Butter is still better. (Part Two)

[cpnews]

Tuesday we posted part one of Steve's conversation with Sherry Cosovic. They discussed the multitude of clubs that have embraced her at the door as well as common threads found throughout the nightlife scene. If you missed day one, read it now. Otherwise keep on reading for day two.

Everyday we hear about the city harassing clubs, forcing them to close their doors over extremely minor infractions. If you looked real hard at a Macy’s or a Madison Square Garden during a rock concert, you would find infraction after infraction. Not only public safety issues like aisles being blocked or even doors, but drugs being happily abused. Tell me that when the Stones play the Garden that the smell of pot isn’t everywhere. Yet someone lights up a blunt in a club and you basically get swat teams rolling in. Our interview today and yesterday puts a face on who is getting hurt by this unfair and quite possibly illegal double standard.

Sherry is a single mother. Her entire income comes from club work. Club people aren’t evil doers, as they are often portrayed at community board meetings. They are mothers with babies and actors looking for a career, they are students, schooling days while working nights. They are people who can’t pay their rent or their grocery bills without a second job. They are DJs who will become record producers or artists, they are artists selling little and moonlighting in a joint. They are taxpayers.

I saw a girl dragged out of a club the other night. She apparently was doing blow, which is never a good thing. She was in handcuffs and not as a means to pay for the powder, but because the cops had arrested her. She was taken away teary eyed in a blue van and her future has become a little bit cloudy. Maybe it’s a good thing, maybe she’ll quit, get some help. It just seems like this present administration does everything a little bit heavy handed. I just don’t remember this sort of thing happening before. It seems like we are ruled by a regime not an administration, and I’ve heard that despite the law he wants to wangle another term. He’s a despot, this mayor of ours, and all the good he has done means nothing because of his lack of a connection with people like Sherry and the little guys who are hurt because of his ivory tower approach to our town. Someone said he’s better than Giuliani, but I don’t see it that way. Under Giuliani there were people you could talk to. Now we are just told what’s good for us.

SL: So tell me what else you do. Now you’re working the door at Butter on Mondays and you’re hosting a little bit inside.

SC: I’ve been hosting more because they hired Bin two years ago to do the door and help me out. He’s also the door guy at 1 Oak. I book all the tables, I put people at tables where they belong, and the toughest part for me is having to move people from tables in case celebrities just show up unexpected. That can be a little rough.

SL: People don’t mind.

SC: Well, yeah - but that’s the toughest part.

SL: How do you define a celebrity?

SC: How do I define a celebrity. Wow. How do I define a celebrity?

SL: Well at what point do you remove someone from a table? I mean, you wouldn’t move someone from a table if it was a football player?

SC: No, no. I would move maybe if it was someone like a Jeter or an A. Rod, the Jay Z’s of the world.

SL: Movie stars.

SC: Right. Leonardo of course and such; movie stars to me, not young Hollywood.

SL: Right.

SC: Which, you know, they think they’re celebrities.

SL: Well, they are.

SC: I mean, yeah, I guess. I beg to differ. I actually have a funny story for you. I was working the door at Lotus and these kids roll up that are like, ‘Hey we’re with the band 98 Degrees.’ And I’m like, ‘98 degrees?’ I mean, I dunno who 98 degrees is. He like, ‘What do you mean you don’t know who 98 Degrees is?’ I go, ‘The only 98 Degrees that I know is my pussy when I’m fucking.’ Everyone was on the floor, dying.

SL: Oh my god, that’s amazing. My definition of a celebrity was always if you would be proud to have their name in the paper the next day, that’s a celebrity.

SC: Really? I don’t know.

SL: If you were to say that Jake Gyllenhaal was at Butter, you’d say oh that’s cool. If it was some football player from the Giants, who cares. That’s the way I see it.

SC: And you know look at Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton, it’s like now it pays to be a whore…

SL: It always pays to be a whore, what are you talking about; that’s nothing new, that’s the point.

SC: I mean to be a celebrity, to be a celebrity to be in Hollywood, to be in the Hollywood crowd.

SL: Wasn’t it always that way…

SC: But that’s why all these little girls are so promiscuous, because they think it’s okay.

SL: I think they’re promiscuous because it’s fun.

