Have you ever wanted to party like a complete Hollywood douchebag and pretend you’re contributing in some meaningful way to bettering the state of “socio-economically devastated” Los Angeles communities? If so, shell out over $100 and attend an event organized by Tonite, an event production company run by recent alumni Justin Combs and UCLA football linebacker Kene Orjioke and third-year political science student Jake Juels. All three met while playing football at UCLA.
Having taken an online marketing survey about how much college students would be willing to pay for LA nightlife, I received a mysterious invite to Tonite’s first event: a Halloween party in 2015. Although I didn’t attend, the event description piqued my interest. However, since then, Tonite has rebranded from accessible-yet-pricy premium nightlife experience for college students and other relatively young partygoers to an ultra-exclusive, lavish event targeted at Hollywood “influencers” and other LA socialites that have at least a few Ks in their Instagram follower count.
Tickets to the event in 2015 began at $50 for female guests and $80 for male guests, putting the price of tickets far beyond the entertainment budget of most college students. However, included in the price was an open bar and food, and a portion of the proceeds went toward “progressing lower socioeconomic communities.”
Tonite’s first event, however, was marred by logistical disasters. According to Orjioke and Juels, tickets were oversold, leading to an angry crowd of would-be party guests waiting outside the venue in downtown LA. After, guests were refunded, and until their most recent Halloween event, Tonite went dark, even as I kept in touch with Orjioke for news of the next event.
In a dazzling show of over-hyped ineptitude, it took an entire calendar year for Tonite to organize its second event this past Sunday. In order to up their “star power,” aside from Combs being P. Diddy’s son, Tonite has since added Angus T. Jones, the actor who played Jake Harper on “Two and a Half Men,“ to the business team.
It’s fitting, given the rebrand, that the Eventbrite description for this year’s event includes rules such as, “No forced interactions with celebrities, influencers or VIP guests. Those who do, will be removed from the event by security.”
When I arrived at this year’s “The Purge”-themed Halloween event, I did indeed see some people I might consider famous, like Flo Rida and model Shaun Ross, but all in all it was mostly populated by people I’d never heard of. Orjioke said both T.I. and P. Diddy showed up after I had left.
For this year’s event, ticket prices jumped to $150 for general admission. That’s triple what was advertised as the starting price for a female general admission ticket per the 2015 Eventbrite description. According to Orijoke, 5 percent of the profit from Tonite’s most recent Halloween event in 2016 will benefit LA’s Best, an after-school program for elementary school-aged children attending LA public schools in economically disadvantaged areas.
At only 5 percent of profit going to LA’s Best, and given that Orjioke confirmed Tonite had sold approximately 800 tickets for the 2016 Halloween event, LA’s Best will end up receiving less than $10,000 at most. Clearly, this attempt to “uplift, bring awareness to and impact” low-income LA communities is more a publicity stunt than anything else, since that money once disseminated among tens of schools could amount to little more than school supplies for the kids.
While attending the event, held in an Armenian cultural center in Hollywood, it became abundantly clear that few, if any, UCLA students were present. Having met with Juels prior to the event about Tonite’s changed vision, this came as little surprise. I did, however, meet some USC students volunteering as “models,” or people who dressed in costume and helped guests with various tasks. It’s evident that making a profit for Tonite posed a challenge despite the $150 ticket cost since it required the labor of college students paid in food and event attendance in order to get the event completely ready.
There was, indeed, an open bar as promised. Outside of the event there was also a cigar bar, as well as burgers, fries and tacos interestingly plated on what appeared to be sushi boats. Luxury cars, including Bentleys and Lamborghinis, lined the entry to the event, which included a pseudo-red carpet and police presence.
Juels envisioned the ideal clientele for Tonite’s events as a “20-something-year-old who is tasteful, who values culture, who wants to experience nightlife in a more perfected way.” According to Juels, his own LA nightlife experiences informed his goals and vision for Tonite’s future events. Here it becomes apparent that college students like Juels himself are seemingly all but forgotten.
Tasteful people in exclusive venues, conveniently enough, mean plenty of women dressed to the nines in sexy Halloween costumes and men wearing large amounts of jewelry, including one man dressed as a sheikh who kept insisting I put his Instagram handle into this article (I won’t). He later bragged that his bling was indeed 18-karat gold. Apparently, what Juels considers “tasteful” clientele also includes several people in culturally appropriated costumes with Native American headdresses, Inuit hoods and mockeries of traditional Chinese clothing. Though Tonite cannot control what its guests wear, is cultural appropriation truly “tasteful” and valuing of culture?
21 Savage and Young Thug were set to perform later in the evening, but the scene felt more high-school dance than exclusive Hollywood club. Hardly anyone was dancing, and bored partygoers lined up along the edges of the ballroom while playing with their phones. Sneezing from the cigar smoke that hung thick in the air of the foyer, I attempted to leave the venue after watching the dance floor fill up ever so painfully and slowly.
However, as I tried to leave, crowds had formed around both entrances into the venue. The gates were firmly closed, and LAPD and LAFD officials hovered between the organizers and the would-be guests. Although Tonite had not oversold tickets for their sophomore effort, the venue hit capacity early on, with Orijoke estimating guest numbers at around 1500 in spite of having only sold around 800 tickets.
The source of the discrepancy? According to Orijioke, the extra guests were Comb’s many friends in LA, who received complimentary tickets. Orjioke also attributes this issue of hitting capacity early on to the entourage of celebrities such as Chris Brown, T.I. and P. Diddy. Orjioke claims those in the crowd outside were largely not ticket-holders, but rather various random people who learned of the event through friends of friends. Any ticket-holders in the crowd were refunded the cost of their tickets, and at press time, two emailed Tonite in order to do so.
An LAPD officer on a motorcycle barked at the crowds to stay back as a large man dressed as Biggie Smalls helped me leave through the narrow gate opening and slightly hostile crowd. A host of cars lined up outside the venue filled with frustrated partygoers. Although I cannot personally comment on what happened as I left early, TMZ later reported it as a “mob.”
If this is what counts as an exclusive Hollywood evening, I’m rather disappointed. If you are interested in paying a lot of money to attend the same events with people who are famous on Instagram and maybe in real life, then Tonite’s events may be the place for you. However, don’t let Tonite’s publicity sway you; its philanthropic ethos is nothing more than a thinly veiled, poorly organized stunt to justify lavish excesses.