I ask this question because when I first heard that Teri Woods and her friends and family got turned away from her own party at a Soho club and was going to sue for a billion (yes, a billion) dollars, I have to wonder, what is it that she’s suing for? Because if I were turned away from a club, I would just go to another one or go home.

A while back, I guest blogged on Blogxilla’s site about how to get in the club and avoid getting turned away. While partially true, this was all in fun. But I guess it’s not funny when black people are getting turned away and it makes headlines. While I side with Teri Woods for blowing the whistle about the door policy, again, I have to question, a billion dollars?

“It was supposed to be a big night for top urban fiction author Teri Woods, who had invited 175 people to party at a trendy SoHo nightclub to celebrate her new book.

But Woods ended up in tears when she found almost her entire guestlist being kept outside Greenhouse’s notorious velvet rope.

Now a $1 billion class-action suit says the partygoers were denied entry because they were black.

Club owner Barry Mullineaux declined to discuss what had happened to Woods’ party beyond calling charges of racism “all pretty much bogus.”

Woods has text messages she says he sent that night showing he was barring people based on appearance. “Everybody looking at me like this ur people Barry???” read a text message. “I couldn’t let in 300lb girls.”

Asked if he remembered sending the messages, Mullineaux said, “Not word for word.”

Woods said, “I was clearly violated that night, and so were so many other people. … All I know is it had something to do with ‘your people’ and ‘fat.’”

Woods, author of New York Times best seller “True to the Game,” said she arrived to find that all her black guests – some of whom had traveled from as far as Virginia – had been turned away without explanation.

“They left all of my friends and family standing outside,” she said. “I had really serious people out there: lawyers, doctors and people in the entertainment industry.

“I was embarrassed. I was just walking around in circles and in tears. They took my moment.”

A handful of her guests who were white lawyers were allowed in, she said.

“There was nobody out there who was fat, and even if there was a fat person, who cares?” (source)

Based on that experience and going to other clubs that have few blacks there, I learned that it’s about image. If you don’t look like “America’s Next Top Model” or if you’re not spending thousands of dollars on a table and/or some top shelf liquor, chances are, you’re going to be standing on that line for a long azz time. And if a guy doesn’t have more than two women accompanying him, or if he’s not properly dressed, he’s not getting in either.

As I said once, it’s about paying for a fantasy, wanting to be seen and to see celebrities. Whatever happened to just going out to dance?

Nowadays, it just seems like the drinks are overpriced (and not well made), the cover charge is even more ridiculous at times (before Body closed down, a friend of mine told me that his friends went there and the cover charge was $50, WTF??) and there is likely to be a fight somewhere. And let’s not forget us women trying to compete with each other with whose outfit looks better, along with the side eyes……

I’m over it.