Steve Lewis Chats Up DBTH

[cpnews]

Ever since nightlife scion Steve Lewis partnered with the good folks at JoonBug on Goodnight Mr. Lewis, we had been getting requests through intermediaries to do an interview. Finally, we relented on one condition. We got to run a sneak preview of it here first on our little site.

Steve Lewis: When I was coming up during the day, working with Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager at Studio 54, they told me that they had an idea for doing something with computers that would sort of be an online diary. And I had all of this peanut butter in my mouth, a whole mouth full of peanut butter, and when I tried to speak, the only noise I could get out was "brahg". And Steve Rubell, who was a genius, said to me, "yes a blog. That is exactly what I'm talking about. A blog." And so we actually came up with blogging then and there. And when I was running Life, I was doing everything, the door, the music, the design, making drinks, hailing cabs, blogging, the servers, and dancing. And that is sort of like Down By The Hipster, which I respect.

DBTH: Well, we there is a group of people helping out, and all of the readers, so it's tough to say that one person really does everything, but we understand the comparison.

SL: When I did the door, I learned from the best. The best. And so when I blog and when someone like Rosie blogs, you know you are going to get some nouns, some verbs, some adjectives. Those are all some of the best parts of grammar. And you mix them together and create a successful sentence. And when I was running Life, you really only got a noun, but the noun was the best one with all different letters. So your posts are sort of like me naming the club Life.

DBTH: Well, we do write about Danny A, and apparently he was a really big deal at Life, so we can see the connection. But in other ways, they really aren't anything alike.

SL: Now, when I ran Life, we really only made money at the bars. These days you can make money with the tables, which I invented, and which are like little tiny bars. And by reading Down By The Hipster, which I haven't read by the way but I hear is great and doing all those things with the posts and the stories and pictures, it seems like you not only have the bar, the main point of sale, but also tables that are the second point of sale. So it's like your running your blog like I would have run a club, like Life, when I was still doing that.

DBTH: Yeah, well, we try our hardest to run this like a business, and we cover nightclubs, so you can definitely see the similarities.

That is just a little taste of what you will be seeing tomorrow on Goodnight Mr. Lewis. We thank Steve for taking the time to interview us and look forward to a long friendship.

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