DJ Vice, performing this weekend, no stranger to big celebrities
If Justin Bieber walked into the shoe store you owned, how would you protect him from people chasing him in there? And then, how would you escort Bieber safely out of that store?
DJ Vice knows the answers to these questions.
Vice – who DJs Saturday at Tao nightclub, and then Sunday at Wet Republic dayclub – just went through the Bieber routine in May.
You see, Vice co-owns a sneaker boutique called CRSVR on the retail floor of The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
And Vice has a professional connection with Bieber – Vice just produced one of Bieber’s first official DJ remixes for the single “Boyfriend.”
Anyway, Bieber, 18, was in Vegas for the Billboard Music Awards, so he went shopping at Vice’s CRSVR. Vice briefly shut down the store to the public to give Justin breathing space from fanatics.
“If you’re Justin Bieber, you can’t do anything in Vegas,” Vice says. “You can’t gamble. You can’t go to nightclubs. You can’t even see some of these shows. So what else do you do?
“You go shopping.”
Bieber entered the store “low-pro” (low-profile) with a hat. But people recognized him and crowded Vice’s store. So hotel workers spirited Bieber (who picked up some CRSVR shirts) through a backdoor and down to a secret place on the casino floor.
“They had to hide him in the back holding area behind the check-in desks, because there was a crowd that started gathering, waiting for him,” Vice says.
Vice (Eric Aguirre) tells me this story nonchalantly, because he’s been around celebrities forever. (He’s also had Kardashians in his store, as well as all kinds of famous DJs.)
He’s familiar with celebrity because he grew up in Los Angeles, and he was good friends with the late DJ AM, who introduced him to even more famous people.
Vice has DJ’d at house parties for Paris Hilton and at gigs for Tobey Maguire and Christina Aguilera.
He’s human, so he does have the ability to get star-struck. He once DJ’d after a private Prince show in a Miami airplane hangar for a party of 300 people.
“I don’t even remember what I played – I was so nervous!” Vice says with a huge smile.
As a producer, Vice – who lives in Vegas and L.A. with his wife – has been very busy lately. He’s done other official remixes for Rihanna (“Where Have You Been”), Enrique Iglesias and Dev (“In The Dark” and “Kiss My Lips”).
Part of his appeal is he knows how to produce a song to fill a big Vegas nightclub or dayclub.
“They want that Vegas sound: ‘Whatever works in the big room in Vegas,’ ” he says.
Vice has been here longer than most marquee DJs. His first gig in Vegas was eras ago, at Baby’s in the Hard Rock Hotel.
He’s been a resident DJ for seven years in various Vegas clubs, where celebs go up and say hi.
“Growing up in Hollywood – it helped me get that exposure to the Hollywood scene,” Vice says. “Now when I play in Vegas, all those people come into the DJ booth and hang with me.”
He insists he and others are good representatives of SoCal.
“I’ve had that Hollywood background – but I’m not ‘Hollywood.’ ”
Doug Elfman’s column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Email him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.
