The Last Hurrah

It’s 4 A.M. and your man in Vegas just ordered a raft of sushi and a fresh bottle of whisky, and he wants to know when you’re going to stop nursing that wine cooler and start having a good time. Meet Phil Stamper, bachelor party professional.
By A.J. Daulerio Photographs by Jeffrey Vogeding

Drop your cock and grab your socks. It’s time to go to the pool,� says the man on the other end of my phone. It’s noon on a Saturday in Las Vegas, and I’m still dressed and still buzzed from the night before. Apparently recovery time is over. On the other end of the phone is Phil Stamper—aka My Guy in Vegas—calling from his car. “I’ll see you in 20,� he says. I better get my shit together.

The last time I’d heard Phil’s voice was just a few seconds before he put his face down on the bar at a castle-like strip joint called the Men’s Club, a little after 4 A.M. Prior to the snooze, he’d ordered $100 worth of sushi for me and his buddy Doug. Then he promptly laid his head on the bar for 20 minutes as I guarded the raw fish from a stripper who kept asking for a bite. Since Phil had picked me up at the airport that Friday afternoon, I’d rarely seen him without his phone glued to his ear, practically bursting with positive energy as he blew through a succession of calls. There’d been a total of five “Hey, buddy! Sure thing, buddy, when you coming in? You’re all set up, buddy� conversations since I’d stepped into his Range Rover for the 20-minute drive to the Monte Carlo hotel, where he’d booked me a room for the weekend.

Our background chat had been brief, but I knew this: Phil was raised in Oklahoma and came to Vegas in 1993 on a football scholarship as a field-goal kicker at the University of Reno. He tried to make the NFL but it didn’t work out, and he offers no excuses as to why. “Just didn’t happen,� he says, only slightly forlorn. He returned to Vegas in 1998 as a host at the Hyatt Regency, but discovered that with his good ol’ boy charm and sports connections, he could start his own concierge business and not be constrained by his employers’ corporate agenda: namely to keep guests gambling in the hotel.

He left the Hyatt to freelance and, in 2001, VIP Vegas Phil was born. It wasn’t a smooth transition; it turned out that nut-hustling for every penny-pinching Vegas warrior required a lot of work for not a lot of money. So Phil took himself out of the phone book, ceased advertising, and used his core clients (“whales,� as he refers to them) to generate word-of-mouth, real VIP status for his business. It worked.

Vegas Phil’s job is to host 24- to 36- hour parties and ensure that people have an extraordinary time. It’s easy to do it up in Vegas, but it helps to have an organizer like Phil. He says he pulls about $20,000 per month for his services, but it’s mostly in cash and he winks when he gives me the figure. For about $300 per man, he secures access to VIP clubs, strippers, primo tables at steak houses on busy Saturday nights, or essentially anything else the client wants. He’s hustled to get people last-minute front-row tickets to see Gwen Stefani and supplied one picky client with ten glass bowls containing beta fish at each table setting. Sometimes he arranges parties months in advance and other times with only a few hours notice—and drawing from his wealth of connections.

The weekend before I meet him, Vegas Phil organized a party for actor Luke Wilson. He says he’s hosted Jimmy Kimmel; various
ESPN personalities, including Stuart “Boo-yah� Scott and Steve Levy; and athletes from every major sport, from scrubs to superstars—plus coaching staffs. Throughout the weekend, a parade of satisfied customers approaches him—and they aren’t surprised that Phil has a reporter from Penthouse tailing him. “He is the man,� they say, more clarifying the fact than paying a compliment.

“This is a lifestyle,� Phil keeps repeating. He says this with a smile and a drawl and a backslap and a “You hanging in, buddy?� I quickly understand why everybody likes the guy. He’s got a deep well of energy and enthusiasm—there isn’t much respite from being the VIP concierge in Las Vegas. He admits that he’s at the mercy of the business—meaning he always has to be ready to party—but on the rare day off he’ll head to the beach or visit family, go anywhere to get away from the Strip for a while.

Most unexpectedly, Phil has a girlfriend. Live-in. He won’t share many details about where they met or how long they’ve been together; only that she possesses an understanding of “the lifestyle.�

If he’s not at a club overseeing a bachelor party, Phil oscillates between making business calls, glad-handing with club owners
and promoters at his various “offices�—strip clubs, cafés, lounges, wherever—or operating his crew of severely eligible bachelors, who, it seems, drink, fuck, and eat their way through Las Vegas. This weekend’s crew consists of former NFL placekicker Owen Pochman; one of Las Vegas’s top doctors (who preferred not to be named); Houston Texans defensive end Anthony Weaver; Doug, a concierge-in-training; and a local 25-year-old former tennis pro with a bum knee, a punk-rock band, and a need for anonymity. They’re young, in shape, and have plenty of money to do anything they want. And they do.

Phil gets us VIP status at the Palms’ $5,000-per-year members-only club, then Rain and Ghostbar, and finally, the Polo Towers’ Sky Lounge. He orders sushi by the pound. We down drinks everywhere we go; though he is technically “working� the whole time, Phil is never without a Captain and Diet in his hand and rarely without a stripper within grab-ass reach. He’s easy to lose—bouncing around from big shot to bungalow boy, politicking—but if I’m out of his eyesight for more than five minutes, one of his crew texts me to make sure I’m all right, then invites me over for introductions and hooks me up with a drink, a sandwich, or cigarettes.