SC: Huh? No, no. They look at Paris Hilton and the Kim Kardashians of the world and think it’s okay. Paris Hilton, look at her - that’s what made her famous, so I might as well, you know?

SL: Right.

SC: Listen, I’m not saying I’m an angel, I did my thing; but there was a line of respect, of self-respect.

SL: I always liked Paris. I thought Paris was always fun, and cool.

SC: She’s cool.

SL: I never liked Lindsay. I’m sorry. Now that she’s with Sam, who we love, now that that thing’s going on, whatever’s going on and I see them together, I think she’s so cool cause Samantha Ronson is absolutely cool.

SC: Samantha’s great.

SL: Samantha’s great. Therefore Lindsay now is great. So uh she turned me around, I’m very happy. I know she doesn’t give a damn but I like her. I wrote something once where I put her down and now I see no reason to put her down. I think she’s really turned a corner and she’s healthy, happy, and she looks pretty good.

SC: She’s straight.

SL: Is she?

SC: She’s straight now. And Samantha is of course. Samantha doesn’t get high or do drugs.

SL: She’s a Ronson. Of all the people I’ve ever met the Ronsons are just about as cool as everyone. Charlotte, Marc…

SC: I remember when Marc DJd at USA on Thursdays.

SL: That was a long time ago. So that’s when you started really going out?

SC: Yeah, it was ‘93, ’94. I was fifteen, sixteen and I was hanging out with thirty year olds. Thirty year old criminals at fifteen, sixteen going to USA.

SL: You paint a great picture of the club, I had fifteen year old girls and thirty year old criminals.

SC: Yes, you were hanging out with thirty year old criminals they had thousands of dollars in their pocket and they just paid for everything.

SL: What were some other places you have worked?

SC: Well I’ve done Lotus, Chaos, Shine, Kit Kat with Danny A and them Uptown, which used to be Expo with Matty Johnson and Simone. I’ve worked at Cheetah and System which is now The Grand. I was going to The Grand in high school. I’m 32 now – so I’ve been going out eighteen years, and in the business going on twelve years now.

SL: So it took you six years to figure out that you can make money from the clubs. You’ve been working a long time.

SC: Yes, and it was just a random thing.

SL: That’s how it starts. Now you’re Albanian

SC: I’m Albanian.

SL: You mentioned that awhile ago. I remember when I was at the door with you and you’d be hanging out with some Albanians, and you know there’s a lot of nice Albanians let’s be real, but there’s a lot of asshole Albanians.

SC: Majority.

SL: And a lot of those asshole Albanians go to clubs and you’d be the hardest on all these people, I was actually nicer than you.

SC: I hated them.

SL: I was nicer; I would let some of them in, but you were vicious.

SC: Cause I knew what they were about, you know what I mean?

SL: Right, do they get into Butter? Is there a truce with those people? The old school ones; they grow up, have they matured? Not at all…

SC: Not at all. I just turn my head I don’t let one of them in, I don’t.

SL: Now you support yourself with clubs, this is your choice of income.

SC: This is the way I make my money.

SL: And you have a child, how old is your child?

SC: I have a six year old son named Jason.

SL: And you’ve raised him on your own.

SC: On my own since I was five months pregnant.

SL: And you’ve fought hard. I remember back in the day before you got pregnant which, congratulations by the way, we used to hang out together and we always tried to get you a job. I gotta tell you, when you needed work I’d get twenty-five phone calls; we gotta find something for Sherry, we gotta find something for Sherry. One thing about you that I think has really helped you now, is that we used to give you lots of things to do, and you could do anything.

SC: Anything.

SL: We’d give you something to do whether it was answering the phones for a minute or doing the door or whatever, you’d always fill in and I think that that gave you a fairly rounded outlook. Is that about right? It’s that you’ve learned and you’re experienced from doing lots of things.

SC: It’s scary because I know this job too well, there’s nothing else. I need to feed my brain with other things.

SL: Well there are books.

SC: I know, of course. Hello Steve, I do read. I’ve been studying for the last three and a half years, taking acting classes, you know

SL: Are you going to be an actress?

SC: I mean, I believe so

SL: I remember back in the day, your sidekick was Vanessa, what was her last name?

SC: Ferlito.

SL: Nowadays she’s making a little bit in John Leguizamo movies…

SC: Quentin Tarantino flicks.

