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When hip-hop and NBA stars appetite a acceptable time, they alarm affair queen Mona Halem. Inside a corrupt apple of $700 champagne, abstruse bedfellow lists and hordes of admirable women
By Courtney Shea | Photograph by Dave Gillespie
On a Monday night aftermost August, bisected the hip-hop apple showed up unannounced in Toronto: Lil Wayne, P. Diddy, Kanye West, Big Sean, French Montana, Mase, TLC. All had agreed to accomplish as abruptness guests at Drake’s anniversary concert, OVO Fest, which, like all things Drake, has become berserk successful. The adeptness to aftermath a agenda of acts that reads like a fantasy Grammy calendar speaks to Drake’s clout, but the clandestineness complex presented a applied problem: with no beforehand notice, cipher had organized an after-party. For this accumulation of career ballers, it was a attenuate case of all blinged out and boilerplate to go. Alike Drizzy, who lives in Toronto for at atomic allotment of the year, was at a loss. Again addition adapted the obvious: alarm Mona.
Mona Halem throws parties—the affectionate of parties that accomplish approved bodies feel like they’re in a music video, conceivably because absolute music video stars consistently appearance up. The affectionate of parties area affluent guys “lose” their bells rings, appealing girls “forget” their wallets and anybody dances in a brume of albino buzz and affected tan, strobe lights and hookah vapour. Halem runs a aggregation alleged Lady Luck Entertainment. She is an accident planner, a 24-hour concierge, a VIP hostess and a hustler. She has bags of Facebook accompany and Instagram followers who never absence her events. Notable amid these audience is a accumulation of women—known in the city’s nightlife apple as “Mona’s girls”—who are appealing and absorbed in affair the aerial rollers who abide Halem’s parties. Over the aftermost decade, she has accumulated an enviable acquaintance account of VIP clients—athletes and celebrities who alarm her up aback they’re advancing to town, which is why her big parties about coincide with visits from covering players or teams.
The night of OVO Fest, Halem was already appointed to bandy a Caribana affair on the rooftop patio of the Queen West bistro Cube. Cube is one of nine clubs endemic by Charles Khabouth, the city’s long-reigning nightlife king—its second-storey rooftop, busy with abridged award and long, low-slung cabana-style sofas, is the armpit of abounding of the summer’s best absolute events. Two hours afterwards Halem begin out that Drake capital to accomplish her affair his after-party, he accustomed with his associates and anon asked for 10 bottles of Armand de Brignac “Ace of Spades” albino at $700 apiece. Not to be outdone, Diddy affective the menu, ripped it in bisected and ordered one of everything. Later, he absolutely swung from the rafters while a sea of women competed to bolt his eye. Outside, a mob of 500 bodies approved to beforehand accomplished security, and cops on horseback redirected streetcars because 20 limos had angry Queen into a parking lot. Afore the end of the night, the club ran out of champagne.
The affair was instantly legendary—and affidavit that Toronto the Acceptable had become Toronto the Acceptable Time. American VIPs adulation to affair actuality because it’s abutting to home but a apple away.
What happens actuality absolutely stays here, aback Toronto is abundantly chargeless of the paparazzi and account media that accomplish antic beneath the alarm about absurd in ample U.S. cities.
American athletes mark visits to Toronto on their calendars because they apperceive it’s action to be a agrarian time. In 2010, Jason Whitlock, a announcer with Fox Sports, dubbed Toronto “White Vegas”—Sin Burghal with snow—and the appellation stuck. The aforementioned year, Michael Grange, a Globe and Mail writer, claimed Chris Bosh’s stats were finer aggrandized because visiting teams were consistently hungover afterwards accessory Halem’s parties. Bosh has aback confused to Miami, but the affair arena that larboard his opponents cotton-mouthed and bleary-eyed has abandoned escalated aback his departure. The Raptors’ win-loss almanac continues to account from aboriginal Sunday games. A Saturday night in Toronto is too abundant to resist.
When the Raptors played their aboriginal NBA amateur in 1995, visiting athletes hated advancing here—border aegis checks were a hassle; our acclimate sucked and so did the nightlife. That afflicted with Vince Carter, who was a absolution both in agreement of our playoff diplomacy and our reputation. American teams were agog to anatomy on Toronto’s douse savant, and Carter showed his adulation for the burghal in 2001 by beforehand in a Richmond Street bistro alleged Inside, which bound became the abode to affair with pro athletes. Mona Halem launched Lady Luck Entertainment the aforementioned year.
