Swaggy P’s Guide To Partying In Los Angeles

Pro tip: Be careful who you wake up next to.

Nick Young knows where the party’s at. The evidence: He’s dating Iggy Azalea. He’s beginning his third NBA season as a Laker, in the city he grew up in. And he calls himself Swaggy P, a nickname you don’t use without having some serious nighttime swagger. So we called him up and asked him to take us through one perfect night in the City of Angels.

What do you think of L.A. as a place to party?

Oh, man, L.A. is probably the best place to party. Compared to other cities, man, you don’t have to party until 6 in the morning to really get the job done, unless you really want to. You just got more variety here, and it’s LA—it’s still cool at night, so if you want to take your shirt off after you’ve had a couple drinks and you’re feeling yourself, you can do so.

Is it a better scene than anywhere else you’ve been?

Yeah. I think so. New York is a close runner-up. And Miami is just—you go there if you want to die. You just die in Miami. If you want to sell your soul to the devil, you go to Miami.

Okay, this is a good start: Let’s try not to die tonight. Start us off with dinner.

Okay, you can start off at Mastro’s. Get yourself a nice juicy steak. You about to have a big night, so you gotta fill up, right? Get your protein in there. Get some of that creamed corn. And from there, go to Dave & Busters—in Hollywood. The one in Hollywood. You gotta go there.

Why that one?

Because that’s my people. They treat us good. You get your fun there—you get your bubblies, you get your drinks, play a couple games, pre-game, hang out with your friends, talk trash, shoot on the court. Make bets, like if I beat you, you gotta take a shot. You have your fun there.

Then you’re all warmed up, and it’s 11:30 p.m., midnight. Go to Hyde! Hyde nightclub is probably 15 minutes away. Oh, man. That’s where the party starts.

What’s going on at Hyde?

You got all kinds of people you like in there. It’s a mixture of nice women and nice men. It’s a mixture of nice music, good people. Good vibe. And then, then you’re pretty much done.

What? No after party? We want to go somewhere after Hyde!

Oh, man. You not gonna make it out of Hyde. It’s low chance. If you can make it past Hyde, you’re a trooper. You make it past Hyde, you’re Project X.

But if you can, you go to Hollywood Hookah. Just go hang out, relax, calm down, talk, sober up, crack jokes. Then go home and have a nice sleep. If you can make it to Hollywood Hookah for an afterparty, you earned 12 hours of sleep.

That’s probably still not enough to avoid the hangover.

Hopefully, you wake up with somebody you’ve been wanting to wake up next to. That’s the thing. You don’t want to wake up the next morning and be like, “Awww, man, Lord, what’d I do?” And start praying, “God, please get me out of this situation.” You don’t want to wake up like that.

After you leave Hyde, you gotta make sure you have the right one. That’s why you go to Hollywood Hookah—to make sure that you got to get the full stamp, and that’s at the after party. Because you want to wake up with a girl you wanted. And then you can call your buddies and say, “Boy, we got to do this again.” Or you call them and say, “I don’t want to do this stuff no more, man. It killed me.” Either one. Either one is a good night.

Let’s be ambitious: Say you wake up, you don’t regret it, you don’t feel like hell, and you’re hungry. Then what?

You got to go to Crave Café. It’s open 24 hours, so that can be your after-hours too, or your early morning when you wake up and say let’s get some breakfast. They’ve got everything. They’ve got brunch, breakfast, lunch, dinner. Everything.

You’ll need some good food to distract you, if you wake up next to someone you regret.


Yeah. Don’t wake up with regret. Though, you know, there’s still some good regret. It’s never a full loss.

Photos by FilmMagic / Getty Images