SL: We used to call Vanessa “Lips†and I used to read lines with her by the club. You were her best friend, and then after she made it and she’s out in Hollywood and all of that, you and her just don’t talk anymore, she just stopped talking to you.

SC: Done. Changed her number.

SL: Changed her number and your lifelong friend, sister, decided to cut you off.

SC: She was literally like my sister, my other half.

SL: You guys were inseparable, and she makes it big time and cuts out a large part of her life, not only you but lots of other people.

SC: Yes. It was crazy. When we stopped speaking I was going through a lot in my life at the time and I needed her the most. I just had a baby, and she wasn’t there. It hurt me more than when I broke up with my husband. That bond that we had it was like a sister bond, like a sister I never had. I would just sit there and say to myself, what did I do? What made her feel this way, what made her just cut me off? But you know, I guess she wasn’t true to herself.

SL: Would she show up one night? How will you deal with it if she does?

SC: I don’t know. No ill will at all, I wish her luck on her path but some things are better left unsaid. When I see her, I’ll know what I feel.

SL: I remember you having a little bit of a temper. The Sherry I know is capable at any moment of gouging the eyes out of the nearest human being.

SC: I’ve grown.

SL: You’ve grown?

SC: I’ve grown. I control it. I try to control my temper. I mean, I do control my temper.

SL: That’s fantastic. Because the only beef I had with you was that I was afraid of you at the door sometimes. I would say, ‘Sherry, go inside Sherry.’

SC: All the fights that I had at Life and Spa, they would hide me in the office; that’s all done.

SL: Did the child calm you down?

SC: Of course. But there was this time when I was in Miami with my son and I had lost my phone. I forgot it in Puerto Sagua, a Cuban restaurant in Miami. So I get to an FYI to buy some DVDs and I realize my phone’s missing, so the guy let’s me use his phone in the store to call my phone. I call the phone and some Cuban girl picks up and says, ‘Yeah I just found this phone.’ I said, ‘That’s my phone, can I meet you.’ She goes, ‘No. I’m at 75th and Collins, you gotta come up here and meet me.’ Now I’m on first and Collins. I told her that I have a six year old son, it’s my phone, can you please meet me half way. She said no, the only way you’re gonna get your phone back is if you give me a hundred dollars. So you know, I didn’t want to wile out on her over the phone cause I wanted to meet her and get my phone – but I was raging Steve, I’m with my son in Miami! So we get a cab, we get to 75th and Collins, I get out the car, she’s waiting there with three little girls, and she’s maybe eighteen. She’s like, where’s my money, and I just cracked her right in the face and took my phone. My son turned around in the back seat when I got in and said to me, ‘Mommy, you always tell me not to hit anyone, why would you do that?’ I said, ‘She was trying to shake me down for my phone, it belonged to me. That was a line of disrespect and she was trying to shake me down.’ That’s one thing I’m always going to teach my son, so that my son will always be a man and stand up for himself.

SL: It makes sense.

SC: But it hurt me to see that my son was there and watched it, but then I said to myself no - cause I don’t want anyone to step all over him either…

SL: You’ve always kept it real.

SC: Always. Although I’m not a bully. I’ve never just gone up to someone and smacked them for no reason.

SL: No, you’ve always been real. You’ve always been a person that could be trusted, and that’s the main thing. I think in the business that the most important thing is trust. It is the thing that some people get and those that don’t, you don’t trust. We don’t have to mention too many names, I mention them all the time in the column; they’ll fail in the end, and those that can be trusted do very well.

SC: It’s true. And no one can say anything bad about me. I’ve always been loyal and honest to everyone.

SL: So you’re not gonna end up being an owner, you’re not interested in that stuff.

SC: No no no.

SL: You’re not gonna have your own bar…

SC: Scott’s been pressuring me to manage and I said I can’t. I love my hours, I love socializing, and just leaving…

SL: So you’ll be an actress.

SC: I will. It’s gonna happen.

SL: I believe you. I know how far you’ve come to get here.

SC: I’m the underdog. The underdogs always come out on top, and I’m a late bloomer.

Good Night,

Mr. Lewis

Interview conducted and written by Steve Lewis.

Interview has been edited and condensed by Jessica Tocko.

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