether it be with gloves or bare knuckles and then it’s over.  Then we’re going to hug, and it’s done, and we’re not going to talk about it again.

 

It’s done?

Yes.  Sometimes that happens, and it can be cleansing.

 

Is there a hierarchy in your club?

Yeah, we have a President, Vice-President, Sergeant of Arms.  We’re all brothers and we all have a say. We vote, but there’s a boss, and it just adds organization. If you have problems you have people you can talk to.

 

How many fights have you been in?

I think I haven’t been in that many since I’ve been in the club. Most of ‘em we’re when I was bouncing and I wasn’t a member of the club. Just because not a lot of people want to get cute when we’re all hanging out. Or once it gets to that, people will leave.
I was at the movie theater watching a movie and just wanted to watch one of the 3D movies that were out.

 

Avatar?

It was Alice In Wonderland.

Awesome.

This Cholo gangster guy behind me kept on kicking my seat.  I’d look over and his shoe would be on my shoulder.  I was so happy watching this movie, but this guy kept kicking my seat. And I turned around and said, “Hey dude, why don’t you just take it easy OK?” And he’s like, “Whatever,” he had some girl with him so he was showing off.  Through the movie I was just burning. My wife wanted to see the movie really bad, so I waited until after the movie. The lights came on, I turn around, and I had a bottle of water and I stuck it in his pocket. And I just squeezed it and dumped the whole water into his pocket. He was, “What the fuck!” And then I just hit him right in the fucking chin…just drilled him, and then I realized that the lights just came on and there was a hundred people who just saw me sock this guy. We’re like, “We better just get out of here.” [laughter]

But, you know, I would not do that to somebody. I would not kick their seat. Especially if they said, “Hey man, take it easy.” “Hey, I’m sorry dude, that was not cool.” I try to be respectful to people. I’d like them to do the same. But this guy just kept doing it, so I waited until after the movie and I socked the shit out of him. It felt pretty good.

 

Part of your club’s ideals are anti-racist, right?

Yes.

 

Nazis aside, are there any other groups that cause an issue?

Not really. The racism thing is not as big of an issue as like the organized Anti-Nazi clubs. I mean we don’t deal with racists, but at the same time, we’re not going to not punk somebody if they’re being an asshole because they happen to be brown-skinned. Color is not an issue. To me I like to think everybody’s a person. I know some of the SHARPs have different opinions…everything is around anti-racism, where ours are, “People are people.” We really hate these shitbag nazis, but people are people. If you’re going to be disrespectful it doesn’t matter what color you are. If you’re a shitbag you’re a shitbag.

 

So it’s more about respect for you guys?

Yeah.

 

Anybody causing any issues or disrespecting you guys.

Yeah. The Nazis happen to be a disease that when it comes in, nothing good comes of it. A lot of them are felons and penitentiary people who just have that mindset. They just come in and don’t do anything good. Like one of our friends last year, who was a SHARP, we were downtown at a bar. And he must have had a confrontation with a Nazi previously. They came to the bar, waited until he was drunk and not around everybody, and they shot him. Shot him in the chest and he’s paralyzed forever.

 

Really.

Yeah. So they put a hit out, and came in a chicken-shit way. They snuck up on him in dark clothes and a bandana over the face and shot him. Where’s the honor in that?

 

So, in that instance would you guys call the police?

No.

 

What do you do in that instance?

It can get taken care of in different ways.

 

Was it taken care of?

To my knowledge no, not to date.  I think if it was an actual family member of ours, something might have happened. I hate to say anything incriminating, but I would have taken care of it. I guarantee.

 

If it was your own guy?

Something would have happened.  The city would have been lit on fire. It would have been ugly. There’d be body counts and we’d be in jail. It would’ve ruined our lives.

 

How far would you go for one of your brothers?

To fucking hell, you know we would. Every time the phone rings and somebody calls and says, “Hey dude, bunch of guys are making me nervous.” All my guys know how to take care of themselves. But they’re nervous – that means they’re not just calling because there are some frat boys there. And every time that happens I kiss my wife and say, “Hey honey, I love you, see you later.” Knowing that, hey, I can get shot.

 

Is your wife OK with your lifestyle?

She is…she gets nervous, but I think she is comfortable with that. I don’t know why she is.  She knows I’m not stupid. I’ll try to stay out of trouble. But I go out, gun in one pocket, knife in another, brass knuckles in one pocket, and my mind sharp.  I don’t get drunk and sloppy that I’m going to be taken advantage of.  I’ll drink, but I can’t say that about all of my brothers. But I always keep my wits about me.

 

You said you carry a knife, a brass knuckles, gun?

Yep, look, I’ve got a 38 in my pocket.

Right now?

Right now.  It’s an Airweight 38. I mean I have bigger guns I carry if shit’s going to be really bad. But this is something that’s in my pocket everywhere I go. I can just have my hand in my pocket.  I’ve sat there and talked to people and had conversations with them and I had my finger on the trigger pointed at their belly.  If they were to be stupid, I’d fucking blow their guts.  And I didn’t even move, my hand’s just in my pockets, they’re in my coat like everybody else.

 

So somebody might have been talking shit to you, having no clue how close they were to dying?

Oh yeah, many many many times. There’s been a lot of times where I’ve had to talk to somebody, gun pointed at their guts and they didn’t know it.

 

Shit.

I’m not stupid; I’m not going to shoot somebody and go to jail just because it was cool. It’s the last thing I want to do. I’m more than comfortable fighting, taking care of something myself.

 

It seems there’s a serious code of ethics and honor with you. How are guns seen in your crew? Is it seen as a pussy way out?

No no.  It’s a necessity, because obviously–the Nazis came to (Location Withheld) and actually shot somebody. So we’re no longer having fist fights. We’d like to keep everything fist fights, that’d be awesome. But if it were to get escalated, then we have the means and opportunity right there to make sure we’re all going home to our families.

 

So maybe you’ve adapted to the times. Where maybe a couple of years ago you wouldn’t have needed to carry a gun, and now you do.

I didn’t always carry a gun. Now…I don’t go to the mailbox without having my gun in my pocket. I don’t go to the store. Not because I know something is going to happen, it’s just, why have that right and that opportunity and not do it?  Because something is going to happen the day you don’t have it on you. You’re just going to go to the bank or the 7-11 and somebody is going to snap and want to shoot everybody. And they’re not going to stop me from hanging out with my wife or my son ever again.

 

Right, well, there’s a difference between me and you.  I don’t carry a gun. I’ve never had to carry a gun. I don’t think like that.  You’re in a situation where you need to. But that seems to be self-inflicted.

No, no, definitely. And not all of us do. A lot of us do. But I guess…You kick enough asses, there’s a lot of people who don’t like you. Whether you did it for a good reason, their ass is still sore. They don’t like you, their friends don’t like you. At any time something could happen.

 

Do you have more enemies or more friends?

I would say more friends. Yeah, I think because of our code of honor where we don’t just go around harassing people, like other clubs. You read the articles about some of the other clubs who go around harassing people. I remember those days. I’ve bounced in clubs where they would come in bullying people. And be like, “Wow, that’s not cool.” We don’t go around bullying people. We like to bully the bullies. To me that’s a fucking good time.

 

Bullying the bullies.  It’s like fighting violence with violence.

Yeah.

 

Does that work?

Yeah, fuck yeah. I mean, you don’t see a lot of Nazis running around (Location Withheld).  There’s been enough fights and every time they come–they can’t come into town and not have somebody show up and want to call them on it.

 

Do you think it’s that, or do you think who the hell is a Nazi now, in 2011?”

If they’re out hanging out, getting comfortable, we’ll show up and say, “What the fuck are you doing here?” And, “You think it’s cool wearing that shit?” They’re going to get socked up.

 

Are there different rules with Nazis versus a bully? Are you going to immediately punch a Nazi with no questions asked?

Yeah, if he’s flying his colors.

 

It’s different rules with those guys?

It’s open season. They’ve openly said they shot one of our friends. And they’re hostile. So if they’re going to be wearing their attire… It’s no different than being in war. It’s the rules of engagement: you see them, and whether they’re invading your country, you have to get rid of them before they get rid of somebody you know. I think that’s where we’ve been for a while, is that there’s no in-between. You see them, they’re there, they’re not doing anything good. They’re looking for trouble. I mean, if they’re there wearing all their shit, they’re looking for trouble.

 

It seems like you take it as your job, as your responsibility, to keep the streets clean.

Yes, definitely.  If we’re sitting at a bar and some guy smacked a chick, I can’t just let that go because I don’t believe in violence towards women. You can always walk away and take the high road. There’s no excuse for you to raise a hand to a woman.

 

But there is a reason to raise a hand to another guy?

Oh Yes. Yes, definitely.  I like the old days where, you fucked up, you got smacked. We don’t call the cops. We’re not going to come back and bring a bunch of buddies and shoot you down…you get smacked, and that’s it. And, if you can’t end it at that, then we can always escalate it. A lot of our guys are huge. We have a 300 club, a bunch of guys that are over 300 pounds, and all of them are mean and ugly and like to fight. So when it gets ugly, man, the meat shows up. It’s just like, a bunch of Neanderthals show up angry. It gets scary, but it’s nice to have that on the speed dial. [laughs]

 

I bet it must be comforting to know that you’ve got some big guys who’ve got your back.

We’ve got friends that work at bars, and sometimes we’ll get a phone call say, hey, there’s a bunch of guys in here, and they’re being dicks, and it’s making me nervous. I like to call in an air strike.

 

An air strike?

Yes. Whether it be a motorcycle club, or there’s a lot of little clubs that’re into scooters, they’re into punk rock, whatever, and they’re being rude and disrespectful. We just show up, usually that’s all we need to do. It’s not that often that we have to get physical. Just usually showing up and showing support lets them know that they’re not OK doing what they’re doing.

 

What do the bar owners think when you guys show up?

Since we’ve all worked in the bar industry bouncing, most of the places we go, they know us. We try, especially at places we frequent a lot, to not let stuff happen inside the bar. We make sure it goes outside, if at all possible.

 

Right.

We’ve been 86′d out of a lot of bars, and usually when they let us come back in, we’re like, OK, we promise we won’t let this shit happen from our guys. It’s never going to happen in here again. So we try to keep them happy and respectful. When we come in, we spend a lot of money. We buy a lot of whiskey,  we eat and drink and tip well, and when we leave, that’s a lot of revenue. If we do scare off a few people, it’s usually less money gone than what we would spend while we’re there.

 

So is intimidation part of your club?

No. I think there might be people who are intimidated, but we don’t use it as a tool.

 

When I first saw you guys I was like, oh, shit.

