It's 15 minutes until midnight on a Saturday. The bouncer sits at the entrance to Spannk, wrapping neon green bands around clubbers' wrists. As they enter the bar, green and red beams of light dance through the thick smoke from the fog machine like laser confetti.
Bodies twist and tangle on the dance floor, wearing glow stick halos on their heads. Some guys have sunglasses on, and one girl wears a shirt that matches the glimmer from the disco ball hanging from the ceiling. Everyone's sweating; nobody cares.
In the front of the room, tucked behind the bar and hidden behind an old-school Plymouth car décor is the DJ booth. Without the crafting that happens in this spot, there would be no club. There would be nobody fist-pumping on the dance floor, no sweating bodies packed on the stage. Without the DJ, there would be no party.
A DJ isn't just a person sitting in a closed off corner playing music off of iTunes. Masterminding the perfect music for a party takes sleepless nights and busy schedules, and there is a lot more to being a DJ than people are aware of.
Vijay "DJ Vi" Seixas pulls the headphones from his ears and looks up from his laptop. He doesn't dance, or bob his head or even tap his feet as he spins, he concentrates on the crowd's feedback to the music blaring through the speakers. The electro remix of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" seems to be a hit.
"The crowd at Spannk is awesome. They're nuts. They scream every song," he said.
Vijay may have been born to be a DJ with such a catchy name (Vijay the DJ), but he prefers to drop the jay. The 22-year-old started spinning after attending a electro-music festival in Miami with a friend when he was 18.
He said his style differs from anyone else's because he introduced Gainesville to the indie-electro sound. He also began the well-known Neon Liger event that draws hundreds of eager clubbers on Saturday nights.
"Usually I'm a DJ for hire, but Saturdays at Spannk and Tuesdays at Speakeasy are my parties," he said. "I can do what I want and play what I want."
His switch to a Fergie song is so natural it almost goes unnoticed. Everyone keeps dancing.
DJ Vi says that he loves spinning in Gainesville because the crowd is so wild in this college party town.
"No one dances in Miami and the bigger cities. They are all more pretentious and snobby. Here it's more party," he said. "Here they're college kids, they want to party and get down."
A prominent Latin DJ in Gainesville, 24-year-old DJ Esteban, disagrees with Vi. Although he has twice seen girls strip down in the booth for a song request, he said spinning in Gainesville doesn't compare to performing in a bigger city.
"In Miami, the clubs stay open later and they party all night, so my sets run for five or six hours," he said. "Here it's only one or two."
He also said that unlike Miami, most Gainesville clubs require DJs to lug their own equipment around, set it up, and take it down at the end of the night. In bigger cities, the clubs usually provide DJs with turntables, speakers and lights to do their jobs.
DJ Sol, 24, a popular house spinner in Gainesville, said that this serves as an advantage for anyone who gets into DJing. The equipment isn't cheap, so only really serious DJs will make the investment. He has been accumulating equipment for years; a computer with a program that holds music files, turntables to manipulate the sounds, headphones that allow him to listen to the next track he will mix into the current.
He said that technology has made his job easier than when he first started eight years ago. Computers hold thousands of songs, while before he would carry bulky record books around that couldn't hold even close to that. The variety is crucial because he performs sets six out of seven days in the week.
"It's a really busy job, and I don't know if people realize that," he said. "It can be exhausting."
Along with scheduled sets at bars, social events and private parties, DJs' jobs require them to have a social life outside the clubs. Sol said that after parties are a daily routine, and they often take place at his house.
"Then there's all the other things that come with knowing everyone in Gainesville. It's always somebody's birthday, farewell party or welcome party," he said. "Not to mention my sleeping schedule is totally thrown off."
But having a daytime job that allows for a normal sleeping pattern doesn't seem to work for DJ Sol. He has tried; he always go back to being a DJ.
He may not have time to experience a social life of his own outside of the DJ world, but the good thing about the profession lies in having fun and working at the same time. The better night he has, the more likely it is that he's connecting with the crowd through his music.
Lady Cherelle, 33, says that communication with a crowd through music is what separates a good DJ from a bad one. As a very popular house DJ who has played around the country, she feels that music is a universal language that she can reflect her personality and life through.
As a female DJ, like other industries, she faces some discrimination, but she doesn't let it affect her. If someone blindly puts in her CD without looking at the cover, it would be next to impossible to interpret her gender.
"A good DJ is a good DJ, either male or female," she says.
And ultimately, she advises that a good DJ becomes a producer. It opens up opportunities to get music heard across more avenues.
"To me, being a DJ is about spreading the art of music around the world," she says. "That's my goal. That's what I want to do."
