From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

A Pirate’s Tale

After years of getting down and dirty in the nightclub scene, nassie shahoulian is having a high time on the high seas.

by Terra Sullivan

October 26 2005

Docked behind the Hard Rock Cafe in Miami's Bayside Marketplace, a fire-engine-red pirate ship named the El Loro rocks with the waves produced by a tropical depression moving in from the Atlantic. A voice that sounds like a cross between a worried Jewish grandmother and a seedy strip club owner blasts from a bullhorn, warning the boat's passengers to get cash for the bar before boarding. "You think the fucking pirates of the Caribbean had ATMs?" the voice asks.

Once onboard, a cluster of cute, tattooed girls places bets to see who will throw up first, while a drum set belonging to the Miami psychobilly band The Van Orsdels slides from one side of the ship to the other. Although the passengers openly worry that the cruise will be canceled, its host continues to promise otherwise.

But what started as a fine mist has become a full-on rainstorm. Passengers head into the boat's enclosed bar to load up on shots of whiskey and bottles of beer, waiting for the storm to pass. An hour later, the weather has deteriorated even further, and the ship's crew has no choice but to call the whole thing off.

The man behind both the event and the bullhorn is Nassie Shahoulian, a Hialeah-based concert and events promoter who appropriately goes by the nickname Nastie. Fed up with the cutthroat nightclub business, he recently decided to explore new avenues of partying and debauchery. His résumé already included such projects as the annual 420 Festival, a weeklong music extravaganza, and female mud wrestling, in which scantily clad -- and inevitably nude -- women paw at and roll atop one another in venues such as Churchill's Pub in Miami.

Eager to outdo himself, Nastie devised the idea of a floating rock 'n' roll party that would encompass everything from punk to hip-hop to Latin music after he discovered Miami Aqua Tours. The sightseeing company charters the El Loro -- Jolly Roger and all -- for everything from corporate events to children's parties through Biscayne Bay and the Venetian Islands. No one would confuse Nastie's semi-monthly event with a kid's party, however.

On a sunny afternoon several weeks after the washed-out pirate cruise, the Mohawk-sporting Nastie settles into a chair on the back patio of Churchill's to discuss the event, which he successfully hosted one a week after the storm; his nightlife career; and his peculiar voice, which on this day makes him sound as if he has swallowed a mixture of gravel and pasty bong residue. "Either it's a character trait or cancer," he explains. "I've always had this voice. It could be worse -- I could sound like Mike Tyson."

Nastie delivers everything from his mouth with a wink and a nod, as when he explains his reluctance to disclose his birth name. "I would give my real name except I have more benches than the park," he says, joking about the supposed bench warrants for his arrest. His penchant for exaggeration is in keeping with his history as a former community-theater actor who once won the prestigious Silver Knight Award for drama and landed a scholarship to New York University. He left the university after a semester with what he calls "a Ph.D. in THC."

Despite his jocular nature, Nastie takes his promotional work seriously -- including the mud wrestling. He started out in 1998, booking shows for his band The Gimmicks, but soon parlayed his talent for event-planning into a job promoting concerts by rap acts such as Luther Campbell, Dead Prez and Mobb Deep, as well as artists with considerably less street cred. "I did a show with Corey Feldman as the host," he recalls. "That was a big mistake."

Nastie has become best known for the 420 Festival, which he describes as a burnout's holiday. (In pothead lingo, "420" is code for lighting up.) The event, which took place this year at I/O in Miami, typically showcases more than 100 of local bands and features attractions such as children's bounce houses. Like the pirate cruise, however, the 420 Festival is far from a kid-friendly event: Past performers include the beyond-filthy rapper Blowfly and scores of punk acts.

The reputation Nastie has garnered for his left-of-center promotional endeavors is nothing compared to the one he has built on his outsize personality. He leaves an impression -- good and bad -- on everyone who works with him.

"I'm trying to think of something that's a plus and a minus [to say about him], because that's definitely Nastie -- an inspired problem, perhaps," Churchill's Pub owner Dave Daniels says. "He is certainly inspired at times. But sometimes, you have to sort of sit on him and tell him, 'You can't do that.' "

Even those nightclubs that decide to stop working with Nastie are never really done with him. "I stopped doing shows at the Hard Rock, but I wanted to do a party close enough to irritate them," he says with a sarcastic smile, referring to the pirate cruise.

Daniels, for one, realizes that Nastie's pluses occasionally outweigh his minuses. His female mud wrestling has been one of Churchill's most talked-about events. Now, after a brief hiatus, it has returned once a month to the club, the most recent bout taking place this past Saturday. While the wrestling is more playful than sleazy, Nastie insists no one participates against her will.

"If anyone is exploited, it's me," he argues. "Girls would tell me they'd wrestle and then not show up. I tried to make enough to pay the girls, and I'd be going home muddy and broke, and all I had was the [video] footage for the night to keep me company. And after watching those tapes 50 times, you can't do anything but watch them another 50 times."

As if to defend himself against charges of exploitation and misogyny, Nastie enlisted his mother, Hilda Yaber, as the event's co-producer. She works the door at most of his events. "People say I'm like a mama's boy, but I resent that," Nastie says. "I'm more like a mama's man."

When Nastie first told his mother he was planning to have women writhe around in a nightclub caked in mud, she had only one request: No Jewish wrestlers. "God spoke to me vicariously through my mother," Nastie recalls. "And God said, 'If you can make money, do it -- just do it to the Gentiles.' "

Then, he began dating a nice Jewish girl who wanted to wrestle. "I told her, 'As long as we are together, I would never do anything like this,' " he says, explaining the reason for the event's hiatus. "And I changed my life and started to have more respect for women and people in general. And then, she dumped me. So fuck it -- [the wrestling will take place] until she takes me back."

Even the frequent sight of naked girls can get old after a while, so Nastie is concentrating on events intended to entertain both him and his audience. "I made a lot of money in the beginning, and I became a dickhead because of all the pressure," he admits. "But my new outlook is, I'm not going to produce a party that I wouldn't go to myself."

He credits this change of heart to his most recent birthday. "I just turned 30, and it's not good," he explains. "The best way to describe it is when you turn 30, you go on trial and the prosecuting attorney is yourself at 20. And he's like, 'What about these dreams and aspirations? Here it says that at 30 you'd be here.' And I'm looking at my 20-year-old me, and I have no answer for him."

Nastie says a successful promoter is one who is able to sell himself as well as his event. This is why he can sometimes be seen outside a nightclub at 3 a.m., wearing a pirate costume and passing out fliers. And even though he often plans his parties well in advance, Nastie is able to capitalize on an opportunity at a moment's notice. The night of the storm-wrecked pirate cruise, as the passengers disembarked and raced to their cars to escape the sideways rain, Nastie heckled them on his bullhorn, threatening an impromptu wet T-shirt contest. No one would have been surprised if he'd pulled it off.

Two pirate cruises will sail Friday from Bayside, 401 Biscayne Blvd., in Miami. Against All Authority will perform on both. The first will leave at 9:30 p.m. and admit all ages. The second will board at midnight and admit ages 21 and older. Tickets cost $10, are limited to 100 per cruise and are available only at Thegimmicks.com.