I wouldn’t say I was trying to intimidate anybody, but people might see it that way.  But if you’re a smart ass or just disrespectful, then I wouldn’t puff up and try to scare you. I might drag you outside and beat your ass.  I would say I was never using intimidation as a tool. To me that’s a bluff. Intimidation is fake.

 

But it seems that you guys roll pretty deep, and when you go into some place it is about intimidation.

I would say that when we are called out to roll up, we’re going there with the thought that we might be fucking these people up, and it’s their choice if they want to fight or be cool and leave. I just don’t like the thought of intimidation like you’re using your strengths to a weaker person to get them out…

 

Do you have an example of what you’ve done to be 86’d from a bar?

There’s a bar that we go to a lot and hang out in, and a bunch of people were just being assholes. And we were like, “hey, what the fuck, dude? Why don’t you calm down?” And they said, “hey, fuck you”, and they got a bunch of their friends. And then all of a sudden it turns into a cowboy movie where chairs are flying and tables are getting broken [laughs] and people are flying.  There was probably four or five guys just knocked out, unconscious, on the ground with tables broken. And, obviously, if you owned a bar, that would not be cool. That just happened. Police are going to be called. It doesn’t look good towards them. People get scared off, and people get pissed. So, they’re like, dude, you guys can’t come in here anymore. You guys are too rowdy.

Over time, we’ve realized to be a little more respectful to the bar owners and try to take care of everything outside. If it’s a place that we go to that we really don’t fucking care, then yes, we’ll throw them through a window, and it doesn’t matter. But if we want to come back there and keep a good standing, then, yes, we try to keep it cool.

 

So, you’re saying you can fight violence with violence.  Do you think that you can change somebody’s view on racism through violence?  Has there ever been an instance where you beat somebody up so badly that they were like, “I’m not a Nazi anymore”?

I don’t think you can change somebody like that.  The sad thing is its part of how they were brought up.  I was actually brought up racist. My parents told me that gay people were bad and black people were bad, and it wasn’t until I experienced life myself and realized, boy, “They’re fucking wrong. My parents are idiots and they’re bad people,” but that’s the way I was brought up.  I realized that there were people out there who are black who are cool.  Why would I hate them just because my parents said I need to?

 

You were saying that you have your colors. So, can you explain what that is?

I’m not going to really describe what the colors are, just because I don’t want to say who we are, but it’s something you earn, just like Sons of Anarchy on TV, or the Hell’s Angels. They wear their vest that has their patch on the back, and to them that’s sacred.  If somebody were to spit on it, it would get them killed.

 

So you have something that’s essentially the equivalent of a vest that you earn.

Yep.

 

And you don’t just get that right off the bat.

No, you have to become a full member.

 

Right. So once you’re a full member, then you get this “thing”.

And once you have that, you have your colors. And you hold it sacred.

 

That’s always with you?

Always with me.

 

Let’s say it’s your anniversary, you’re at a nice restaurant with your wife, and some dude walks by with a swastika tattoo. Are you going to start throwing punches?

If he’s starting shit, yes.  And my wife knows. We’ve been on dates, and I’d say, hey honey, go get the car. I’d have words, punch somebody and leave.  She understands that I’m obligated.  It’s not like every time I go out.

 

But it’s still part of it.

Yes. Oh yeah. It is.

 

And you’re totally accepting of that and honest about it?

Yes. I was always in fights when I was in school. I didn’t fit in any clique. I wasn’t a jock. I wasn’t a stoner, I didn’t do drugs. I wasn’t racist, so I wasn’t a Nazi.

 

Do you think that outsider mentality was a precursor to you coming into this lifestyle?

I think so. I mean, I had anger issues. I got picked on a lot because I was a fat kid.  I grew up angry and learned to fight.

 

It seems like technology plays a part in your social club.  You said you can’t Google your club.

Yeah.

 

So how else does technology help in what you do?

We know that there’s technology out there; people could find out what we’re doing, whether it be law enforcement or someone else.  We like to try to keep things a little bit on the down low.

 

So no Foursquare check-ins?

You know what’s funny is there were a few of the guys who started doing that. It’s like, what the fuck? You’re telling people where we’re showing up…don’ t do that. And if you’re going to do it, if you have to do that because you want to be the mayor of that bar, do it when we leave.  We learned that you could communicate on Facebook pretty well.

 

Yeah, it seems kind of funny that you guys would be on Facebook, checking in.

Yeah, that doesn’t happen. What’s interesting is ANTIFA…They use technology to the extreme.  They’re hacking into Nazi websites and finding out information. They’ll post flyers like “Hey, this person’s a Nazi, and they work at your job”.  They’re out there being productive with technology.

 

And you guys like that?

It’s kinda cool, yeah. We like to share in the knowledge that they give us. We see things on a street level and they see things on a more electronic level.

 

What’s the scariest situation in the club?

There’s been so many. I’ve been stabbed a few times, I had my jaw busted. But to me it was never scary.

There was this one time on New Years Eve, and I was out drinking heavily. We went to a bar and not a member but a cousin kicked some random guy in his ass as a joke. Just joking around, but the guy freaked out. He got all “hey what the fuck”.  He saw there was a bunch of big guys, so he went to his car and got a fucking gun. I went up to talk to him because I was the only one who was fairly sober.

So I go out there and there’s this guy, scared to death. And he’s like “hey you fuckers are big and I’m not going to fight you I’m going to shoot you.”   I was like hey dude fucking calm down…listen we’re both going to die or go to jail. I guarantee you won’t be able to get all of us. You need to fucking calm down.  I promise you, you put the gun down and you can go home and nothing’s going to happen to you I promise. You have my word.”  The guy, either he was drunk and he was scared, you could see his wheels turning. He wanted to pull the gun out. But if he did, I was going to shoot. And it was this stand off where I had my hand on my gun, he had his hand on his gun. He ended up finally walking away.

 

Anything I’m missing?

Our group did a fund raiser for the family of that guy that got shot and killed…We did a bake off.  We try to do good things for our community.  I think that’s another reason people are OK with us, because we try not to start shit and we try to do good things. I mean when it gets bad there’s always damage.  But we’re pretty good people. We’re not malicious douche bags.  I’m proud of who I am and who I hang out with.

 

You’re proud?

I don’t hang out with people who I don’t think are good people. That I wouldn’t have around my family. There’s not one of our guys I wouldn’t have my son and my wife around. My son calls them all uncles.

 

So you take the good with the bad? You’re proud of it all?

Yeah.

 

The fights and the bake offs?

Yeah. We aren’t out looking for trouble. We don’t go out looking for fights.

 

This is kind of a random question…do you know who John Galliano is?

Galliano? No.

 

He’s a very famous fashion designer.  He was just fired from Dior for making racist comments.

I saw him, he said he loved Hitler.

 

Yeah. What are your thoughts about John Galliano?

Is he gay or straight?

 

I would assume he’s gay.

I think it’s funny that a gay fashion designer would be a Nazi lover.

 

Let’s say John Galliano walked in here.

I don’t think it wouldn’t bother me.

 

Well, he made racist comments.

On camera?

 

Yeah.

I’d probably sock him. I would, I would, I would sock him.

 

That would be hilarious. [laughing]

I’d wear that like a badge of honor. [laughing] And it’s sad because he looks like a small guy.

 

He’s tiny.

I wouldn’t go around punching little guys, but if you’re going to open up your mouth like that, you just gave up your defense of “hey, you wouldn’t hit a guy with glasses”. Those glasses are going in your ass.

 

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For Part 1, Click HERE

For More Undercover Interviews, click HERE

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What was the saddest thing you saw?

Most of the time it didn’t bother me when people would say, “I want to be fucked by 50 people tonight.” They’d line them up, and they’d do that, and it seemed like the women were into it. But one time one of my coworkers was turning 27, so for her 27th birthday she wanted a 27-person gang bang. She wanted it done with three people doing her at once and then moving on to the next three. It was her idea. No one told her that she had to do it. No one suggested it.

She just did not look happy. She just had this hollow look. It was made all the more sad, because she had handed out birthday cards that said what number she would like you to be. She had handed me number 27. I had a strap-on, so I went in as number 27, and I didn’t last very long because it was just too sad.

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Wow.

It was not hot at all, because she just looked hollow. She did not look happy.  It didn’t happen a ton, but when you’d see people who were clearly there for a traumatic reason, like they had a history of sexual abuse or things like that… Sometimes that translates into really wanting that kind of thing, but sometimes it seems like they feel like they have to be doing it. It’s a compulsion, and that’s sad to see.

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So who were the regulars? Who went to this club?

It is a wide mix of people. It was predominately people in their mid 30s and older. But you did get young people coming in there. Some people are looking for a mature couple. My favorite regulars were this couple who, I think they were in their 80s.

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Their 80s?

Yes. The woman was just out of control. She’s hilarious. They always had a different guy going in with them.  I talked to her one day. I asked, “You know, you’ve been doing this for a long time. I was wondering if you have any tips about oral sex?” She was like, “Well I think that’s best shown through demonstration.” So she whipped off her husband’s pants, and went there.

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An 80 year old?

Yes. [laughs]

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Who wants to have sex with an 80 year old couple?

The couple wasn’t bad looking. They took care of themselves. There were a lot of people who went to the club that didn’t care that much about how everyone was looking. It was more of a, “I just want to stick it in something.”

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Really?

It’s a weird scene.

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Was it desperation?

I don’t think so.

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Were there ever really good looking people that came in?

Definitely. Yeah. There definitely were.

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Did you think, “Why are you here?”

No, because it was pretty obvious. In most cases it seemed like they were there because they wanted to feel beautiful. They were sick of going to clubs where they were competing with everyone to be a beautiful person in the club. If you’re at the swinger’s club and you’re pretty, you’re going to get a lot of attention, and it’s going to be positive attention.

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Are swingers clubs legal?

It’s definitely legal. Here in (Location Withheld) it’s definitely legal. It wasn’t actually legal to pay the hostesses, so we had this kind of an under the table deal because we were allowed to, as they call it, “play,” if we wanted to. Therefore it would have been construed as prostitution if we had been paid outright.

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Did you ever have a politician, a minister, or the Mayor, come in?

I know there was a judge who came in and he was a little bit anxious. We had to reassure him that there were no cell phones in there. They take away your cell phone when you go in. If there’s ever a camera out, we take it away. We don’t give it back, that kind of thing. I think most of the famous people who came in were involved in the sex industry.

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But never a group of nuns?

That would have been great. No. Not really, because they know what’s up. And if they didn’t know what was up, they sure would know by the time they got done being in the lobby. They probably wouldn’t pay the $500 it would cost for the group of nuns to get in. [laughter]  I imagine the Mayor has access to classier places.

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What about messy or weird stuff you saw in the club?

