All work and all play

Here, in the other city that never sleeps, I still managed to sneak a few hours of rest in after work last Friday. After all, if you're going to hang with the pro clubbers on their own terms and vampire schedules, a few z's worth of bio-clock adjustment is the least you can do for your brain and bones before throwing them both into a hardcore Vegas nightlife sub-scene with no sympathy for the day-walkers. The after-hours people you'll find here -- industry types whose lives are a curious cocktail of constant work and constant play -- may not be out for blood, but they are serious about milking the night past all reasonable expectations. This is their story.

It's just after midnight when I meet Vegas Alliance VIP host Brandon Walker at New York-New York's just-opened Rok Vegas nightclub. Walker's dark sport coat means business. He doesn't work for Rok, the hotel or even ultimate owner MGM Mirage, but no one at the door seems to mind when he escorts me in himself, through a gauntlet of casual-fabulous-attired souls all looking for a piece of fresh Strip action. Rok doesn't have its grand opening until Labor Day weekend, but this less official get-to-know-you phase has been under way for a week or so, and with a turnout already looking about as grand as it gets.

"Soft" openings like the one here, at our first stop, are a big deal for all involved, from owner to server, DJ to dancer -- even those who own, serve, DJ and dance somewhere else entirely. Once we're inside and posted at the table Vegas Alliance has reserved for the night, one of Brandon's associates, Seamless Gentleman's Club VIP host and resident DJ Brian Hart explains how it doesn't really matter whose payroll you're on; despite the dizzying inventory of nightlife brands and logos in the valley, all of clubland is a collective tighter than you'd think, with those who make a living from fueling its non-stop engines all looking out for each other.

"We're not here to steal anyone's customers," he says, taking in the new room. "It's not a competition. It's just that we don't have a right to expect them to come to our club unless we show up at theirs first."

While Hart describes a promoter's role in making all the connections that ensure the healthy client base needed to keep late-nights alive, Alliance member Dave Garcia texts furiously nearby while a wet-lipped blonde -- one of several who accessorize every group like this in town -- grinds on the leg of another well-dressed guy at the table to the mashed-up tune of Guns 'n' Roses' "Paradise City." Wedged in with my pen and notebook, I feel like I'm in a hair metal video, cast as the uber-nerd caricature who gets his cut-loose-and-party lesson served up loud and fast. But they've got their jobs and I've got mine. Theirs just demands more dedicated socializing. That old conventional wisdom about not mixing business and pleasure? In this scene, the two wrap each other up nightly, with a passion exceptional even for a city that eats conventional wisdom for breakfast.

"We're all heading to Tabu around two-thirty, bro," reminds Walker, just back from some dedicated socializing. Vegas Alliance principal Gino LoPinto just showed up as well, now standing in his pinstripes, surveying the place and quietly glowing over thoughts of his new twins, born just today. ("Welcome to the world, my beautiful baby girls!!!!!!" he'd texted me earlier.)

While milling around and chatting up random patrons under Rok's 360-degree LED screen and its sound-synched CGI craziness, I realize time has flown. By the time we all reconvene at MGM's Tabu across the street, I'm also realizing something crucial about this world, now that I'm on the other side of the wizard's curtain, so to speak. Among the all-night superclubber soup of industry people, unaffiliated locals and tourists, industry dominates even more thoroughly than I'd imagined. The hundreds of drinkers and dancers who drive this machine into the not-so-wee morning hours are almost all here by someone's direct invitation, or at least by some very focused word-of-mouth. Promoters like LoPinto, Walker, Garcia and Hart are really a sleeker, subtler version of old-time carnival barkers. The "Hurry, hurry! You sir! You ma'am!" has just been replaced with an easygoing -- but no less compelling -- push to keep things rolling 'til the break of day. A grinning Hart explains it best: "It's a lot of shaking hands and kissing babies."

As Chicago-based electrohouse DJ Dani Deahl spins in the back (I'd already been introduced to her at Rok), LoPinto mentions recently defunct Empire Ballroom and the non-casino-housed after-hours party where he used to preside. There's a definite wistfulness in his words, but he's clearly looking forward these days in the way of anyone who's managed to stay alive in this business for 18 years.

"Empire was ... I loved Empire," he says. "But free-standing in this town? Not easy. Anyway, this is a good time to raise the bar."

With a platoon of like-minded allies now working toward the same goal, LoPinto is doing all he can to raise that bar while porting Empire's formidable fan base over to MGM's Tabu and Studio 54. And if Labor Day weekend's DJ lineup for both venues is any indication, he's steadily accomplishing both.

By 4 a.m., Tabu is at full-tilt. Party people crowd the main bar, squeeze past each other with premium-priced drinks and shimmy on the dance floor, showcasing an impressively wide spectrum of pupil size and motor coordination. This is the end product of Garcia's earlier texting at Rok: a lengthy guest list he built up and confirmed during his busiest hours between midnight and 2 a.m. -- "e-barking," you might say.

A trio of Los Angeles mothers -- Amy, Alta and Danielle -- say they know the DJ (a cliché, sure, but by these rules? If they brushed her in passing, they know her). According to Alta, they come to Vegas for this whenever they can, taking turns with their currently homebound, babysitting husbands. Nearby, an off-duty member of the Stomp Out Loud crew flies into action in his polka-dot scarf, looking wired but relieved to be dancing to something he doesn't have to produce himself. It turns out the after-hours scene is peppered with work-hard-play-hard Strip performers -- more industry folk -- who flock here to decompress after quitting time, just as nine-to-fivers do at the corner bar.

Across the room, tiny bombshell Lana tells me she's an art instructor from Washington D.C., here every few weekends to do what she's doing now -- rocking a platform with the moves of a dance instructor. She's part of the out-of-town crowd Vegas Alliance partner Rafael tells me about a little later, up in the Tabu VIP section, where I'm also introduced to Johnny, Jimmy and a tall, taciturn dude they call Truth.

"Yeah, regular clients come from all over the world," Rafael says from underneath a black designer trucker cap. "They want a vacation and they call ahead because they kept a [business] card from before, so they get set up, they get guest-listed."

Around 5:30 a.m., something changes in the energy. Not so much more of it, but a different kind. More whimsical. Lana's back on the platform and having a blast, this time with a skilled b-boy who complements her movements in a bizarre coupling, an actual, disciplined dance partnership like I haven't seen before now. There's laughter all around. All bets are off, as the mood shifts away from the hip and toward the simply ... fun. Why now? A biological response to the surreal dawn no one can even see yet? The natural influence of little-understood, body-manufactured compounds? The synthetic influence of God-knows-what? My own sleeplessness and encroaching insanity?

Maybe all these things. Whatever the reason for the elevation, it feels part-and-parcel to a late-night phenomenon Hart describes later, back on his home-turf. It's close to 7 a.m. at Seamless and I'm drained. Hart, not so much. The ex-UNLV offensive tackle has brought as many people as he could round up for the after-after-hours phase and, though it's a decidedly thinner crowd than the one earlier at Tabu, it's still a party.

"Around 6 a.m., people gotta feel welcome," he says. "Or they go home. Before that, they're going to be out anyway, but now it's by no means a matter of 'Open your doors and they'll come in.' Getting them here is a bonus ... keeping them here is the hard part." Maybe so, but the persuasive powers of Hart and his associates is undeniable; glancing around, even at this ungodly hour, no one in the room looks like he's having his arm twisted.