Everyone knows Conrad. He’s that terrifying, ungodly, bulging wall of muscle, who ripples with frustration and hate outside of Willow. With every new drunken student, he has to control his first instinct; to slice our faces open with our I.D cards. I’ve seen him headlock drunken students and crush inebriated shoulders into the ground with his elbows.
Even his outfit supports his role of Super Villain: elastic black shirts, and a little luminous arm band, wrapped gently around his bicep (his equivalent of the Super Man logo.). These stretchy tops are so revealing they’d be as effective painted on with boot polish and would save him the trouble of wearing shirts that are so tight they must severely restrict the blood and oxygen flow to that Schwarzenegger body.
It’s terrifying. The love child of Hercules and Voldemort, only the Dutch courage of a night on the town would give us the confidence to approach him.
And he’s fantastic. The wonderful thing about the ‘Voldecules,’ is that, I can’t imagine him in any other role, ever. I see him wondering into Costa coffee and demanding to see the I.D’s of everyone in the room, breathing steam into the faces of old women for floundering too long in their handbags, and dislocating the arms of businessmen for hanging around in the middle of the floor without purpose. This is exactly what we want in a bouncer, and this is the problem with Tokyo.
Conrad understands he is a bouncer. Not a student, not a raver, not the entertainment. People have not come to see him. They have come to run past him as quickly as possible, brandish their I.D’s in his face, hoping not to get pulverised, and THEN to enjoy themselves. Conrad is there in case anyone oversteps the line, to come down on you like a flash of light, lycra, armband and police speed dial at the ready.
Why is it that Tokyo bouncers and D.J’s repeatedly make the mistake of thinking that somehow, they are more than D.J’s or bouncers? It is not ok for them to pay girls to make out, join in our drinking, or behave in a way that is (as a first year History student commented the last time Vision wrote a story about the behaviour of staff in Tokyo), “cringingly inappropriate, derogatory not just to the people on stage but for all students there too.” Not only because it’s “inappropriate and derogatory,” which it is, but also because it’s simply not the point of them. If they were there to entertain the students and managed to somehow spectacularly get it wrong and face plant themselves in a world of dubious morals, then I would still think they were vile – but the point is, they’re not supposed to be partying with us at all. They’re supposed to be looking after the club, and us, to a certain extent. That’s the point of them.
I have some sympathy with them, I’ve worked in a place where the people around me were having a wonderful time and I wasn’t allowed to, and it’s really boring and difficult if you can’t involve yourself with any of it. But sadly, the role of a bouncer or D.J isn’t to enjoy the company of drunken teenagers, fill them with booze and get them to act out sexual positions. Tokyo needs to get a grip. It’s really not ok for clubbers to feel vulnerable and abused by the people who are supposed to be watching out for them.
I realise this might sound odd, but Tokyo should really learn some lessons from Willow. Failing that, they should get Conrad to monitor their staff. Hurrah for ‘Voldecules,’ there’s nothing better than a bouncer who understands his job description, and also manages to look like Mr Incredible in black. Learn your lessons Tokyo. We’re bored of these news stories. One last thing: if we’re learning lessons from Willow, maybe some free prawn crackers wouldn’t go a miss.
“..he’s fantastic”- have you met the guy? he is poor excuse of a human being, childish and over-enthused with the small amount of responsibility that he holds.
“Conrad understands he’s a bouncer” following on from my previous point, conrad is an abomination of a bouncer. Corrupt, abrupt, rash, unfair…did I mention corrupt?
The last thing York needs is more bouncers reading this while pausing to think…”maybe I SHOULD be more like Conrad”.
what a mare.
What? WHAT?
Are you serious? He’s a corrupt asshole. You can pay him extra to skip the queue or bribe your way back if you’ve been banned (which he does on regular basis, on flimsy ground, to keep the cash flowing). Or if you do not want to pay you can shag him. Yeah, he understands his job description, allright…
Conrad is a top bloke!! There is no reason to feel unsafe around him unless you don’t play by the rules, which in that case you do not deserve to enter the paradise of willow. He is firm but but fair and I will be visiting him tonight.
I ALWAYS stay at Willow until the end. There was this one time where Conrad let us stay later. Let me tell you, the things we didn’t do – not worth mentioning! I love Conrad, he is so sweet and his muscles make my knees go weak. I’m a third year now, and graduating will be the saddest day as I will no longer have Conrad in my life. Anyone who says anything against him is a facist. Luvin lyf!! xxx
Firstly, poor editing: it’s Konrad.
This really does just show how out of touch York Vision is with it’s students. I mean seriously are you just trying to seem credible by running an article on The Willow?
This is a man who has happily taken £60 from an incredibly drunk vice-president of one of the colleges to be allowed back into the Willow after being banned. This is a man who regularly waits for Willow owner Tommy to disappear upstairs before he takes £5 to £10 from students to skip the queue. And we all know of the college chair who was wrestled to the floor earlier this term…
Seriously, what is there to be celebrated about this man? He shows no interest in students other than how much he can capitalise on them. Hell you’d be better off naming Vodka Revolution or Salvation staff rather than Konrad.
Please do your homework before writing such articles again.
I’m sorry….what?!?!?!?
I genuinely don’t understand how you can hold such views – clearly you have no knowledge of what the role of a bouncer or D.J. is. Let me break it down for you.
A bouncer is on the door to check that you are over 18. His/her second role is to prevent fights (so, if someone is being a drunk dickhead, don’t let them in…or, if needed, go into the club to break up fights if/when they occur).