Honestly, it was pretty vanilla in there. Besides just the different combinations of people having sex, you didn’t see that much that was crazy like a triple penetration. Wild with sex, yes, but…

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No midgets and whipped cream…

Right.  It was a pretty hetero crowd. If there was a threesome, it was usually either two men doings to a woman. Or if there were two women, they could interact. This wasn’t a club rule, it was just how things ended up. The two women who might have sex, but by and large, it was just a hetero scene.

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Any other crazy stories?

You’re putting the pressure on me.

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You might not think it’s a crazy, but the fact that your job was to pick out a Hispanic guy and a black guy to do a double penetration on some girl…that’s pretty crazy. That’s the craziest job I’ve ever heard of.

Strangely, the things that made the job for me were going around and talking to people and actually getting to know the people who wanted to do this. There’s a type of person who is bi-poly pagan. These people who are really into the whole earth-goddessy things, kind of hipyyish, usually larger, into expressing their sexuality.  We got a lot of those, and they got really irritating after a little while.

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Did working there desensitize you to sex?

Yes, and no. I think it definitely made me a lot more blasé about people’s wild sex fantasies. It made me more open and accepting to that kind of thing.

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I imagine a job at a swingers club must attract an interesting person.  What kind of people worked there?

A lot of the girls who worked there… they kind of looked like a stripper from (Low Class Part of Location Withheld) if that makes any sense? Kind of trashy suburban stripper. I don’t know why they did it, because it didn’t pay that much. I did it because it was interesting. But yes, either they were trashy stripper types, or they were volunteers. Couples came in and volunteered in order to get guest passes to come back for free.

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Did the volunteers clean up?

Right.

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Can you tell me about cleaning up? That sounds disgusting.

There weren’t generally huge cum spots everywhere, but sometimes there were. What the people who cleaned would do is come around and make sure there were clean sheets sitting on the foot of the bed.  There’s that, and then also most of the couches and booth areas were made of pleather, so they would go around and squirt them down and wipe those.

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Wow. OK, so you said your job was the hostess?

Right.

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And you said that you would partake?

We were allowed to.

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You were allowed to. And you did with your friend on her 27th birthday?

Right.

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But otherwise, did you?

Twice. There was one time towards the end of the summer that I worked there. There were these three red headed guys who were regulars and they just started throwing around some ideas and so we all went into a room and we had a foursome because I thought “A good end to the summer would be a foursome with three red headed guys.” You know, cap it off, have an interesting sex experience of my own.

Then, the other time was with a pretty attractive couple in their 30s.  They had gotten a babysitter for their three kids. The woman wanted me to fist her, which I thought would be very difficult, but it turned out to be very easy which was then weirder than if it had been difficult.

And so it was me pumping, I could move my entire hand in any way that I wanted in there and it was bizarre. That was weird.

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That’s a weird story.

Yeah…it was pretty weird. Once the owner of the club told me that if I gave him a blowjob I would get $300. It ended up lasting for five minutes, with a condom and I got the money. That’s the main illegal thing that ever happened when I was working there, besides the fact that I got paid. It didn’t ever feel like I was being paid for being pressured into sex.

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Is there anything that I’m missing?

There was a chat room that was for the club for people to get to know each other on there first…It was a Yahoo! Group.

People would meet each other on there and they’d treat it like the Craigslist adult personals.  That to me was insanely hilarious because I was 20, I thought it was hilarious that people would be like, “Hello, are you the girl who works at the swinger’s club?,” and I’d be like, “Yeah, what’s up?” They’d say, “I want to show you something,” and the something they wanted to show you was always their penis.

[laughter] Always their penis.  They just really wanted to show me them whacking off.

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The first thought I have of a swinger’s club would be hot people everywhere….everybody’s beautiful. And then I think the reality would be that everybody’s hideous and gross, and filled with ton of guys who don’t know how to talk to girls.

There’s certainly people like that. That’s why they have a cap on single men on most nights.

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So would there be a line of guys before the club opens, to make sure they got in?

Yeah, on the nights when it was couple’s nights, there definitely would be people trying to get there at least in the first half hour. You would definitely have guys standing in the corners crossing their arms like, “I’m just kind of skeeving here.” They’d say, “Want to get a room?” after you’d said, “Hello, welcome to the club.” They’ say “Let’s get a room,” or, “I want to touch you.” And I’d say “Well, I don’t want you to touch me, I was just trying to have conversation.”  Those were often people who didn’t understand that most of the people who go to that club want to at least have some conversation before running off to a room.

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Anything else before we finish up?

Well, I think I just want to reiterate how amusing that chair was that went in the air because it was the best thing ever to see some woman having the time of her life up there. It’s a pretty low risk activity for the woman lying there with her legs open…men coming by and eating her out and cycling through. It was just amazing. I think that by and large, people had really positive experiences there. I think that for a lot of women it was just amazing for them. There are all these fantasies that they wanted, that they had no idea they’d ever be able to actually have. It felt great when you could actually pair women up with people to go off and make their dreams come true.

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So you made people’s dreams come true?

Yes. [laughter]

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That must give you some job satisfaction?

Definitely. There was rarely a night when I walked away from my job feeling anything other than amused and high on the energy there.

I can honestly say that I’ve never been to a swingers club, but I’d be lying if I didn’t wonder what goes on behind those very closed doors.  Confidentiality and anonymity are of the utmost importance to these clubs, so that’s what makes this Undercover Interview that much more special.

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Undercover Interview- I worked at a Swingers Club Part 1

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So what was your job?

I was a hostess at a swinger’s club. I got the job with my best friend. She and I would go around and make sure that everyone was comfortable and everyone was talking to each other and everyone was getting what they wanted out of the experience.  When people come in they’re nervous and don’t talk to anyone…then they end up coming off as creepy. If you can get them comfortable, relaxed, and talking, then they’re good to go.

It also entailed us cleaning up after the rooms. Making sure there were fresh linens. We didn’t do that a lot. We left that to the volunteers because there were volunteers who came in to help out in exchange for entrance.

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What is a swinger’s club?

Its a place where people can go, either single or in couples, and have casual sex. Or they might want to just have sex together in a place where they’re being watched. Some of the customers have regular couples that they meet at the club and swing with. But, by and large, it’s couples coming in and meeting people that they don’t know and then splitting off and having sex. There’s private rooms and semi-private rooms, group rooms, hot tubs, porn theater, things like that.

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How does the whole system work?

You walk in. There’s a membership. So, if it’s your first time, you pay the membership and then the visiting fee.

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How much is that?

For a single man, its $150 for the membership fee and then $100 every time you went. For a couple it was $125 and then $75 for each visit. For single women, it was much less. The idea being that the single women are the people who make the club, and a man with a woman is a lot more desirable to have in the club than a single man. And you’re much less likely to get trouble from a guy that came in with a woman. And your membership is non-transferable. So if you come in with a different woman the next time, you’re a single man or you have to repay the membership with that person.

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Lots of rules.

Yeah, lots of rules. Twice a month on Thursdays they had gang bang night, which was now been changed to something that sounds more friendly like “Ladies’ Night” or something like that. [laughs]  On Fridays they had an “everyone is welcome” kind of thing where they had a cap on the amount of single men that could come in.  Saturday nights were more geared towards couples. Single women were still welcome, single men, not so much. I think there was a cap of 10 on single men in a night like that.

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So what’s it like inside the club?

When you walk in, there’s an entrance lobby area with a huge rack of towels, and then also some fake plants. It kind of looks like a creepy hotel lobby. You come in, and you might see some scantily clad people about, kind of cavorting. But they try to keep that out of the front room so that in case a minor makes it in, they don’t see anything. So you pay your fee. And you will be well advised to take a towel because you want to lay it down if you’re ever going to sit naked or if you want to use the hot tubs. And when you go straight through, you see a bay of lockers and a big hot tub. And on your right, there’s showers and there’s stairs upstairs. Then there’s a glory hole room.

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OK.

[laughs] Then you go a little bit further in. You’re in the buffet room. And there’s also a sex swing cage in the buffet room.

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A buffet for food?

Right. Buffet for food.

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I thought maybe that was slang for something.

No! [laughs] That would make sense. But, no, there’s like a taco buffet or a meatball buffet. It just makes people more comfortable.

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Was the food good?

It was, surprisingly! At first, it took me a while to want to try to eat it. But then I got a little more comfortable and I was like, “All right. Yeah, cool. There’s food at work.” [laughs] So if you take a U-turn through the buffet room, there’s private rooms. Those all have a special feature like a big fake plant or a fish tank or something.  They all have a bed, a huge bowl of condoms, hand sanitizer, and towels. And they also have windows and curtains that open. If the windows and curtains are closed, that’s like don’t mess with it. Those people don’t want to be disturbed.

Then there’s the smaller group rooms which has a bigger bed and windows into this sort of massage/porn area that has a massage table. And if you go through there, there’s a dance floor with stripper poles and mirrored walls.

Upstairs there’s a bunch more private rooms.  All in all, I’d say there’s about 15 private rooms.

Also upstairs is a big porn area where there’s a huge screen of porn, and this dental style chair…it’s kind of like a cross between a dentist’s chair and a gyno chair…there are stirrups. It lays back and it can raise and lower. So you can basically have people line up and then orally pleasure you. So that’s going on in the big porn room and people all sit around.  That’s a good place where people can go if they don’t want to talk to anyone but they still want to hook up and see who’s around.  If you go through there, there’s the huge group room which has a bed that’s the size of two king mattresses. On gang bang nights that’s where most of the action is. You might see 10 people on that bed all at once.

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So you’re saying that there are certain nights. Is there anybody that wasn’t allowed in?

Well, obviously, you have to be 18.

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Like by looks or by weight or something?

No, not by looks or weight. But if you looked really nasty or dirty, you wouldn’t be allowed in. They wanted people to take pride in how they looked. But also anyone of any size could go in. There are a lot of people there who got really into the BBW kind of thing: big beautiful women.

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Do you that think swinging is good for marriage?

I think for the minority of people who came in, it was an excellent thing. They were super comfortable with each other. They’d been married a long time. It was just a thing they did once a month or so, just to spice things up, and I think it totally worked for them. But I think a lot of people went in there because the man had been saying for a long time, “Hey, I want a threesome. Hey, I want a threesome. Hey, I want a threesome,” and then the woman is finally like, “All right. We’ll go.” They go, the man has a great time, and the woman has a terrible time.  I am not optimistic about that marriage’s chances.

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So you saw that happen quite a bit?

Oh, yeah. In some cases it was the woman who wanted to go, but most of the time it was the guy. Then there were other times where I think that probably the partnership aspect was working fine, like they’ll probably stay together for a long time, but they weren’t sexually interested in each other. They’d go together, and then they’d split off and have sex with a bunch of different people. They didn’t seem that into each other. They seemed like friends, but they were married.

