For anyone unfamiliar with the Universal CityWalk, tucked right
beside Universal Studios in Hollywood, it is a monument to excess.
Everything is big. And loud.
It’s just past 9 p.m., and not many people are around
before the buses come. Kiosks and shops close for the night. The
only places still open are bars. And although they’re not
busy, it looks like they know what’s coming.
It’s Thursday, Oct. 24, and Pepperdine’s business
and law school are coming to take over. In a program spearheaded by
UCLA and Universal, students from colleges all over Los Angeles are
being bussed to and from CityWalk to party and drink the night
away. Nov. 7 will be UCLA’s turn.
Everything started when Scott Porter, manager of promotions at
Universal CityWalk, began a pilot program, the College Club Crawl
(C-3 for short), that bussed UCLA students to the CityWalk spring
quarter of 2002. For Porter, UCLA was the perfect testing
ground.
“It was location, it was easy to get there, it was the
perfect demo(graphic),” he said. “I lived close to the
school so it was easy for me to go out one night and talk to people
about it.”
The deal was students would go out and party like mad. CityWalk
would foot the bill for transportation, offer specials for drinks
at each location, and waive any cover charges that a club might
have.
Porter contacted Anthony Bertuca, now a fourth-year
communication studies student, through his fraternity, Theta
Xi.
“You always wonder what the catch is,” Bertuca said.
“So we did the first one, and we didn’t know what to
expect, and it was so much fun.”
Bertuca quickly became Porter’s liaison to UCLA for C-3,
and the two arranged a second run, tripling the amount of students
involved from 50 to 150. From there, Bertuca began a summer
internship with Universal, and establishing C-3 as a regular event
became his main focus.
“I think I have one of the best jobs ever,” Bertuca
said, “because it moves a bunch of people who are already
fairly tight, like the Marshall School of Business at USC, or the
UCLA Fraternity and Sorority System, all to a different location,
and it gives them a bunch of different things to do.”
But Porter notes this is not a specifically Greek System
program.
“It’s actually open to any groups that want to
participate,” he said. “The reason why it’s (so
far been only) fraternities and sororities is that they’re
the easiest group to penetrate and get the word out to.”
As a student, Bertuca’s mission is justified since his
complaint with nightspots in Westwood is one that most students at
UCLA share.
“Every night kids go out to Madison’s and
Maloney’s and BrewCo., the same old thing every time,”
Bertuca said. “And a lot of students aren’t even from
L.A. and don’t know where else they can go. People have heard
of Universal Studios, most have heard of CityWalk, but nobody knows
what’s up there.”
Eric Bailey, a first-year Pepperdine business student, explains
that the reason he decided to show up is, “They listed the
drink specials (while promoting this event). Two dollar beers. Two
dollar wells. So I’m getting drunk for cheap.”
The Pepperdine crowd first invades the Café Tu Tu Tango, an
outdoor patio bar/restaurant before taking the stairs to the top
floor of Jillian’s, which sports a ten-lane bowling alley.
Behind the bar and between the bottles of booze are a bunch of
bowling pins.
From there, everyone heads over to the nocturnal Universal
Cityloft. The Karl Strauss Brewery is the first stop. By now, the
graduate students from Pepperdine are flinging beer coasters at
each other from across the bar.
Tonight, Porter, a Pepperdine alumnus, is among the group. He
makes it a point to accompany all the schools that come out.
“This is a really tame crowd,” he says. “With
undergrads, it gets really crazy. And with UCLA, we’re
looking at ten times the students we have out here
tonight.”
Some head over to B. B. King’s, a bar/restaurant named
after the blues guitarist. Some check out Howl at the Moon, a
double piano bar which takes audience requests for anything from
Quiet Riot’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” to
The Monkee’s “Daydream Believer.” They also spend
15 minutes telling dirty knock-knock jokes. After a few beers, this
is the most incredible piece of entertainment ever.
Others head over to Rumba Room. Outside the bass beat is
audible. Inside it’s deafening. A live disc jockey plays
hip-hop, R&B and dance music.
The final buses leave after all the bars close for the night.
For the Pepperdine crowd, it’s best they’re not doing
any of the driving. Porter mentioned this was a tame crowd;
it’s hard to imagine what UCLA is capable of.
Concerning C-3 as a whole, Bertuca enjoys the prospect.
“The college club crawl is going to stop Nov. 21,”
he said. “And then they’ll pick up again in January.
There hasn’t been a date set, but there will definitely be
multiple UCLA nights. Starting January, we’re going all the
way through June, every Thursday night.”