The Clubland Flower Guy

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Friday night, at my clubnight, lots of glamorous young gay men and glamorous young girls, impeccable dancing to the best dance-pop around. About midnight I check how things are going on the door. Our doorgirl is the sweetest Swedish girl ever, everyone loves her. There?s a big queue of people waiting to pay to get in when this tall bespectacled guy, with a bucket of cheap fake roses, pushes past the queue, smiling broadly and nodding at everyone. Lovely Swedish girl stops the Flower Guy and goes ?err, three pounds please,? but Flower Guy continues to smile and nods at his bucket of flowers, like it?s his golden pass to every club in town. He clearly isn?t going to pay so I step forward: ?Ok pal, for a start you shouldn?t have pushed past everyone but you ain?t getting in here without paying. Three quid please.? Flower guy?s smile flickers but he carries on nodding and says ?Come on mate, let me go in, this is my trade.? Then I think about it and realise that most of the people inside wouldn't want some professional beggar hassling them to buy his bits of crappy plastic so I say ?Not a chance, we don?t want flower sellers in here anyway. Now leave or I?ll go and get a doorman to get rid of you.?
Flower Guy does not like this one bit. Hissing: ?You fucking prick, do you run this night??
?Yeah yeah, you?ve got five seconds to leave and then you?re getting kicked out.?
A few more pricks hurled my way, then Flower Guy paints his smile back on and walks back up the stairs, unsuccessfully plying his trade as he goes.

Now my concern here is: have I unleashed the Flower Guy fury? Who are these people? Are the flowers a cover for more unsavory activities? Can I expect to be pummelled with fake dandelions and plastic posies? What do other club-promoters do re: these guys? Was I wrong to stop this guy trying to earn a bit of bread or are these people little more than the bluebottles of clubland? I suppose this is also linked to Suspiciously polite black men in toilets whose job it is to turn on the tap, wipe your hands and then offer you some aftershave, dud or ULTRA-FUCKING-DEGRADINGLY-DUD? .

― Affectian (Affectian), Monday, 1 August 2005 11:31 (twenty years ago)

Maybe you just dissed the local pusher! Aw man you're in trouble now =)

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 1 August 2005 11:40 (twenty years ago)

I'll just have to get a posse of Jaagermeister girls on his arse. The referee will be a scally decked out in Kappa, wielding a bag of steaks he's just nicked from Kwik Save. (more of a pub thing, the latter)

― Affectian (Affectian), Monday, 1 August 2005 13:01 (twenty years ago)

apparently the flower (and flashing "jewellery") guys, in glasgow, have started to offer pirate DVDs, around pubs

I think I am going to tell the police

― RJG (RJG), Monday, 1 August 2005 13:10 (twenty years ago)

If it's the same flower guy I'm thinking of: tall, slender, mixed-race guy of indeterminate age with a scruffy goatee beard; I think I actually know this guy [in a vague sort of way] and have done for many years. He's always been a bit of a dick but afaik is not especially well connected to scary people.

ps. I think the average club dealer in this neck of the woods has never felt the need for any kind of disguise. I know this because for many years I kept on being regularly accosted in various clubs by terribly middle-class white students who were convinced that I'd recently sold them some dodgy disco biscuits (which, naturally, I had not). Unless this means that the guy was disguised as me...

― Stone Monkey (Stone Monkey), Monday, 1 August 2005 13:17 (twenty years ago)

SM, yeah, put a pair of glasses on him and that's the guy. What most amused me was the way he strolled down the stairs nodding and smiling at everyone like "Hi there, hi, yes it's me, the Flower Guy has arrived, move aside for Flower Guy, he's gotta whole load of fun for one and all, it's Flower Guy time.."

― Affectian (Affectian), Monday, 1 August 2005 13:33 (twenty years ago)

It's three fucking quid man, so you shouldn't feel guilty about not giving him a free pass.

― dog latin (dog latin), Monday, 1 August 2005 13:40 (twenty years ago)

there's a guy in nyc who goes from bar to bar selling roses (real, not fake) and behaves in a similar sort of manner - grinning, nodding at people, and generally acting like your night is saved now that he's on the scene with his bucket. likewise, he gets angry if challenged though frankly if that were my job i'd be mad as hell 99.9% of the time. and though his hard sell tactics can be annoying, east village flower man has been around for so many years at this point that a lot of people i know kind of view him as a late-night mascot.

― lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 2 August 2005 10:20 (twenty years ago)

seven years pass...

These guys~!

― how's life, Friday, 12 July 2013 19:23 (twelve years ago)

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