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Were there any jealousy-related happenings where a woman ran in and found her husband?

I definitely saw some guys who brought their wives to gang bang nights who hadn’t quite realized how it would be. The wife was into it, and the guy was like, “Whoa, I hadn’t realized my wife would want to have sex with seven people crowded around her. She really likes this. This is freaking me out. I don’t know who she is anymore”.

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Did you ever see anybody you knew who went into the club?

There were several people who worked at the clothing store that I go to all the time. I’d be like, “Oh my God, it’s that person whose name I don’t know but I see every week!” You’d see random people you knew from around town.  I like to say this. If you walked into the (Name Withheld) mall and you took the first 100 people that walked through the door, you’d probably have a pretty representative sample of the people who would go to a swingers club. It’s just average people. If you want to swing, and you have your choice of people, honestly, most of the time those people go to a regular nightclub.

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Got any funny stories?

Most of the hilarious stories happen on gang bang nights.

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Obviously.

The main thing that the hostesses did for gang bang nights was to go around and make sure that the women were getting everything that they wanted and ask them, “Why did you come here?” Women would say, “Oh, I really want to be doubly penetrated by a black guy and a Hispanic guy. So can you go find me a black and Hispanic guy?”

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This was your job?

Yes.

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So you’d say, “Oh, excuse me, black dude. Can you come into this room. There’s a girl who wants to have a gang bang with you.”

Right.

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What did that guy say to you?

Generally, yes. He’d say, “Oh, great. All right, I’m there.” Some people have qualms about the double penetration because of the ball-to-ball touching.  So that was basically the job on gang bang nights. Sometimes you’d have people come in, and a woman would say, “I want to have a bukakke.” So you’d round up guys, and there’d be a bukakke. It’s actually a lot harder to pull off than it’s made to seem in porns, because you want to get everyone coming around the same time so that there is a big explosion of cum, and that’s tricky.

But the best one was a woman brought in her own goggles for it, because you don’t want to get it in your eyes, having all this cum shooting at you. So she brought her own goggles and put them on for the bukakke, and I thought, “That’s so excellent. You came prepared.”

Ron Jeremy came for a visit, and my boss said, “Hey, what do you want to do today? I have some girls who work here who will bring you around and show you the town.”

He said, “I want to go to the zoo.” We brought him out to the zoo, and all these women who were moms with their three-year-olds were ripping down their shirts and having him sign their tits. It was bizarre.

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Part 2 coming soon

This Undercover Interview hits really close to home.  About a year ago two friends of mine were hit by two drunk drivers while they were standing on the street having a cigarette.  Both of the drivers were convicted of DUI, and both had to server jail time.

Its hard to get all preachy about this subject, because I’ve had a beer and driven before.  I know you have too.

What are the penalties if you get caught drinking and driving?  Fines, losing your license your a few years, jail time…you might even have to join a white supremacist gang.  For real.  Read on…

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For more Undercover Interviews, Click HERE

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So what happened to you?

The day leading up to the DUI was actually a pretty fun day. I worked at this restaurant that used to have these great deals on Mondays. Cheap margaritas and cheap shots and stuff like that. We were going to go for Happy Hour, because Happy Hour was cheap drinks and free food. We were in our early 20′s, so we were broke and we wanted to get drunk and we wanted to eat.

So we went out, grabbed a couple of margaritas apiece, had a shot, and I think I drank a beer. Another friend of mine had been bugging me to come play softball with him and some friends and said, “Hey, we really need somebody today. Can you sub in for this dude that’s not going to make it today? We just need somebody in the outfield and somebody to swing the bat.” And I was like, “Sure, that’s fine.”

It was an adult league softball game, so they were drinking beer and hanging out in the park. So I had a couple of “maintenance” beers there, and I was just having fun.

That got done and two of my roommates at the time wanted to go out that night, and my female roommate was kind of into this guy, so we were going to go meet up with him and have a couple of drinks at a bar, and then pick him up and go out a little bit more after that. So we piled into her car and drove over to meet up with this friend of hers.

There was more inexpensive booze and more fun, and just hanging out and grabbed a bite to eat there, and then we left from there with him.

Me, and my two roommates, jumped in her car and I drove from there to downtown to go to another bar for a few more drinks. So it was fun, you know, we were feeling pretty good. We’re having a lot of fun just hanging out.

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So how long had you been drinking at this point?

A good 6-7 hours of drinking, not like back to back to back to back, but definitely like a couple here, a couple there. You know like two or three drinks at each stop. And so, we got downtown to some Irish bar, and I got a car bomb and then somebody talked me into a shot of Irish Whiskey.

They’re like “All right, let’s get out of here…let’s go back to (Name Withheld)’s house, he’s got a ping pong table, and his roommates are cool.”

We took off towards his place in (Location Withheld).  By this point I’m driving kind of on the buzzed side and wasn’t feeling any pain. When we got down there I cracked a beer open, took a few sips of it, set it down, and then passed out.

I was exhausted by this point, it had been a long day, so I passed out for what would have seem like longer but probably was only about 10 or 15 minutes. When I come to, they’re playing ping pong and my male roommate was like “Hey dude, how you feeling?”

And I’m like “Ah fuck, I feel a lot better now. I took a nap,” He said “Well, it’s kind of late and it’s like 2:30am and I kind of just want to go home, and I don’t think she wants to leave.” My other roommate, she didn’t want to leave, she wanted to hang out with this guy longer. He said “How do you feel…do you think you can drive?” I said “Yeah, I’m good now. Sure, I can drive.”

My roommate gave me the keys to her car, and we piled into it and took off down the road. You know I was heading out of (Location Withheld), we went up this street…it’s a nice long stretch with no stoplights or stop signs. It’s quieter and less police so we went up that way.

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So were you thinking “I’ve got to dodge the cops…I’ve got my buzz on?”

I knew that if a cop got his hands on me that it wouldn’t have been a pretty thing. He probably would’ve just given me a ticket or a DUI if I got pulled over.

I was just thinking in high-school terms, like “stay away from the cops, stick to the side roads, try to dodge the main intersections and stay out of the way and just get home.”

The objective was to get home and get to bed.

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Before that day, was it a normal thing where you drive with a little bit of a buzz?

Oh yeah…I, for whatever reason, was the guy that everybody threw the keys to.  I was always like “Oh, I can drive,” or “Oh, I’m fine.”  I was always the guy that was the go to guy to drive, it was never a big deal for me to drive when I’d been drinking.

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So you wouldn’t say that you were more drunk than any other time?

Not necessarily. I definitely had been drinking for a good portion of the day, and was probably more inebriated than I realized, but I didn’t feel drunk. I walked to the car, I put the keys in the block, and then, you know, we even picked out a CD.  I thought “Lets just get home and crash out, and maybe go surf tomorrow,” it was just kind of like one of those “Wow, that was a crazy Monday night, lets get the fuck home, and get this day over with.”

So we got in the car and I started flying down the road. We got on to this road where there’s this nice long stretch of road. The road has drainage ditches at the four way stops, so it creates that hump in middle of the road through the intersection and you kind of have to slow down to not scrape the front of your car on. Well, I got the bright idea that it’d be fun to zoom through those and hop our car over those…for whatever reason that sounded fun. Guess that probably should have told me I was a little bit more drunk than thought I was.

So we’re like “All right!”…we just blew through a couple of them and hopped like one or two and it was fun, we laughed and bumped our heads on the ceiling of the car, stuff was flying around the car…we were laughing, just being stupid and drunk.

I started to go towards this four-way intersection with lights. I’m coming up on it and it’s green.  I’m getting closer and closer as it goes to yellow, and then I’m like “Crap, I don’t think I’m going to make it”, so I put a little more gas on it heading towards that intersection. I’m just thinking in my head the lights are on a timer, it’s late at night, so it’s just cycling through…I’ll just blast through it, it won’t be a big deal.

So I get to the intersection and all of a sudden the car is just up in the air, I didn’t know. It was a really weird sensation, it’s one of these sensations where you know what’s happening, but you don’t really want to know what’s happening. You know you just got into an accident but you don’t know where it came from, or why, or what…there’s no explanation.

Well apparently there was this girl that worked as a waitress at one of the strip clubs there at the (Location Withheld) and because she was coming home from work, she’d tripped the lights so she was going on the green. I plowed in the front left of her car going about 40 mph.  The front end of her car basically acted like a ramp and I launched the car up onto it’s roof and landed on the roof.  It rolled over one more time and landed on the roof again and then slid up the driveway on the other side of the intersection.  It was a violent experience.

So everything comes to a stop finally and I don’t think I blacked out, but there was a little moment there where I don’t really remember, maybe like a second where there was black and then it comes back. When I come to, I’m upside down.  I’m looking out the front of this car, and when I look up, my up is this asphalt and down is the sky. I unsnap my seat belt and fall in a crumple under the roof of this car, and I look over and my roommate is gone, and I hear flip flops…We were surfer dudes so we were always wearing flip flops, and I can hear flip flops running away from the car.

So I’m like “Oh crap, what happened.”

So I roll over and I kick the door of the car open. I get out, and for whatever stupid reason I decide to just run…I ran, towards the sound of his flip flops. Just run, run, run, run, run, run. We run on about a block and a half, full speed. Just run, run, run, run, run. And I’m like “Wait, wait, stop, stop, stop, stop, what’s going on? What’s going on?”

I thought maybe somebody was after us, I thought we hit somebody and they were pissed, and I thought we were just trying to get away, I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

He said “Dude we hit somebody! We hit somebody!” I’m like “What? We hit somebody?” He’s like “Yeah, didn’t you see the other car?” I’m like “No I just ran…I don’t even know what the hell happened. I’m assuming we hit somebody, but all I know was the car was in the air.” But he was like “Oh my god, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do.”

So we found a hose and I hosed my head off…I had a little cut back behind my ear, that was just bleeding a little bit, which tripped me out for a second, but as soon as I got my head rinsed off I realized I was pretty well uninjured. I was like “Wow, that’s not bad” I was expecting broken bones or something.

He said “Dude I can’t do this, I can’t do this.” I’m like “Can’t do what?” He asked me “What are we going to say happened?”

He started freaking out on me. I said “Dude, you’re fucking useless you know, if the cops do find us you’re just going to cough it up…are you going to be able to hold the story together?” And he said “I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!”

He said “My dad’s close by, lets go to his house.” I said “I am not showing up at your dad’s house. You go to your dad’s house and you just disappear…I won’t even say you were in the car because you are obviously not going to do anything but hurt my situation.  Just go to your dad’s house, I’ll deal with this.”