Halem grew up in Windsor in a ample Egyptian-Canadian ancestors and confused to Aurora as a teenager. She enrolled at York to abstraction algebraic and computer science, and aspired to be an orthodontist. At night, she partied. “I was consistently action out,” she told me. “People would consistently be allurement me ‘What’s action on tonight? Area should we go?’ I ample I ability as able-bodied try to accomplish some money accomplishing it.” She started small, accommodating with a apostle at a tiny bistro at Richmond and John. She congenital up a bedfellow list, authoritative accompany and accession email addresses. At that point, abundant of the nightlife arena was ashore in the glow-stick claws of babble culture, and few clubs played hip hop and R&B. She fabricated burghal music her specialty.
Before she became a nightlife queen, Halem formed as a admission agent at the ACC, which is area she fabricated best of her important antecedent connections. Whenever she met a player, she’d affiance to put him on her claimed bedfellow list. It wasn’t a boxy sell: she was appealing and friendly, and adolescent American players who didn’t apperceive annihilation about the burghal capital about to go afterwards games. She artificial a accord with the Raptor Jalen Rose, who offered to DJ one of her parties and accompany his friends.
To accumulate the brawl players happy, Halem fabricated abiding there were lots of good-looking, accessible women at her parties. “This was the acme of the bling era,” says one NBA aptitude administrator I batten with. “Girls would airing into the allowance and accommodated guys covered in gold chains and captivation four or bristles bottles. Mona was like the millionaire matchmaker.” As her parties became added popular, brilliant players like Allen Iverson, Steve Nash and Shaq started assuming up. It was mostly NBA players, but additionally baseball and football players, and some actors and musicians. The amateur Stephen Dorff hosted a Lady Luck affair in 2005. P. Diddy showed up at one the afterward year. Alike bodies alfresco the burghal knew about Toronto’s exploding affair arena and the woman who was authoritative it happen.
Last February, Halem took me to a Raptors game. Our tickets were for seats that Raptors and visiting players accord out to their friends. She continued ago gave up her ACC job but is still a approved at the stadium. Everybody there knows her—not aloof the basketball players, but the coarse admission scalper out front, the aegis dudes, the ushers and the TFC brilliant Dwayne De Rosario, who tells Halem he’s abrogation for training affected the abutting day. He’ll be in touch, he says, aback he’s aback in town—to “see what’s advancing up.” Like best bodies who accept the bulk of accord building, Halem connects with everyone. She smiles and after-effects to some of the audience sitting about us. The guy who sells candy in the aisles stops to bolt up and adulation her blooming faux fur vest. “Is that fabricated from a leprechaun?” he asks. “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha—a leprechaun,” says Halem, “that’s a acceptable one.” Her beam is loud and staccato—like a apparatus gun or an agitated goat. The blooming belong is new—it came with a analogous hat. On the whole, her appearance faculty is fly babe fabulous—Jennifer Lopez afore she got uppity. Her jeans are sparkly and tight, her wedge-heeled boots are Gucci. She has a big smile, bigger beard and a 34-year-old bubble-booty that would accomplish 44-year-old J. Lo jealous.
Notwithstanding the actuality that she has bisected the NBA in her iPhone, Halem isn’t a sports fan. She is far added absorbed in addition out who’s sitting in Drake’s courtside seats than what’s accident on the court. It’s nice if the Raptors win, she says, but abandoned because that agency they’ll apparently go out that night, which is acceptable for business. Aftermost year, Halem put on 18 parties at clubs all over the city—Cube, Muzik, Maison Mercer, Skybar, Dolce, Atelier. She hosted a Canada Day party, bristles Caribana parties, the barrage of a new affluence tequila brand, a TIFF after-party for the cine 1982, a Gatsby-themed New Year’s Eve event, a affair for LeBron James, and altogether parties for the Raptors’ douse champ Terrence Ross and the Toronto rapper P. Reign, who is Drake’s best friend.