Phil is not the typical six-figure entrepreneur—nor is he the stereotypically shifty Vegas hustler. (He says his pet peeve of the job is when people with only a couple million in the bank act like “Johnny Big Dicks.�) He can whip out the good threads when necessary (“boot and suit it�), but for most of the weekend, he operates from the wardrobe that’s piled in the trunk of his 2004 Range Rover—bathing suits, dress shirts, blazers, and jeans, in various permutations of wrinkled or pressed—everything he needs to get the job done.

Phil’s phone—which appeared to be his lifeline on Friday—has since conked out, so he spends most of Saturday and Sunday using mine to coordinate the weekend. The Rover is running on empty, and every interior warning light of the SUV is begging him to take it to the shop.

Phil drinks. A lot. He gets sloppy, particularly on Saturday, which ends in an awkward, early-morning argument that Phil concludes by throwing cash at the driver’s chest and proclaiming, “There’s a $100 bill for being an asshole.� And then there’s the money: He carries around $6,000 in bills that are wadded, perilously loose, in his pants pockets.

But despite a haphazard approach, Phil’s business seems to be working. His other party that week end was being led by a guy who works for the New York Giants organization who proclaimed with a wry smile, “Phil is highly regarded by people at the Giants.� The group got everything it paid for as it went from stripper-poled shuttle bus to VIP bottle-service treatment at every club, and was escorted by a pack of blonde party girls flown in from L.A. for the occasion. At one point, it appears that even though the groom-to-be has already cleared two velvet ropes at the impossible-to-get-into Moon at the Palms, he’s not going to get in the door. When the bouncer sees how cross-eyed drunk the bachelor is, he says, “I’m not letting that guy in here.� But Phil quickly confronts the surly, hulking mass in a tuxedo and neutralizes the situation with some small talk and a back-slap, promising that the drunken groom won’t cause any problems under Phil’s watchful eye. Sure enough, the gate is unhooked and the rowdy guys are VIP’d again. (Phil doesn’t watch over them. He spends most of his time at
the bar doing shots.)

Later, at the Rain VIP lounge, Phil leans over to me and asks if I want to make a bet. “How much money if I finger-jam that girl right there?� he asks, pointing to one of the blonde party girls who’s sitting on the couch three feet from us. She’s mousy but cute; I take the bet just so I can see what he does. Phil leans in and starts making out with her. I immediately turn away, but he bats my leg to make sure I watch. Soon, his hand disappears beneath her skirt and she makes a startled facial expression
that quickly turns into a brief look of satisfaction. He pulls his hand out and gives her a kiss. Then she gets up, grabs one of her party-girl cohorts, and squeals, “Phil’s bad!� Phil smiles at them, winks at me, then wipes his finger across my pants. “I think you owe me $50, buddy.�

By Sunday morning, I am desperate to leave. I’ve seen enough tits, drunk enough booze, and eaten enough sushi. But we still have a full day planned at the Mirage’s topless pool, Bare, where the bachelor party is convening for some downtime before this evening’s private show in their Mandalay Bay hotel room.

We hit the pool and then Phil and I grab dinner at Japonais. He has the waiter bring out samples—sushi, rolls, Kobe beef on hot rocks—and we bullshit about life. He says that at 32, he still has a few years of party left in him, though his salt-and-pepper hair might suggest otherwise—but he says his business, right now, is him. It’s all about the relationships he’s built and the reputation he’s established. “I can hand over the contacts to people, but where would that get me? People continue to work with me because of me.� And it’s true. It’s Phil’s laid-back approach and impressive likability that keep his customers coming back.

By the time we get back to the hotel room for the “private� portion of the bachelor party—which consists of two incredibly hot strippers Phil has hired to perform a sordid lesbian show for the group—I’m completely spent. Phil realizes this and sees
me nervously checking my watch, wondering how I’ll make my 12:30 A.M. flight if it’s 10:30 P.M. now and there’s no gas in his car and the show has just started. Phil smiles at me and gives me his drawl: “A.J., you hanging in? Don’t stress about your flight. This isn’t the first time I’ve been to the rodeo, you know.� He sees that his words aren’t calming me down, so he turns
serious: “Look, if you miss your flight, I’ll getcha a private jet to take you back. Swear. I’ve done it before.� He still doesn’t sense I’m convinced, so he asks one of the strippers to vouch: “Amy, tell him that I’ll get him a private jet if he misses his flight.�

Amy lifts her head and smiles at me, even though she’s got about seven inches of purple dildo crammed inside her that she’s sharing with the other stripper. “A.J., don’t you worry about it, baby,� she assures me with a smile. “We’ll getcha home.�

Phil gets me to the airport about an hour before departure—right on time, of course. As I’m leaving, he tells me he’s going to miss me and that he liked having me around: “You’ve got yourself a friend for life now, man.� I step out of the Range Rover, which is miraculously still running, and he says with the utmost sincerity, “Call me if you ever need anything. And I mean it. Anything.� That’s not the first time in my life I’ve had a relative stranger say that to me, but it’s the first time I’ve actually believed it.

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