So he takes off. I’m there by myself, I’m thinking “Fuck…what the fuck do I do, should I go back to the scene?”, because it’s hit and run at this point.

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How long have you guys been away from the scene for?

Long enough to start hearing the sirens…not close enough to see the lights but close enough to hear it. And I can hear that something’s going on. So I take off again, away from the accident. In my stupid mind, I thought it’d be a good idea to come up with a story, like I got carjacked. Somebody stole the car, and they drove the car over there and got into that accident, and I was just an innocent bystander, right? Sounds real logical.

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[laughter] OK.

[laughter] So I go to a pay phone, I get the story all straight in my head, and I call 911.  I say “I just got carjacked”, And they’re like “Oh really? Where are you?” I said “Oh I don’t know but I can hear sirens not far from here.” They said “Oh. We’ve had an accident in the area, so there’s police in the area. We’ll send one over to take a report from you.”  I start seeing the cops coming up and down the street, obviously looking for somebody. I stepped out on the street, and I waved one down. They come over, get out, and ask, “What happened?” I started trying to tell this story about how I got carjacked. I could see the cop scanning me up and down with his flashlight, looking at my eyes, looking at my head, and looking at me. Doing this whole “this guy is full of shit” thing. “Why is this guy telling me this?”

I get about a paragraph into this story, and I’m like “You know what? I’m just going to stop.” He asked, “What do you mean?” I said, “This is bullshit.” He said, “Yeah, I know. So go ahead. Continue.” I told him, “It was me. I was driving the car. I got in the accident, and I ran, and I don’t know why.” And I tried to spin this story to get away with it. I said, “I just want to know, did I kill somebody? Is somebody dead? I just need to know that I didn’t kill somebody.”

He said, “Just calm down. Just take it easy for a second here. First of all, have you had anything to drink?” I said, “You already know the answer to that question. Look at me, man. I’m a mess. I was just in a gnarly accident. I know you can smell it on me. Yes. I had a few beers today, quite a few earlier in the day. The last one was at least an hour ago. I don’t know if I’m under the influence still or not.”

He says, “All right. Let’s do a field sobriety test.” So we did a field sobriety test, which he said I passed. He said, “Well, you told me you had some drinks, so we’re going to need to take you down to the station and either draw blood, or breathalyze you, or both. With the circumstance the way they are I’m going to have to put you under arrest because you ran from the scene of an accident, and it was an injury accident.” I said, “Are you serious? How bad was the injury?”

He said, “I can’t tell you that, but just know that nobody’s dead. I’m not on the scene. I can’t tell you any more than that.” He read me my rights and put the handcuffs on me, and I sat there on the curb in handcuffs.

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Are you freaking out?

I was actually calmer by that point because I was just glad to have been able to tell them that it was me, and that I knew no one was dead made me feel so much better. At this point, I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to tell my roommate that her car is in pieces, and how I’m going to avoid telling that (Name Withheld) was in the car with me. Because they starting asking, “Was there anybody else in the car with you?” I said, “No.” They said, “OK. Well there was a beer can and some stuff in the passenger side. Whose were those?” I said, “They must have been mine. I gave a guy a ride earlier in the night, but not then.” They asked, “Who was this guy?” I said, “Just some dude on the street. He needed a ride, and I gave him a ride.” They’re like, “OK. That’s beside the point. So you’re saying that you were driving the vehicle?” I said, “Yeah. I drove it, and I got into this gnarly accident. I freaked out, and I ran. I can’t explain why I did it. I’m not going to try to tell you guys why I did it. I just got really scared. I thought somebody was trying to hurt me. I don’t know…I don’t know why I did it.”

The sergeant came around and put me in his car, and drove me downtown to get blood drawn for alcohol content, and on the way, he was talking to me. He asked, “What happened? Did you see the light?” I said, “Yeah. I just didn’t think it was somebody was coming.”  I asked, “What’s going to happen?” He said, “I don’t know. This is one of those things where you’re going to have to let the lawyers deal with this one.” I was like, “Fuck, dude. Should I try and post bail, or should I just stay in?”

He says, “To be honest with you, since you tried to flee the scene and there was an injury, the judge is more than likely going to give you some time. So you’re probably better off not bailing out and staying in, because you’re gong to have to serve time anyway.” He’s giving me the breakdown. “If you stay in during the whole court proceedings, then all that time counts towards your sentence. Then that time gets taken off of the top of your sentence, so you have less time to serve once you do get sentenced.”

So I said, “OK. That makes sense.” On top of that I would have had to go to my parents to bail me out. At this point, me and my folks were not exactly seeing eye to eye on lifestyle. My parents are Christian. They didn’t really jive with my drinking and crazy lifestyle. I had nobody to go to. So I guess I’m flying this one solo. I just got to take care of this myself. It was weird, but I felt better that I was in jail, because I had hurt somebody. I felt like I almost needed to be there.

So I went in jail. They booked me in that night. I was only in there for a week or two. Actually they’re supposed to get you in front of a judge within 72 hours of you being booked. So I saw a judge for arraignment where they read off your charges. It’s just so that if you have anything else you need to say, or you want to post bail, or if you need to ask for a change in bail amount, anything like that you do it at that point. And then, from that point, they start setting court dates.

They’re like “This will be the day when they do the arraignment,” when you actually get formally charged by the district attorney’s office. The district attorney decides on the charges he or she will actually put up against you in court. Originally, it was felony DUI with great bodily injury, hit and run, and falsifying a police report.

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That’s pretty heavy stuff.

Yeah, all three. The felony DUI and the hit and run are major felonies. They’re strikable felonies. And the falsifying of a police report is a heavy misdemeanor.

So I was in the district attorney’s office with my public defender, who did a pretty damn good job. They worked out a plea bargain deal where I would plead to the felony DUI with great bodily injury, and they would drop the hit and run and the other misdemeanor charges, and anything else that was pending.

I would take a strike on my record, the felony DUI with great bodily injury, and I would serve a year in county jail. I was facing originally seven years in prison, which is what all the charges maxed out would have been. So I jumped at a year in county jail. At this point, I had already been in for almost a month; that means you do two thirds of your time. So if you get sentenced to 300 days, you do 200 days and they give you good time. As long as you behave yourself and don’t get in any trouble, they let you out early, and that’s when your probation picks up.

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What happened to the person you hit?

I broke her left femur. The bone popped through the skin but then popped back in, which is pretty traumatic within itself.

She ended up writing a letter to the judge, I don’t know why. But out of the kindness of her heart, she basically wrote a letter to my judge and said that she didn’t hold any ill will against me, and she hoped the judge wouldn’t sentence me to any further time than necessary. Basically, I think she was just a nice girl. But she ended up, with four days left on the statute of limitations, filing a civil suit against me years later.

There were only four or five days left on the statute of limitations, and she filed a civil suit. She ended up getting a civil settlement from the insurance company of the vehicle I was driving. So the insurance company covered that part. As for myself, and my friend whose car I was driving, there were some threats of being sued for some time. But the insurance company said don’t worry because I had permission to drive the vehicle in California. The insurance goes with the car, not with the driver. So that’s the law.

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What happened with your friend that was in the car?

He came and visited me one time when I was in jail. He was all sheepish and shy. He basically just boned out. I think he felt really guilty that I took the whole brunt. I don’t hold anything against him either. It’s a bummer that he had to get involved in it.

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So in the end, he never got caught?

No. It got brought up again later on by the lawyers, and I said, “There was just this homeless guy I picked up and gave a ride, and he ran from the accident. I don’t even know what happened to the guy.”

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What about the girl whose car you crashed? What did she do?

She came and saw me a few times while I was in jail. She was real supportive at first. Her parents are pretty well-off. Once the lawyer started getting involved, she suddenly vanished. She had to move back in with her parents because I smashed up her car.

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So that night, do you think you were lucky or unlucky?

I think I was lucky that I didn’t kill the girl. I think I was lucky that I survived that accident with no real damage other than a little scrape on the back of my head. I’m lucky because I was stupid enough to say yes to driving home, when I could have just as easily stayed at that guy’s house and crash on his couch.

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So in the end, what did you learn from this experience?

Everyone drinks and drives on occasion. You go out, you have two or three beers with your friends, and you get yourself home. That’s one thing.

But when you’ve been at an all-day drinking fest like I had, there’s just no reason to be operating a motor vehicle. It’s ridiculous. You’re just putting yourself and other people at risk. If I had killed that girl, I would be a totally different person right now. I don’t even know if I’d be alive, to be honest with you

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You say that everybody drinks and drives. Do you still? Would you still have a drink and then drive?

I have between then and now.

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You have?

I would much rather get a cab, or just call it a night. I’ve driven people home that were way more intoxicated than me, and gotten them home to a safe spot. It’s definitely not my preferred method of drinking. I prefer to have a decent plan as to where everybody’s going to end up at least by the end of the night.

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You go through a crazy, life-changing experience like getting a DUI and going to jail for it. Does that ever scare you away from drinking, or do you go back to your old ways of like “Well, I’ve had two drinks or three drinks. I’m a little buzzed, but I can drive home.” Does that still go through your head?

Well, not really. Usually someone else is driving. I’ll be honest with you. Since my DUI, I’ve just completed all the requirements to get my license back. I still don’t have my license from the whole experience.

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How long has it been?

Eight years.

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During this time, did you ever drive when you didn’t have a license?

Yeah, I have and that was a mistake, too. I don’t do that anymore either, and I don’t drink as much as I used to, either.  I’ve definitely learned from it. It wasn’t an immediate effect, I’ll tell you that. But it definitely had an effect, and it definitely rippled through my entire life from that point forward. I’m a little worried about getting my license, to be honest with you.

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How come?

I just know how easy it is to get in a car and drink and drive, obviously, even without a license.  It’s not an easy way of life to constantly worry about “Is my friend going to ask me to drive?” Constantly trying to dodge those kinds of questions is tiresome.

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Right. You got called out. You got caught, and you paid the price heavily for just one mistake. I’m just wondering, in all honesty, does it teach you a lesson? Does it make you never drink and drive? It sounds like it didn’t.

No. It definitely didn’t teach me that final, final lesson. It’s sad that it didn’t because it really should have, but that’s just stubborn human nature.

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How long did you end up going for?

I was in jail for just a little over seven months in one stretch.

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Did you deserve your punishment?

Yeah.

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It seems like you are a good guy. What was it like to be in jail with real criminals.

Well, it was interesting because there is a real big like gap in mentality in criminals.

There is just a really interesting social structure in there where you have career criminals that should probably have gone to college and been doctors but were born in the wrong neighborhood. It was interesting because I got involved in politics in there a little bit because you don’t have any choice.