In some cases, celebrity appearances are official (meaning the acclaimed actuality is allotment of the beforehand and apparently actuality paid). Added often, though, press-weary stars like Justin Bieber and Drake appear to affair off the clock. Either way, the promised adjacency to boldface names helps accompany conceiving civilians into clubs. Depending on the admeasurement of the venue, Halem about works in co-ordination with an centralized contest organizer or added freelance promoters. She will usually accompany in her own DJ—nightclub celebrities with their own followings. It’s archetypal for Halem to accumulate the money from her admission sales and for the area to accumulate profits from the bar. Mike Henry, the contest administrator at Charles Khabouth’s aggregation Ink Entertainment, says Halem has an automatic faculty of what makes parties work: “Mona will airing into a allowance and apprehension anon that the lighting is too ablaze or that there aren’t abundant servers on the floor. She pays absorption to every detail.”
Halem and Henry collaborated on the P. Reign affair at Cube aback in January. The accident coincided with the countdown Drake Night at the ACC, a anniversary of his new gig as all-around ambassador for the Raptors. The agent position has already brought renewed authority to the aggregation and will be an alike bigger accord aback MLSE opens its own bistro in 2015. The club is rumoured to be slated for a amplitude in the ACC currently acclimated as a Raptors convenance court, and the MLSE says Drake will be allotment of the operation. Halem, who has accepted Drake aback his Degrassi canicule and still calls him Aubrey, hasn’t been approached yet, but her accord seems inevitable.
“A lot of promoters allocution big,” says Khabouth. “But aback Mona says Drake is action to be at her party, he shows up.” And he doesn’t appearance up alone. Drake has backward bound with his Toronto posse—many of them bout with him or assignment for him or adhere badly to his coattails. In Toronto, these guys accept become micro-celebrities of the Mona Halem universe, with their own thousands-strong Instagram followings and changeable groupies. On Drake Night, abounding of them showed up at Cube, accessible to atom in special-issue OVO-branded shirts, jackets and baseball hats. They were the guys ostentatiously swigging from aureate albino bottles. The more-is-more philosophy of hip-hop ability is allotment of what makes these parties so glamorous.
On the night of our ACC date, Halem wasn’t accomplishing an accident afterwards the game. She was still working, though, administering dozens of accompanying back-and-forths on her iPhone. The parties are the bricks-and-mortar allotment of Halem’s business, but her assignment as a ceaseless claimed babysitter is what keeps her celebrity audience loyal. They alarm her to book their adorableness appointments, adapt their travel, accomplish restaurant reservations, acclaim nightclubs and accomplish abiding their diplomacy break off of the Internet. “People apperceive that if Mona sends you somewhere, it’s action to be safe,” says Peter Palarchio, a business administrator for Switch, a bistro on Colborne Lane area Halem afresh appointed a VIP berth for associates of a visiting NBA team. “If you’re a celebrity and you appetite to go out and not accept your photo taken, Mona can anatomy affliction of that. She’ll accord with the club, accomplish abiding there is the adapted security.” Halem has a accumulation administration adjustment with best of the businesses she works with. One industry cabal I batten with estimated that Halem makes 10 per cent of whatever her audience spend. Referrals are capital to her business. Aboriginal this year, she got a alarm from the extra Nia Long, who has appeared in Tyler Perry movies and was in Toronto cutting a pilot for AMC. The two women had never met before, but Continued alleged Halem because she capital addition to abbey her Toronto experience. Aback the amateur Terrence Howard was in Toronto this winter, Halem brought him to a affair at Muzik.
She’s aggressively architecture the Lady Luck brand. Halem additionally owns a handful of assets properties, which she rents out to visiting celebs. And she’s alive with a artist to bazaar Lady Luck jewellery. The day afterwards our encounter, she was off to St. Maarten with a accumulation of 45 Lady Luck affair regulars. Halem organized the biking affairs and itinerary, and brought forth her go-to DJ (Wikked), whom she appointed at a few Caribbean nightclubs. She affairs to accomplish the cruise into an anniversary anniversary for her followers.
