Patrick Greene
Patrick, from Carraroe in Sligo, is the average person’s key to gaining access to Manhattan’s most exclusive clubs.
Like many Irish 20-somethings, Patrick moved to New York on the J-1 graduate visa, after completing his master’s degree in e-commerce in DCU. During his first few months, he found himself socialising in the same Irish bars every other weekend. The so-called ‘city that never sleeps’ wasn’t living up to his expectations. He says he “Googled ‘best clubs in New York’ and I got myself and a few friends on the guest list for 1 OAK nightclub [famous for its celebrity clientele]. I realised that being on the guest list doesn’t really get you anywhere, and it was still $100 to get in.
“I was working in a bar at the time, and I made a contact one night with a promoter from that same club we didn’t get into — 1 OAK. He said if I started sending people down from the bar, he would pay me. So I had some business cards made and I started sending people down to him.”
Although Patrick was getting paid to send crowds to the club from the bar he was working at, it didn’t work in his favour at the time, and he got fired the week before Christmas.
“From then, I had no job apart from promoting,” he says. “So I had to go out into the Meatpacking district and get people into nightclubs as my source of income. My Irish accent was definitely an advantage, and it kept me going, but I was living from pay cheque to pay cheque.”
In the meantime, he landed a job as an intern for an ad agency called The Mill. “I was on an intern’s salary earning 15 bucks an hour, which doesn’t get you far living here, so I kept up the promoting on the side, usually on Fridays and Saturdays,” he says.
After just a couple of months, Patrick’s promoting gigs took off: “Things started going hell for leather and more venues started to reach out,” he says. Now, under his PR and Events company, The Greene Room, he works for the biggest nightclubs in New York, holding events seven nights a week, with Saturdays and Sundays amounting to 14-hour days. The company covers everything from restaurant venues to rooftops and brunch parties to nightclubs.
So how does the average person get entry to these parties, without having to fork out thousands for a table? “In a nutshell, there are 55 nightlife venues [in New York] competing for the best crowd,” he explains. “If a club has a client paying several thousand for a table, they don’t want to sit in an empty club. They want to be surrounded by a fun and energetic crowd. My job is to bring that crowd. We bring out up to 500 people a week.”
The Greene Room was hired to promote a party for a Prince of Saudi Arabia, who throws an exclusive party in a bowling alley every other year. Patrick and his friends were playing pool, when they were interrupted by a guy asking if he could he play next. “When I looked over, I saw it was Leonardo Di Caprio. He invited us to join him and his friends in a nightclub after. That was definitely a cool night.”
They have also had members of the Dublin hurling team, the Irish rugby team and cast members from Michael Flatley’s
Lord of The Dance when they were on Broadway. “I want to try to be a link between the Irish here and the Irish at home and build a community spirit in New York,” Patrick says.
Is moving home on the cards in the near future? “For the time being, New York is where it’s at,” he says. “We are looking at growing and maybe hitting up Miami or Vegas. But no, we aren’t thinking about going home — we are thinking about going bigger.”