Once you go into there it’s like… Because if you look like I do which I look like your average white kid, the whites approach you and say hey, what are you, and where are you from.

I ended up going to George Bailey, which is an internally segregated facility. You are black or white or if you are Hispanic, then you become either a Sureno or Norteno which is the Northerners and the Southerners.

Or you are with called Paisa which is basically born in Mexico but living in the states.

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Right.

Then there are “The Others”. The Others are Asians, Middle Easterners, anybody who does not form those other categories goes to the Others. The Others hang out with the Brothers. And the Whites and the Mexicans including all three of the group of Hispanics, all hang together.

So if trouble happens you know who you are fighting against. So, if they look Mexican, they probably are on your side…if they are Black or Asians, they are probably not on your side.

When you get in there, whatever you look like, that group is going to approach you.

When you get in there, your group approaches you, usually like… “Where did you grow up…so you’re a Wood right?”

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What’s a Wood?

It means you’re white.

So, you are Wood, All right, great, so you go out with these guys and they will introduce you around, this is John, he is your dorm rep. You have problems with anybody that is not of your race, you go to this guy, you don’t hit first.

You don’t say the word nigger, you don’t say the word spic, you don’t use any racial language from now on. Not allowed.

If you have a problem with somebody of another race, you go to your rep, you tell them what happened, and they’ll go to their rep and they’ll tell them what happened, and they’ll decide what’s going to happen.

You don’t just pop off and punch anybody you want unless they’re of your own race, and even then you need to make sure you know what you’re doing.

That’s just day-to-day. You get up early in the morning. They put you on buses to go to the court by six a.m., so they wake you up at four a.m. for breakfast. They feed you breakfast, and by feed you, I mean they move these big carts. It’s like the lunch-line assembly. You walk by, and somebody hands you a tray. You just go sit down and eat your food.

There’s assigned seats for the different colors. There’s the white tables, and then there are black tables, and there is the others tables, and there are the Hispanic tables. Even within those groups there are unique groups. But for white guys, it’s white guys and white guys. There’s not a big variety for white dudes.

Once you’re in a segregated facility, you don’t eat, shit or sleep with anyone that’s not of your race. And by sleep, I mean you try to choose your bunk close to somebody of your color.

You don’t sit at a table and share food with a black guy. You don’t share food with a black guy or a Mexican guy, unless that Mexican guy is cool with our group.

Some Mexican guys grew up punk rockers, and so they always hung out with white dudes. They can decide, but you have to make a decision: you can hang with the Mexicans, or you can hang with the white dudes. But if you’re going to hang with the white dudes you’ve got to stay with them. You can’t go back and forth.

There were a few guys like that, that were sleeved-up and had their ears stretched. They would talk like you and I talk, and go, “Yeah, dude, that’s awesome, man,” and talk about surfing. They were as white as you can be, but they just happened to be a slightly darker shade.

There are some Asian guys like that too. It’s harder for an Asian guy…a couple of guys that were Japanese, they were like, “Dude, I grew up in LA, and I don’t hang out with anybody that’s Asian other than my parents.”

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What are some of the dumb things about jail?

One of the stupidest things that almost started a fight, and I was able to talk everybody down about was, they’d bring in mops and brooms for us to clean the dorm areas, the floors and the bathrooms every day.

It’s self-cleaned, and so there’s a little bit of organization with that. We would keep a piece of paper and write down what race was responsible on what days of the week.

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So this literally would say, “Black people mop the floor, Mexicans clean the windows.”

Yeah. Woods this, Surenos that. The black guys were referred to as the Brothers. So the Brothers, the Others, the Surenos, the Paisas, and the Woods.

So, anyway… literally there is a piece of paper with the different colors or different races broken up and their assignments for that day and so everybody would clean.

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Did jail change your view on race or make you more or less racist?

I think it made me definitely less racist because I got a chance to see where people were coming from. And I really got to interact with people on a deeper level than just seeing people on the streets.

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Are you still friends with anybody from jail?

No, absolutely not. I didn’t want to keep in contact with anybody. They’ll give you their phone numbers, and say, “Yeah. Call me, and we’ll hang out.” I don’t want to call any of these people, or I’m going to end up going back to jail with these people

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Has jail made you a better person?

Not necessarily a better person.

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Has it changed you?

Yeah. I think it’s changed me in that I don’t look down on people for having done time

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So in the end, was it easy or hard to do time?

It’s hard in that you don’t want to be there, and you know you’re better than that, and you want to not do it again. You just wish you could take the time that you’re wasting there and apply it to something else, but you can’t…You’ve got to do the time.

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It seems like the lesson to be learned here is that if you drink and drive, you’ll end up in a racist white gang in jail.

Yeah. Basically. Yeah….Don’t drink and drive or you will end up in a gang.

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In the end, that should be lesson enough for somebody who reads this interview…Taking that extra beer and then driving, it can 100% change your life to somewhere you could never even imagine it.  I doubt you could imagine that you would ever end up in a white gang in jail?

No, because I never thought of myself as a racist person. But, when you are in that situation, you don’t have a choice. Your choices get taken away. They get made for you. Somebody else tells you what to do. Somebody tells you when to eat, poop, sleep, everything. It’s the most dehumanizing experience you’ll ever have.

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What do you do?

I work for a professional card counting team, which I am also an investor in. I go into casinos and I play Blackjack and I count cards.

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How did you learn this trade?

I have got a buddy who I went to school with, and I actually met at a summer camp in high school. While we were in college, he started reading a book about how to be good at poker, and there was one chapter in the back of the book about how to beat the game of Blackjack.

And it was really intriguing to him, because poker is all about being…I don’t know. There is a lot of intuition. There are so many skills that you have to learn that aren’t very tangible in poker. There is a lot of math, but there is a lot of reading people and stuff.

With Blackjack, it is just all math. If you know how to beat the game, you can beat it if you do it correctly. He was really intrigued and he just started learning. And he came and he showed me what he was up to.  I went to a casino with him and watched him play. It was pretty fascinating. And at that point, I just thought, “Nah, well, it is not for me.” But I was really intrigued.

He kept playing for a year and a half, two years. He brought on other friends and they formed a team, and the team just started doing really well. And it just looked like a lot of fun, so I decided to jump in, and he taught me.

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If you can describe it in a really simple easy to understand way, what do you guys do?

Mathematically Blackjack is created in such a way that the casino will win more than it loses. Somewhere around, 52% of the time the casino will win. 48% of the time, the casino will lose.

Counting cards is just a simple system where you keep track of which cards have been played and which cards have not been played. And so, you will know when that average, that statistic of who has the edge, flips. And when it flips, you just simply start betting more money.

So if you bet more money when you have the advantage and less money when the casino has the advantage, you win. That is the principle behind card counting, and that is essentially what card counters do.

And there are many different ways to do that…we use what is called the “high/low” system. And it is a system just to keep track of the cards so that you know when to bet more money.

The reason for a team is…It is still risky, right?  Say you took the advantage from the casino. Maybe the casino had a 52% advantage. Well now you have a 52% advantage. Well that still means that close to half the time you are losing, right? So you have to have a really big bankroll to sustain the losses, because over time you are going to win. But any given day, you could actually lose.

And the same thing for a casino, right? If you walked into a casino, the casino has the advantage over you. And you could play the slots or play craps, or whatever, but you can come away that weekend being a really big winner.

Over time, the casino can afford to do this because they will win eventually. So creating a team is, in a sense, kind of creating the anti-casino, saying, “We are going to bankroll ourselves, flip the tables, and take money back.”

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So is that illegal?

No, it is not illegal at all, actually. It is completely legal. It is totally frowned upon by the casino, and they will treat you like a criminal. And it is kind of common for people to think that it is illegal, or shady, or something, because of the way that it is treated, because it is the last thing a casino needs, right? They want to make money. And if you figure out how to destroy their business model, they are not going to be very happy.

It is totally on the up and up. You couldn’t get arrested, but you could get backed off of casinos, trespassed, you can get treated really poorly. But that is kind of an exception to the rule. Usually they are pretty cool to you, even when they find out what is going on. They usually are pretty nice.

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Really?

Yeah. I mean like I said, it is an exception to the rule. Like, I have been treated really, really poorly, but I would say 90% of the time, when they found out what is going on, they just kind of nicely ask you to stop playing Blackjack. They say, “Feel free to hang out in the casino. Play anything else you want. Use the comps that you have accrued. Stay in our hotel room. Enjoy the club-whatever. Just stop playing Blackjack.” And if you press your luck and you start playing more, which we usually do, then they start getting more and more pissed off, and then try to trespass you, have security escort you out; those kind of things.

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Do you think what you’re doing is in any way wrong?
No. The casino is saying, “Look, we have a game and we challenge you to play this game and try to win.” That’s what they advertise. It’s no secret that they’re going to win more times than you’re going to win. But you might be that lucky person who beats the casino in any given weekend.

So do I think it’s morally wrong? No, you’re not breaking any of the rules. You’re playing by their rules, and you’re not breaking any laws. The only reason why people think it’s shady is because the casino could ask you to stop playing at any given time. The reason why they could do that is because they own the business, they own the property. They reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.

So if you had a bar and someone came in, and every time they came in they didn’t help your bar, they hurt your bar, sooner or later you’re just going to ask that person, “Please stop coming to my establishment.” That’s essentially how they treat card counters. But the difference is they don’t – well, not the difference – but they just don’t know if you’re the person who’s going to actually help their business or hurt their business.

They can’t figure that out until watching you play for a couple of hours, a couple of days, a couple of weeks, a couple of months. It depends from casino to casino, but they don’t know so they’ll tolerate you for a while. You do have to be sneaky. You have to pretend that you’re someone that you’re not. So if you think that’s morally wrong, to pretend to be someone else that you’re not.
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I’m with you, I don’t see it as a moral issue… It’s gambling.  You’re taking an advantage by using your brain, you’re not using a computer…

So was this part of the MIT Blackjack team? Does your team have anything to do with MIT?

No. The MIT team were the first guys to create a team. We don’t know any of them personally, and we don’t work with any of them. We have talked with them since being a team.

We are pretty well known as a card counting team in Vegas. In a sense, it is not that hard to become if you do it right. It is surprisingly easy.

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It is?

I think so. I mean yeah. It is easy…It is not simple, but it is easy. It is going to take hard work. But some misconceptions about card counting is that you have to be incredibly, incredibly smart.

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I think of like Rainman.

Right, like Rainman. You don’t have to be autistic or whatever to count cards. It is a really simple method. What I usually tell people is you have to have had like a 3.0 GPA in high school. If you were able to handle that, you could figure it out. It is just discipline and just putting your mind to something and learning a system.