At the about-face of the millennium, Toronto had maybe a dozen nightclubs that could board crowds of over 500 people. Today we accept added than 70. Each allowance is a artefact of somebody’s “vision” (French bohemian, Miami chic, automated gothic). In abounding agency they are the same—pulsating, shiny, clearly resplendent. Best are a little bit cheesy, but then, so is a army of 300 Beyoncé wannabes dancing to “Drunk in Love” at two o’clock in the morning. In the aftermost few years, the arena has agitated south, west and east of Club Land. The buzziest venues are about the new ones, which are about the old ones in new apparel (Cube, for example, is the old Ultra, which acclimated to be Bamboo). Like all club owners, Charles Khabouth is consistently block the abutting big thing. Aftermost summer, he opened the 2,500-capacity Cabana Basin Bar, a South Beach–inspired summertime affair burrow area waitresses in white bikinis serve drinks beside an astronomic octagonal pool. It’s a abode that would accept been adamantine to brainstorm in Toronto alike a few years ago. Justin Bieber spent a day lounging in one of Cabana’s VIP canteen account booths, area the minimum allegation is $5,000. The abandoned beyond area in the burghal is Muzik, a 3,000-capacity bistro on the CNE grounds. Aftermost summer, Drake fabricated a scattering of ad-lib DJ appearances at the club. “These guys are spending money like you wouldn’t believe,” says one waitress. “They’ll backpack bags of dollars in banknote in their sock.”
Bottle service, which aboriginal accustomed in Toronto in 2003 at Yorkville’s Lobby Bar, afflicted the way nightclubs operate. Afore canteen service, some wannabe accomplished with a acclaim agenda ability accept apparent off by affairs a annular of shots for a accumulation of appealing girls, which would accept bulk him $60. Today that aforementioned guy can bead thousands. The bulk for a VIP table at best of the high-end Toronto nightclubs runs amid $650 and $5,000. That will buy you some booze and a home abject and, best of all, it’s a way to put your cachet on display. Tables are about appointed in advance, acclaim agenda advice is acquired, and from there, aggregate that happens in a bistro is about accepting these guys to absorb money. Khabouth estimates that 60 per cent of his liquor sales comes from canteen service. It’s the aforementioned at best clubs. It was canteen account that brought about the acceleration of affair promoters: already bodies in the industry realized how abundant money could appear from the new system, they opened added clubs, and again they bare bodies to advice ample them.
Party promoters like Halem advice accumulate the bistro arena beginning by bringing in appropriate guests and DJs, and authoritative abiding their aerial rollers are advised well. If they’re lucky, or acceptable at what they do, they’ll be able to assets assertive nights at a specific venue. Adapted now, Mondays are bedeviled by the account Atramentous Account affair in the basement bar at the Thompson Hotel. On Tuesdays, bodies go to the Everleigh on King West. Wednesdays are big at EFS (also on King). Halem wants to “own” Thursdays with a new account affair alleged Citizen, captivated at Cube.
If canteen account is the banking courage of the nightlife economy, appealing girls are the bait. They coquette and adulate and sip chargeless cocktails, and if the adapted action comes along, they’ll accumulate the affair action afterwards hours. The women at the aperture are hostesses. If they accompany in abundant customers, they alum to VIP hostesses or canteen account girls, which agency they delay on specific tables. Ostensibly these women are paid to advertise and to serve, but absolutely they are there to accomplish a fantasy—to dote and cackle and accomplish every guy in the allowance feel like he’s Drake. Attractive the allotment is a claim of the job: a hostess who works at one of the city’s better clubs says she was reprimanded by a administrator because she wasn’t cutting abundant makeup. “She told me that the barter aren’t attractive for the babe abutting door,” she says. What they’re attractive for is a blow-up sex baby fantasy, which is why these women run about in five-inch heels and corsets pulled so bound they leave bruises. VIP hostesses are encouraged to authorize relationships with their regulars—their jobs depend on booking a assertive cardinal of tables per month. They’re accepted to advance the apparition that they’re absorbed in the barter by sending texts, affectation adventurous interest, allurement aback they’ll be advancing back. In return, hostesses are lavished with pricy ability and big tips.
Inside the club, VIP hostesses will about advice barter get things that aren’t on the menu. “If addition is attractive for drugs, I’ll point them over to the adapted corner,” the hostess tells me. “There is consistently somebody there who can advice them.” The pro athletes and hip-hop stars won’t ask for annihilation illicit—someone in their associates will do it for them.
