Thomy Hoefer is sort of a Renaissance man when it comes to nightlife. The DJ and visual artist has a knack for crafting ear-pleasing electro mixes, unique-looking club staging, and eye-catching video feasts, which are projected onto the walls at the events he helps promote. Oh, and he's good with cocktails, too. One of the latest things that Hoefer, who performs as Prince Money Money, has been involved with recently that's gone golden, quite literally, is Foul Play. After William Reed pulled the plug on his popular Sticky Fingers at Bar Smith, Hoefer (a former resident of the night) pulled a Nick Fury and assembled DJs from four of the Valley's biggest weeklies for a different sort of dance fete to take its place and "toy with people's expectations of a party." He brought on board The Blunt Club's Pickster One, J.Paul from UK Thursdays, and Solstice's Bigie Meanmugg to help run the night, which launched last November at Bar Smith, and things blew up shortly thereafter.
Each DJ contributes in their own way, such as Meanmugg tackling graphic design or J.Paul and Pickster helping book EDM guests like Tittsworth, Willy Joy, and Butch Clancy. And then there are the phantasmagorical video streams conjured up by Hoefer and his fellow Gestalt Theory artist Aaron Olmstead that are featured throughout Bar Smith during Foul Play. The imagery runs the gamut from old school video game graphics to dreamy maelstroms of color and accentuates the “enticing fever-dreams” of music that’s on tap every week. Typically, there’s bleeding-edge nu-disco, house, and moombahton upstairs, hip-hop and trap downstairs, and a helluva lot of fun throughout. Probably one of Foul Play's most popular draws is its photo booth concept, another Hoefer brainchild, whereby patrons can utilize such props as over-the-top fake weaponry (read: butcher knives, guns, bats) that's been spray-painted gold. Plus, there's also a boombox. Pictures are then rendered in black and white (except for the props in them) and posted to Facebook. According to J.Paul, it's just part of the vibe of Foul Play. "We wanted it to be the kind of place where you just let loose and do something that you wouldn't normally do," he says. Stay gold, y'all, stay gold.