I have seen people fail at it, but it is usually just because they didn’t want it enough. It takes about a month, six weeks, to really figure it out. Our team has a whole testing out process where we make sure that you have got it 100% and are nailing it. And then we give you cash, and then you go into a casino. And it usually takes around six months for players to really nail it.  So it is an investment in your time to learn it, but you don’t have to be a genius.

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Wow.

The MIT guys are really smart guys. But what they figured out was the system. To figure out the system took an intelligent person. To copy the system…You have to be smart. You do have to be disciplined. But you don’t have to be Rainman. [laughs]

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Well that is good to know.
Yeah. I am sure you could do it.

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So you work as a team, right?
Yeah.

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Tell me who would be on a team with you at a table? Do you pick women? Do you pick older people so you all look different, or does it end up being all dudes?

Well, so playing as a team means a couple different things. One, it means we pool our resources and we all play with the same bankroll. So we could be at any given casino in any given city working on our own, but we are all working off the same bankroll. And what that does is it mitigates our risk and it allows for us to just get more hours on more tables, which is great.

The second thing a team means is actually playing together. And what we call that is a “team play”. We don’t always do that. In fact, sometimes it is the wrong thing to do. A casino will be pretty patient with you if they think you are a card counter if you are playing by yourself…for a while. They will kind of take their time to figure out how big of a threat you really are, if you really know your stuff or if you just kind of think you know your stuff.

If they catch you playing with other players, it is over right away. As soon as they figure that out, they have no tolerance for you at all, because at that point, they really feel like you are really trying to screw them over.

The MIT team developed a strategy called “big player” where you have a guy come in the casino. He has got all the cash on him. And he just walks up to a table and he just throws down money. And he is just playing with tons of money.

Well you have another guy in the casino and he is just playing table minimum. And he is counting cards…he is just waiting for the table to get hot.  When the table gets hot he calls over the big player. You have got some sort of signal to call the big player over. He comes over to that table, you pass the guy the count through a system, like a really simple basic system. You just say a sentence with the count in it. So it is like, “Oh, it is already six o’clock. I gotta get some dinner.” So the count is six. And that is significant to the big player, because now he knows what kind of edge he has at the table and how much he can bet. And then he can keep track of the count from there, and you can leave and go to another table and start counting again.

So that is kind of team play. Yeah, there are women on the team. There is definitely the quintessential card counter, which is the young male, early to mid 20′s male. So if you can get people on a team who are older, who are female, you can get away with it probably a little bit more.

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Do you guys dress up?  Is one guy dressed up as a cowboy and another as like a nun or something? Not a nun, but…
Totally. Yeah, we have tons of examples of dressing up in costumes. And it actually helps a lot to change the way you look.  We have got guys on the team who have got this to a science.  They could walk into a casino, play, get kicked out, go and change their clothes and their persona, come back, and they could start playing again.

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So just dressing up and like the cat and mouse, is that part of the fun of it? It is part of the fun of it, yeah, but it is also a little bit stressful. It kind of depends on what kind of mood you are in. I mean the dirty truth about it is that it is a job, right? You go, you sit down at the table, you count cards, and the money stops feeling like real money, and it just feels like you might as well be at your desk filing things.
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What could a normal card counting day look like? How many hours do you work?
Well normally, I attack card counting in weekends because that is when the casino is busiest and you can kind of blend in the most. So Friday morning, I take off to Vegas and I come back Monday.  I tend to do that like once to twice a month.
When I go, as soon as I hit the ground, I just find a casino, find a table, start playing, and play until I’m hungry or tired. My attitude on these trips is like, “I am here to make money and the more hours I put at the table, the more money I’m going to make. When I get home I can hang out.”

I’m married. I’m doing it not because I want to explore the Vegas lifestyle, I’m doing it because I wanted to make money so that I could go home and do stuff that I was really passionate about and have the freedom and time to do those things.

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Essentially it’s just a job.
It is a job.  Its fun and it had a ton of perks, but 90% of the time its just sitting at a table and just watching cards come by. At first there’s definitely a thrill of just like, “Oh I just won all this money.” But after a while you just kind of get used to the mathematics of your winning and your losing. Like, it’s not all my money, it’s the team’s money.  So it starts to feel like a job. It can get boring, but it’s what you make of it.
You’re using a mathematical system that you’re not going to deviate from at any time. You’re trying to limit your distractions so you could stay 100% focused. Your only concern is, “How long can I last here before they kick me out and I have to go to the next place? And how many next places are there in this city before I can’t play anymore and I just have to go home?”

Because there’s always a risk. You fly somewhere – and this has happened. You go to a city that’s got four or five casinos and you want to play them all weekend and you only get in four or five hours and the whole city’s like, “You’re done.” So you can’t play anymore.
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So that’s happened to you before?
Yeah, for sure. I went to Tunica, Mississippi, which has probably 10, 12 casinos. After the first evening, me and the guy I went with were what we called “flyered”. Basically flyers were sent to every casino with our pictures on it saying, “These guys are card counters, don’t let these guys play.” We couldn’t play anywhere, and we were treated so poorly.
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What were some of the weird places you have been?

Some of the weird ass places, like Tunica was weird. There are like these Indian casinos in little pockets of the country that are weird.

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Do you prey on Indian casinos or did you go to those more often because they weren’t as sophisticated?

Dude, one of the things I actually sort of feel bad about is there is a casino not far from here out in…out in (Location Withheld) called (Name Withheld). It is like they never heard of what card counting was. Most casinos know. Our team freaking probably took half a million dollars from them at least; somewhere in the vicinity of half a million or a million from this one casino.

The team has done really well and it has won a lot of money, but to take that much money from one casino is really, really crazy.  This is like some ho-dunk town’s Indian Reservation casino.

Do we prey on those places? Yeah, I guess we did prey on that place, and I kind of feel like that place was a casualty. They ended up hiring a consultant who ended up fixing the situation. [laughs] But it took them quite a bit of money to figure that out.

So, yeah. I guess it is fair game. That is the one thing that I wrestled with, was Indian reservations.  Here is one thing we kind of give to this population who we didn’t treat very well, and now I am just this white guy exploiting that again.

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It is business, right?

Right. Sure.

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So what was your biggest win for one sitting?

I think my biggest win…And this is probably not as rad as other stories on the team, but my biggest win was 60 grand at Barona in one sitting. That was in about four hours. That actually happened to be also the best I was ever treated at a casino. And I was even told after those four hours that I couldn’t play there anymore. But the guy who was kind of following me and watching me, the pit boss, came up to me afterwards and he was like, “Hey man. I just want you to know that I am really impressed. I just hope to one day be at the level that you are at. We can’t let you play anymore and I am really sorry about that, but man, good job. Well done.”

And that is the best I have ever been treated at a casino. And that is rare, because that is Barona. Barona has like a Blackjack hall of fame and they kind of celebrate, like, the heroes of Blackjack and the fact of Blackjack being beaten, and they have one of the best games in the country as far as your odds.

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What about when you played as a team? What is the most you ever took?

Probably only like 100 grand in any given weekend. And that is probably as high as it normally gets with the amount of money we are playing with, and the amount of variance you usually have.  And that is a good weekend for our team, actually. It is a really good weekend for our team.

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And so what would be a bad weekend?

A bad weekend would be essentially the same thing, like losing 100 grand.

What you have got to understand is you take a few percentage edge off of the casino and give it to yourself. So that means, over the long run, you are going to win, but we are talking about huge spikes of winning and losing, and it is slowly going up.  So that has happened before. We have had a team go out to Vegas and lose 100 grand.

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So if you were just a player, could you make more money counting cards than working a nine to five job?

Yeah, for sure. We have got a lot of guys on the team who make decent salaries just from playing…I would say an average of people playing on the team is maybe you play two weekends a month and you make around 60 grand a year.

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That’s really good!

Yeah. That is good.  That is essentially what I did so that the rest of my week was free to essentially put myself through school.  And it was the best…You know. It’s like, what do I do, work at a coffee shop, or do I go and count cards at a casino?  I go count cards at the casino.

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OK, so this is the part of the interview where you tell me funny, crazy stories.

Sure.  Well, for myself personally, I have had some crazy experiences. One of which in Reno, there is this casino called Eldorado. And out of any casino still operating, it’s like the only casino where people will still kind of go, “Yeah, don’t mess with that casino.” There is some roots like the mafia in that casino. And there is urban legends of just crazy stuff that goes down.

For the most part Disney owns the casinos now, and you are not going to get your face punched in because they are going to have a lawsuit. That just doesn’t happen anymore. Maybe in the sixties, right, but not anymore. Well, this place still kind of has that feel to it a little bit. I was in Reno. I was pretty much done in Reno, like no one would let me play anymore. It was Labor Day weekend and I didn’t have any place to stay. We just showed up. It’s very rare to have not five different hotel rooms, and just have them all booked, and go from place to place.

This weekend we didn’t have anything. No one, everyone was kicking us out; no one would put us up anywhere. So we’re like, “We’re going to sleep in the car, what the heck’s going to happen?” And we’re done playing, and I’m like, “You know what, I’m just going to go across the street and I’m going to try this Eldorado one more time.” They had already kicked me out, but what do I have to lose. We have ten minutes to kill, I’ll play through a couple of hands, play a couple of shoes. So I sit down, I start playing…I’m not the kind of guy who will come and just demand attention and tell people what to do. But I am at a table and all of a sudden, the count turns and it’s really, really good. And there is only room at the table for me to play two spots, but it would be great if I could play three spots at this point, because the odds are in my favor. So I ask the guy next to me, “Do you mind sitting out. I just feel like I need to go for it.” And that is kind of something rare for me to do and he is like “Yeah, sure. Go for it.”

I put all my money out and I’m winning more than I’m losing but I’m not like taking them over. And this whole time, I’m like ” OK, any second now, I’ll get this tap on my shoulder. Any second now,” I get this tap on my shoulder. “All right, here it is.” And it’s a host, and she is like “Hey, we just want to know, do you need anything? Do you want to go up to the night club? You need a place to stay?” I said “Yes, I need a place to stay. Definitely”.

She says “Yeah OK, great, we can find a place.” So she gets me a room. I play a couple more hands, and I’m just so excited about having a room…like I get to go to bed. So I called my buddy, I’m like, “I got a room, it’s amazing.” I go up to the room and it’s really nice, and I tell him where it is and he’s coming with the suitcase. I’m laying on the bed and I turn on the TV.  I’m sitting there going “All right, this is going to be a good night.”

Knock on the door, it’s security and they are like, “Listen, we don’t know what is going on but we just have ask you to leave this room.” I’m like “Really?” They’re like, “Yeah, you have to leave this room right now.” “All right, sorry to hear that. I’ll grab my stuff.” And they’re like, “Yeah, well the casino manager is coming up right now, just to explain.” And my heart just drops because, A: I had just been kicked out of this place and told never to return, and B: This place has these urban legends of still being kind of mafia.