Conrad is the complete OPPOSITE of a good bouncer. He lets in anyone who gives him money, or who is a girl WITH or WITHOUT I.D(as he pervily grins at you… “what can I say, I am sexist”). His idea of preventing a fight is starting one, if he hasn’t had enough people kicking off outside the door earlier in the night, and is bored. From talking to other bouncers I’ve gathered that in Poland, or wherever he’s from, being a bouncer is completely different from what it is here – and a lot more violent – and he doesn’t like the guidelines for being a doorman in the UK. You praise him smashing people’s heads in?? That’s “looking after” us?!?
What is even more unbelievable to me is that after you basically make a saint of someone acting completely unprofessional, you become all priggish and bang on about the TWO events LAST YEAR where one Tokyo D.J. initiated sex games on the stage. I’ve had enough with Vision rattling on about this – it’s clear no one writing the articles was actually there, and are basing it all on the comment from ONE girl in first year. I, for one, was there for both, and took part in one of the games on stage. Maybe it was inappropriate, but it did entertain, and they haven’t done anything like that since the first backlash you single-handedly created. And here is where I come to the D.J.’s role.
You, unbelievably, claim that the D.J. is there to look after us!
Do you ever go clubbing? Honestly?
The D.J. is employed to entertain. Not to parent us!!
If you’re going to write an article as controversial as this, please have some actual knowledge of the clubs in York, and maybe what a D.J. is (the D stands for disk, by the way, not Dad).
This is a completely unfair article. I understand my incident is probably in the minority, but I was sexually assaulted in the Willow a few months ago, and while crying outside while I waited for the police to arrive (sober, i may add at this point) he told me to ‘take it elsewhere’ as it was putting off customers. He then refused to give any kind of statement to the police, despite the fact he saw the incident, which resulted in the police not being able to prosecute due to a lack of evidence. This man, and the other bouncers there, are in the small minority of door staff who do their job in the most corrupt manner, that leads to them all having such a bad reputation. Obviously the writer of the article shows some bias towards their preferred drinking establishment, or has not done their research properly.
Are you having a laugh?
Konrad is potentially the worst bouncer around.
Him and Fong are awful, awful human beings.
I remember in my third year (a while back granted), he walked down the queue, literally allowing girls in if they didn’t complain too much about him groping them.
Clueless, clueless article…
I haven’t seen one comment respond to the actual message of the article, which has little if anything to do with Conrad
If you don’t like it. Don’t go to willow. Pretty easy to understand really. Perhaps also don’t complain about things that haven’t happened to you.
Christ alive this is a poorly written article. Before posting online, please learn how to spell ‘wandering’ correctly, as well as the correct use of grammar so that your poorly worded stories actually make sense.
Secondly, Konrad is an absolute tool and as such, should not be glorified in what I can only describe as an absolute shambles of an article.
The guys a sexist, aggressive, power-crazed prick.
What the fuck is this article?
I may not want to deal with creepy dj’s inside a club but I shouldn’t have to put up with some leery bouncer in order to get into that club.
@Reader, what exactly is the message of this article aside from a glofication of a dickhead, and slagging off tokyo? please enlighten us all.
@Rational Person, personally, i get in willow without hassle from konrad. does not mean i want to read someone singing his praises for the completely wrong reasons.
After winning such a prestigious award, you’d think York Vision would a) check the grammar and spelling of their articles and b) do a bit of research. The bouncers at The Willow are corrupt low-lifes. If you want to see an example of what a good bouncer is, head to Salvation.
Another 3rd Year – the author of this piece is clearly trying to set out the differences between how nightclub staff should behave, and how Tokyo DJs behave.
She chose Conrad/Konrad to set against the Tokyo staff because, I imagine, in the times she has encountered the man he has been the ideal bouncer that she describes. It’s not inconceivable that he behaves differently at different times of the night, to different people or even that just coincidentally the author hasn’t experienced the bad side of Konrad.
Obviously – as the waves of insulting comments show – the author’s opinion is not the same as many other people’s. But that shouldn’t really matter because what she is saying isn’t ‘Konrad is awesome’, or even ‘Tokyo DJs should aspire to being someone like Konrad’ – it’s ‘Tokyo DJs need to up their game. They need to show more professionalism, on the level of Konrad as I have experienced him’. That seems like a strange attitude to get angry about.
I think the main problem is that the very things she praises in Konrad are the things that make him inherently unprofessional.
Another massive problem is the ridiculous comparison between a bouncer and a DJ. Perhaps if she compared the DJ to another DJ, then this article would be slightly less problematic. DJs are employed to entertain (quite funny that she denies that). Bouncers are a safety measure for the club.
It’s really a shame that Vision has published this, because it really is poorly judged.
Apologies, ‘Professionalism’ was the wrong term. It’s more ‘Doing the job you were given’. Granted Konrad’s professionalism slips from time to time, but what Helena seems to be saying is that she hasn’t seen him deviate from the job title on his pay cheque.
And she thinks DJs should do the same. Her opinion (this is a comment piece, i.e. one person’s opinion) is that disc jockeys should play discs. Your opinion is that they are employed to entertain. If you want to write a comment piece arguing that, I’m sure it will be welcomed on this site.
And that brings us to your last point – that Vision was poorly judged in publishing this. It’s not a news story. As long as it’s not highly offensive, I don’t see why one student’s opinion can’t be heard.
“Granted Konrad’s professionalism slips from time to time, but what Helena seems to be saying is that she hasn’t seen him deviate from the job title on his pay cheque.”
Has she seen the job title on his pay cheque? Probably says “Door Staff” not thug.
Do I really have to write an article arguing that a DJ is employed to entertain in order for you to accept it as plain, and obvious, fact?
Or can I just link to the description of a DJ on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_jockey
‘Conrad’ is a kunt.