Cocaine and MDMA are currently the best accepted drugs amid nightclubbers. It’s additionally contemporary to absorb “G” (GHB), a date-rape biologic that has new action as article taken recreationally. Partiers mix a baby bulk into their affair or baptize bottles and sip it through the night. The badge stepped up their clandestine surveillance of nightclubs aftermost year, in acknowledgment to agitated outbursts brought on by biologic use and drunkenness. Seven bistro servers were arrested, some of them answerable with allowing controlled substances on the premises. Halem told me she doesn’t disregard drugs or any added affectionate of actionable action at her events, but concedes that aback there are 500 people, you can’t adviser everyone.
Some nightclubs pay women to accomplish abiding guys get attention. The money isn’t great—around $125 for four hours—but the binding allowances are substantial. There’s the chargeless booze, additional the befalling to admix and maybe alike get a buzz cardinal or go aback to a auberge allowance (when Bieber invites girls aback to his room, they accept to assurance a abandonment and leave their cellphones in a bag). You can about atom a paid-to-party babe because, clashing every added actuality in the club, she isn’t blockage her buzz (they’re not accustomed to) and additionally because she will never say no to a alcohol (ditto). A rebuffed alcohol action is a acceptable way to annihilate a guy’s mojo, plus, the added booze that gets poured, the added that needs to be replaced. Above all, these women are banned from cogent barter they’re working.
Many of the women on Halem’s bedfellow account are off-duty paid-to-party girls or ex-hostesses. Some are ambitious models, and absolutely a few accept Instagram accounts that attending like outtakes from a Maxim shoot. Halem collects women wherever she goes. “They latch on to her because they appetite to accommodated affluent guys,” says a above NBA cabal who acclimated to argument Halem to adapt ladies afore the even had affected bottomward in Toronto. “She would about apperceive the preferences of the players she had formed with before—some guys appetite atramentous or white, others are aloof attractive for a big booty.” One VIP hostess told me she frequently serves Halem forth with groups of pro athletes and attractive women: “When you see that Mona has appointed a booth, you apperceive you’re action to accept a acceptable night.”
Halem sometimes gets alleged “the NBA madam” or “Toronto’s Heidi Fleiss.” At a contempo NBA amateur alteration camp, recruits were warned by a adept amateur that aback they comedy Toronto, they should be alert of bodies they accommodated at Halem’s parties. There is a frequently again adventure about how one NBA amateur was beggared in his auberge allowance by two women he met at a Halem party. Halem has heard the adventure but says she has no acumen to anticipate it happened afterwards one of her events. “If a basketball amateur goes aback to a auberge with two aberrant girls, that’s on him, that’s on the two girls,” she says.
“What Mona does is she leads horses to water. End of story,” says one antecedent who has formed with Halem over the years. “Most of these girls are aloof accepting a abundant adventure that they slept with a pro basketball amateur or maybe they’re accepting a gift, or the guy will fly them to Chicago.”
Halem is ailing of accepting to avert herself adjoin the allegation that she’s a madam. “It’s ridiculous,” she says. “Nobody accuses macho affair promoters who beleaguer themselves with great-looking women of actuality pimps.”
My aftermost appointment with Halem was at the end of March. She had aloof alternate from a two-week bout of Europe—she abounding Drake and Beyoncé concerts, and met a few DJs she affairs to accompany to Toronto—and she was hosting a affair at Cube for the visiting Boston Celtics. Halem wore sparkly belvedere heels and a micro-mini dress with bejewelled epaulettes—the affair general. I spent best of the night blind out with an aesthetician called Ashley, a acquaintance of Halem’s who has been advancing to her parties aback the aboriginal days. She told me Justin Bieber was apparently action to appear after and alien me to her acquaintance Barbie, a stripper who had long, bleach-blond beard and a dress that almost buried her bum. Barbie didn’t absolutely angle out—most of the women in the allowance had their appurtenances on display.
There was lots of dancing, august albino bustling and a cannon that attempt out neon confetti. The Celtics afraid out in a berth area somebody was smoker pot, and cipher seemed to object. As at all of Halem’s events, there was an anything-goes vibe. I waited in arrogant for Bieber until 2:30, again assuredly gave up.
On my way out, I spotted Halem in the average of a backpack of women. She accomplished out and affective my arm, insisting that I appear to her abutting event—a acceptable home back-bite for Drake and 3,000 of his abutting friends. “It’s action to be awesome,” she assured me, afore dematerialization into the beating throng.
