Nightclub Bottle Waitress Confessions

Tales of Taboo

Ali Weiss

Society & Culture

4.8 • 725 Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2022

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Which professional soccer player shoved a $20 bill in a waitress’ mouth? Which famous actress with legal troubles had a waitress pretend to be her to evade the paparazzi? Which talent manager promised a waitress a spot on Love Island in exchange for sex?

As someone who’s been clubbing for 13 years, I’ve long been fascinated with bottle waitresses. You know - those gorgeous girls in skintight dresses bringing over the magnums of champagne and sparklers. I saw their job as a tremendous position of feminine power: arm candy getting paid to party with important people in important places. I wanted to be one of them. Or…so I thought.

This week’s anonymous waitresses worked for a super exclusive downtown New York hospitality group, Catch, the Tao Group, Soho House, Public Hotel (created by Ian Schrager of Studio 54), and a notorious high-end strip club in London. Our on-the-record contributor Allie (IG: @allie.keel) even worked some shady private parties in Malaysia when she was only 17!

At their best, they hung out with prime ministers & pop stars and made $10,000 in a night. At their worst, they were forced into deeply compromising situations to get tips, got taken advantage of by their bosses, picked up used heroin needles from bathroom floors, and sang ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’ in slam poetry (!). In between, their lives, which began at 9pm and ended at 5am, lacked structure and purpose. They found it hard to establish romantic relationships. They crumbled under pressure to maintain the ‘perfect body’ (even their hands). And they worried about their impending expiration dates. What would come next? Learn the dirty truth about being a bottle girl while getting an intimate and cohesive look into how the world's most exclusive nightclubs operate.

~ Tales of Taboo is produced and narrated by Ali Weiss. Follow Ali on Instagram & TikTok @aliweissworld. Audio production by Zoe Kuhlkin. Theme song by Chris Stathopolous. Cover photo by Erika Flynn. Cover art by Kristen Montenegro. GOT A SECRET TO GET OFF YOUR CHEST? Share your own confession - or thoughts and feedback - at [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, my little degenerate angels. Welcome back to another week of life lived on the edge.
0:28.2	My name is Ali Weiss and this is Tales of Taboo, an investigation into and celebration of what happens behind closed doors, as told by my very own listeners.
0:40.8	Each week I invite them and their friends and their friends of friends,
0:45.2	and even sometimes people I find in deep internet research rabbit holes to share
0:50.5	totally anonymous stories about their various out of the ordinary or so-called socially
0:56.7	unacceptable life experiences. My goal is to encourage every person listening to question why certain
1:05.1	topics are deemed shameful or trashy or off limits when there are some of the most impactful and honest looks
1:14.2	into the human experience. I could really summarize this show as being somewhere between
1:20.1	daytime television, a therapy session, and an expensive lobotomy in the mountains of Switzerland,
1:26.8	and it's the absolute honor and joy of
1:30.1	my life to be your host. So let's get into it. Starting at the age of 15, I was totally obsessed with
1:43.1	nightlife.
1:49.3	And it raged on for 10 years, like really until the pandemic.
1:59.9	Going out at night, at least in a place like New York, is a portal into everything good and bad about being alive simultaneously.
2:06.4	It's druggy and elitist and expensive, but it's also the best way to develop taste in music and art and fashion. It's addictive. And I've explored literally all
2:15.5	of its sectors, hip-hop, deep house, reggae, tiny underground parties,
2:22.1	massive warehouse parties, bars that center around music and massive clubs with tables.
2:29.2	And most of the massive clubbing I did when I was underage with promoters.
2:37.3	But within those big clubs is something in particular that's always piqued my interest more than anything. And that is bottle girls.
2:44.0	They are those gorgeous girls in the tiny little outfits who bring over the magnums of champagne
2:50.2	that have sparklers in them.
2:52.5	And to be honest, I've always secretly wanted to be them because I saw their job as this
	...

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