And the guy who did pack me up the first time seemed like he would be the kind of guy that would throw me in a river. So I’m like “Tell him not to worry, I’m leaving, so no big deal.” So I grab my stuff, I head towards the elevator and I’m pushing the elevator door button, and I’m waiting and then the elevator next to me, doors open up, casino manager comes over.

Big fat white guy comes over to me, and he goes “Mr. (Name Withheld).” And I’m like, “Shit, what is going to happen?” And I’m looking around and there is no one in the hallway except for these two security guys. It’s late at night. He just looks at me he is like, “You’re really good. But we’re really good too.” And then he shakes my hand and says “Don’t ever come back here again.” And I’m like “Thank God.”

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It seems like there’s a respect, both ways.

There was a bit of respect there.

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It seems like it makes their job more fun when they have to look out for these guys who are trying to cheat them.

Sure. I think for some people they feel that way. I’ve been treated much worse. I was treated badly in Lake Tahoe. I hadn’t even played in his casino yet. He knew who I was, he took my ID, wouldn’t give it back. He basically told me that I’m the scum of the earth and that he won’t tolerate people like me in his casino.

They made me go into the back room. They sat me down, interrogated me, tried to make me feel threatened as much as they can probably get away with. And the only leverage they had was they had my ID. I wanted my ID back and they wouldn’t give it back. Well finally, they set it on the table kind of next to me, but then just kept asking me questions. I was looking at my ID, I’m looking at the door to get out. And I’m like, “All right guys, I’m gonna leave.”

I grab my ID and I just start heading towards the door. The way that we’ve been trained is if you are ever in a situation where you want to leave the casino and they won’t let you leave, like this situation…what you do is you announce loudly that you want to leave. So, if there is any eyewitnesses or any audio recording, that’s very clear. You put your hands completely to your side and you just slowly walk through the people and you leave. That’s standard operating procedure.

If you do anything that makes them say “Oh, he was attacking us!” they could take you to the ground or something. So I’m in this backroom, they’ve got me kind of cornered from the entrance. I grab my ID and I’m like “OK, be cool,” hands to the side, and instead I just like book it [laughs]. I cruise right through them, I just break through.

I break through them and then I don’t know where to go. Am I going to go back the way that they took me, back through the casino? They’re like ,”Hey, wait, ” and I stop and they’re like, “Go that way, go that way.” And I look over and there’s this door and I’m like, “Huh?” And they’re like, “Go that way!” And so I go through that door, and I’m in a stairwell. I go down these stairs, like “Holy crap, where did they just send me?” Finally I’m out in the parking lot, and I am like, “All right. Time to drive home! This is ridiculous.”

So they treated me pretty bad. But like I said, that is like 5% of the team you are treated poorly.

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Any other crazy stories, stuff you have seen?

I have seen people lose a lot of money, dude. I have lost…There is one situation where I lost probably about 40 grand in a matter of like 10-15 minutes.  I had only been playing on the team for a couple of months and, man, it was crazy.

I sat down at a table. Nothing is happening. All of a sudden, the count gets high. I start throwing out money. The count stays high. I am throwing out money, just lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose. I am down around 40 grand. I have more money on me, but I just feel so disheartened. I had to go up to my hotel room, just lay on the bed, and just decompress, like, “What just happened? What was I doing wrong? How did that just happen?”

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I have a technical question. How much money do you go to a casino with?

It totally depends. It depends on where we are going. If you are going to Vegas, it is not uncommon to have 80 to 100 grand on you.

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How do you have it, like in hundreds?

Yeah. In stacks, yeah.

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How big is $100,000?

So $10,000,  if it is folded in half, which is pretty common, is about the size of maybe two decks of cards. The MIT team talks about this in their book, is going through airports to get to these cities with all this money, because you don’t want to put it in your bag. You want to keep it on your person. So you essentially have anywhere from 40 to like 80, $10,000 strapped on you. And if you won big in a city, you are taking back even more. Like $100 bills in 10 straps just all over your body.

One of the gnarliest situations I was in…You kind of get used to that after a while, which is probably bad, because it is still a lot of money, and as a player, you are responsible for the money you are holding.

I am in Vegas and a player on our team had won, I think, 45 grand at Caesar’s, and had 45 grand in brown chips, which are $5,000 chips.

Well he went home without cashing them out. So now the team has these nine brown chips and it is not worth anything to us. So I was handed these, and like, “Go try to cash these out.”

So I am in Caesar’s. I have got these nine brown chips. I go to the cage and they are like, “We have no record of you winning this. We are not going to give you the money.” And I am like, “Seriously? They are my chips. My friend game them to me. He won them. He forgot to cash them out.  I am telling them the truth.”  It sounds like complete bullshit and I am telling the truth. And they are like, “Sorry.” So I call one of our managers and I am like, “Listen. I can’t cash these out.” And he is like, “Well see what you can do. Go to a Roulette table, throw down $100 on something and just try to break it up.”

So I go to a roulette table and I give them a $5,000 chip, and I am like, “Can you break this down?” They break it down. I have got $100 on black or something, and then took that, walked to another Roulette table and did it again.

Well the second time, the guy held on to it and wouldn’t give it back. The casino manager comes down, takes the chip, starts asking me questions. Pretty much thinks that I stole this money, because they do keep track of who wins brown chips, because it is one of their biggest denomination of chips, and I have no record of having won these chips.

So they call the police. The police are there. They are questioning me about this one brown chip. Well I’ve got like eight more in my pocket, plus I’ve got about 25 grand worth of Wynn chips in my pocket, and I have got like another 60 grand worth of cash. So I probably have close to 100 grand on me in chips and cash.

And these police officers think that I might have stole money or chips, and they are interrogating me in Caesar’s, and they ask me questions. And I am just like, “Look. I am just telling the truth. It’s my friend’s chips. He forgot to cash them out. I am trying to do it for him. They won’t let me. I am just trying to get it done.”

Well they don’t have any reason to actually arrest me or anything, so they finally let me go. But it is kind of like you are in situations where you all of a sudden become very acutely aware of how much money you have on your body and how big of a deal that could be.

We have a guy who was stopped by the DEA at an airport. He maybe had 40, 50 grand on him or something. They somehow knew. They came up to him and said, “How much money do you have on you?” He tells them how much money he has on him. And they are like, “Why do you have all this money on you?” And he’s like, “I am part of a professional card counting team. Here is the number to the guy who manages the team. Here is all my paperwork.” He probably shows them charts, his hours, and everything, and he is like, “That is what I do.”

The DEA, they could take money from you for any reason, and then you basically have to wait and prove that you have it for a real reason; you are not selling drugs or something.

So he calls the manager, talks to him, and basically was like, “Listen. I don’t know what is going on here completely. But just because both of you guys have been really, really nice and haven’t given me any shit, I am going to let you go. If your friend would have given me any attitude at all, I would have taken all this money.”

So stuff like that will happen. We have had money confiscated and we have gotten it back. We had a guy who left 10, 15 grand in a hotel room on accident. He was down the road 20 miles before he realized it. Had the “Oh shit” moment, turned around, got to the hotel, and fortunately, the maid found it and turned it in. So they had it, but they are like, “We are not going to give this to you. We are going to call the police.” Like, who has 15 grand on them in a hotel room?

So they call the police. The police come and he is like, “Look. I have all this money because I was at a casino. I play Blackjack. In fact, I do it for a living. I count cards. You want to see? Watch.” And he starts teaching them how to count cards.

So there are like two or three police officers there, and he is like teaching them. And they are like, “Ah! That’s really interesting.” And like, backup is coming for some reason. It’s like a small town or something and everyone is interested. And they are like, “Hey Frank! Come in here! This guy counts cards! Hey, show him again what you do with the card counting!” And so, he is like showing all these police officers how to count cards.

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I was reading there are counter measures the casinos are doing to take away the advantage, like these continuous shufflers and facial recognition. Is there any stuff that is actually working that they are doing?

Sure. Continuous shuffle machines totally shut down the possibility of counting cards.

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You can’t do it with that?

You cannot count cards with that. And the only reason why not all casinos do that is because not only does it keep card counters from your tables, but people who are purists of the game know that that is a way for the casino to get more of an advantage. Not only does it randomize cards completely and make it impossible to count cards, it actually does affect your edge and makes it harder for you as just a normal player to win.

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What are in the statistics there? Like, with the edge the house has?

I don’t know. Like a really good house edge…I don’t geek out on the math. But a continuous shuffle machine completely randomizes the cards and makes it impossible to count cards.  It probably gives the house somewhere around half a percent, probably more, of an edge than…

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And a half a percent will change you from playing it or not playing it?

Sure.  The shoe has to get rich enough in the right cards for that to turn around. And not only do you want it to turn around, but you want it to turn around, and for you to not only have a slight advantage, you want it to turn around for you to have a substantial advantage. And that is when you start betting really big, when you have a one to two percent edge over the house, not like a half a percent edge.

So every percentage that the house takes from the beginning actually does affect whether or not it is even a valuable game. It even affects how much we pay players, how much the game is worth really.

You can look at a game and you can know mathematically, if I played 100 hands per hour sitting at that table betting this much at this time, that game is worth $1,000 an hour. You can know mathematically, over the long run, how much you expect to make. And that number is super important. That number is what we base how much we pay players off of. That number is what casinos use to know how much they comp players and how valuable the game is for them. It is the same exact number.

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Anything else I’m missing?

Many people on our team use it as an opportunity to launch themselves into other things. There are like a lot of people on our team who started their own businesses, who work for nonprofits, who do stuff where they normally couldn’t do if they didn’t have the team to kind of help.

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Like a bunch of Robin Hoods.

Essentially! [laughs] I mean what is unique about our team is like…I met this guy at a bible camp, and we are all people who believe in God and believe that we should be moral. And in a way, that kind of helps bring that integrity and consistency of the team that we can trust each other. And a lot of these people are like, “I want to go and I want to serve my city or I want to serve my church, and I want to use this opportunity to be a good husband and a good…like, this is a blessing. I want to do this…”

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That is the most insane thing ever. You said that you met your card counting buddy at bible camp?

Yeah.

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That is insane.

Yeah.  I think everyone on the team is a Christian, in the sense that we believe in God. We believe in Jesus…I am really cautious to say that means that we are more awesome and that we can trust each other because we are Christians, because Christians are screwed up. But we do have that in common.

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Wow. Well, I think there is something special there that you guys share, that it is beyond just some random person. There is a common belief. That’s super unique.

Yeah. It is a really neat part of our team, for sure.

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