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In Los Angeles, Koreatown is less an ethnic enclave than an overwhelming sprawl of salmon-hued bungalows and remodeled strip malls that rent out to acupuncturists, pool halls and karaoke bars. The minute you exit the 10 freeway and drive north just shy of Melrose, all you see are neon Korean characters advertising noodle shops and Korean Air stewardesses smiling beatifically from billboards. It's a disorienting hybrid of old and new.
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Booking is boy-meets girl on reverb.
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Le Prive, K-town's biggest nightclub, fits right into the landscape. With its flashing neon floor, velvet banquettes and studio apartment-sized mirrorball, the place has all the accoutrements of the cheesy urban superclub, with an added element of sideshow. On any weekend night, almost every female patron will be "booked" dragged by a waiter, usually against her will to a table of waiting men.
On a recent Saturday night around 11:30, a waiter is pulling two bleach-blonde Korean girls across the dancefloor. The girls are protesting as mightily as their anorexic frames will allow: their stretchy miniskirts buckle; their Prada stillettos skitter across the marble floor. One of them grabs onto a faux marble pillar, pleading as if she's being forced into a Stalinist gulag. The waiter nonchalantly extricates her, and the three of them disappear into the crowd.
I'm sitting at a booth a few feet away, surveying the scene with Clara Lee. Blonde, slender and pretty, Clara is twenty-one, a community college student who started making the rounds of K-town clubs when she was seventeen. This is the first visit to Le Prive for both of us. "See! Another one!" Clara cries. She points to a different waiter, who's dragging a busty Asian girl in tassled boots. Before long, another waiter descends on our table and whispers in Clara's ear: "Can you help me out?" Clara looks at me and shrugs. She nods at the waiter, who takes her hand and whisks her off to a group of boys, who greet her with cheers.
 I settle back into the booth, trying to process my first experience with booking. It's a bit like watching Wild Kingdom, I decide: you can never be too comfortable as a spectator.
Booking is boy-meets-girl on reverb, speedier than speed dating, a hook-up that's sparked and extinguished as fast as you can down a shot. It's a mating ritual that occurs almost exclusively in expensive nightclubs in Korea or Los Angeles, where Crown Royal is tossed back like Budweiser and cash is casually produced to pay for $2,000 drink tabs. In these clubs, Boy doesn't have to put his ego at risk and sidle up to a girl with a stammering line; instead, Boy leaves it all up to his waiter. This is how it works: at a guy's request, a waiter approaches a girl's booth. He might ask politely if she'd like to be booked. More likely, he'll grab her by the arm, drag her to a table and force her to sit down. Boy offers Girl a shot of Crown Royal and small talk ensues. But before Boy can offer another drink, Girl blurts, "I should get back to my friends" and leaves. Boy shrugs it off, knowing that another struggling girl will be delivered to his table within minutes.
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"The ones who request booking?" says Clara "Total sleazebags."
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Things rarely work the other way around. If a girl books a guy, she's considered a ho. When getting booked, a girl feels compelled to drag her feet and act spectacularly uninterested. "When the girls see a guy they think is hot, they'll go, 'Take me over there,'" says Romeo, a waiter at Le Prive. "So I'll take her, but she'll play the whole dragging bit. Then she'll put her head down and won't even say hello until the guy says something." He considers this. "They don't want to look easy."
The evening we visited Le Prive, Clara and I got to the club around ten. We were greeted at the entrance by Romeo, who introduced himself as our personal waiter for the evening. Chatty and cute in a silk-tuxedo-and-Duran-Duran-bangs kind of way, he led us to a table and produced a tray loaded with a half-bottle of Crown Royal, four Cokes and an elaborate platter of fruits. Normally, this treatment costs $200, but if you arrive before 10:30 in an all-female group, it's free. You just have to promise to book.
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"Booking makes you lazy," says Jeff, tipping back a beer. "I've lost all my pick-up skills."
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Around eleven, Le Prive begins to fill with girls in J. Lo-style encasings and stiff-haired boys in baggy button-down shirts. Most of them are college students in their early twenties; some are gangbangers, but they dress interchangeably. The DJ is playing last year's Hot 97 hip-hop hits: Missy Elliot's "One Minute Man," Nelly's "Hot in Herre." The girls are all pretty and skinny. The boys look as homogenous as frat brothers. "Losers," Clara confides. "Some of them are nice and cute and can't help it when waiters bring girls. But the ones who request booking? Total sleazebags."
Sitting in a corner booth is Jeff, an overtanned guy with so much gel in his hair you can see each follicle. A former stockbroker who owns a Melrose boutique, he's twenty-seven but likes to tell girls he's younger. At his Midwestern college, Jeff was a jock but had a hard time competing with his white buddies for girls. In the booking clubs, it's pyunei (comfortable); he's with his own people. There's just one disadvantage. "Booking makes you lazy," he says, tipping back a beer. "I've lost all my pick-up skills."
©2003 Cathy Hong and hooksexup.com
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