Club Mixes Business, Pleasure : Socializing: Hi-Net gives Latino professionals an alternative from the singles scene and a venue to make profitable contacts.
While cutting up the dance floor with the tango or cumbia, some Latinos in Los Angeles are also cutting business deals.
They describe themselves as “upwardly mobile singles,” who are tired of the tawdry nightclub scenes and the dry atmosphere found in business organizations.
They belong to Hispanic Network, an organization where talk of the Harvard Business Review’s latest case study may lead to a candlelight dinner invitation.
Formed in 1988, Hi-Net, as founder Carlos Rodriguez calls his club, moved from Century City to the San Fernando Valley earlier this year.
About 300 Hi-Net members pay $150 annual dues to attend dances held on the last Friday of each month at the Glendale Holiday Inn. Members spend the early evening browsing through product brochures and swapping business cards. The later hours are reserved for dancing and socializing.
Rodriguez, 36, said his club benefits the newly arrived immigrant because most members are immigrants themselves and can assist others in learning the ropes of American city life.
“When you first arrive, you have to establish credit and get a job. It takes connections, someone you know that can get you in,” said Rodriguez, a Burbank resident who arrived in Los Angeles from Lima, Peru, 17 years ago. “At Hi-Net, it’s easy to set up opportunities for employers and immigrants to sit down and talk.”
The majority of Hi-Net members were professionals in their native countries, Rodriguez said. His organization provides a job-referral service and also recommends various services such as doctors, lawyers and stockbrokers, he said.
Rodriguez, however, refused to allow interviews with newly arrived immigrants. “We are a very discreet organization,” he said. “The first thing we guard among ourselves is privacy.”
Rodriguez formed his organization after disappointing experiences with chambers of commerce “where members were either married or too old.” He also joined the Young Executive Singles Network in West Los Angeles after his divorce in 1985.
“I met nice people, but all were Anglos,” said Rodriguez, who has operated his own communications consulting firm in Burbank for six years. “When it comes to a personal relationship, I am too old-fashioned--too Latin--to date anyone who is not of my culture or my Catholic religion. So I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if there was a networking group just for Latins?’ I did some research and found out there wasn’t any group serving that need. So I started my own.”
Rodriguez advertises Hi-Net in the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion, and several popular Spanish-language television talk shows have featured him as a guest.
Many of organizations exist for Latinos, but they are geared toward the business community--such as the Latin Business Assn., formed in 1976 and based in Los Angeles, and the Consul of Mexican-American Organizations in California.
But Hi-Net mixes pleasure with business. Gatherings are often theme-oriented celebrations for the independence days of members’ native countries, such as Argentina, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador and Mexico.
“We are very much in support of Carlos’ effort,” said Al Amezcua, president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Orange County. “It brings cultures and people together. It’s a good alternative to bar-hopping. He’s done a great job of uniting people with the same goals, ideals and interests.”
Through informal polls, Rodriguez has assembled a profile of his members: The predominant age range is from 20 to 40; 60% are women; 40% are business owners; 40% hold management positions; 80% are Republican; 2% are white; and 10% are married. Most have annual incomes that exceed $25,000.
At a recent Hi-Net function, about 60 members filled the Glendale Holiday Inn’s main ballroom. “The place really starts hopping just before midnight,” Rodriguez said as he tidied rows of business cards and product brochures that lined two tables at the entrance.
Groups of men and women sat at a round table, eating hors d’oeuvres retrieved from a corner buffet table. Four women in their 50s sat eyeing a group of men huddled around a corner bar. When asked why groups of men and women were segregated, one of the women, Rose Melgar, said, “Yes! Why?”
“It’s the first time we have come,” said Melgar, a retired secretary who moved to America from Guatemala 23 years ago. “Maybe we’re all a little, you know, nervous.”
Melgar and her friend Suzy Allahyar saw Hi-Net featured on a Spanish television program four months ago. They attend no other Latino-oriented clubs in Los Angeles “because we didn’t hear very good things about them,” said Allahyar, who moved to Los Angeles from Honduras 28 years ago. “There just aren’t many nice places for Hispanics to go. There’s too much drinking and fighting going on.”
That sentiment was expressed by both younger and older members.
“I don’t go to other clubs anymore, because you just meet jerks,” said Monica Gonzalez, 27, who sat with her sisters, Norma, 20, and Raquel, 18.
Monica Gonzalez, an East Los Angeles hairdresser, listed the qualities she is looking for in a mate. “He’s got to be educated, respectable, honest, good job, ambitious, handsome, have some money and a sense of humor,” she said. Her sisters laughed and wished her good luck.
“We’re not all here to necessarily meet a certain guy,” said Norma Gonzalez, an undeclared major at East Los Angeles College. “We’re here just to have a good, clean time. It’s the only place around you can go to meet respectable people.”
Rodriguez took the stage and asked all the single men and women to raise their hands. “Now, if you’re a woman and want to dance, raise your hand,” he said, as two disc jockeys flipped through records by Nelson Diaz Y La Constelacion, Juana La Cubana and Paolo Salvatore. Several men dressed in Armani and Hugo Boss suits stepped onto the central parquet dance floor, threading their way to tables on the other side of the room.
Edy and Angel Vizcaino had just arrived from work. “As dedicated business people, we’re at the office about seven days a week,” said Edy Vizcaino, 30, who owns Ecuatorian Express, a Whittier-based trucking company that his brother, Angel, manages. “I’ve made a lot of friends here, but no dates yet.”
The Vizcaino brothers, who arrived from Ecuador 12 years ago and now live in Whittier, have attended Hi-Net for five months.
Angel Vizcaino, 32, said he has made several business contacts at the dances, among them an oil filter manufacturer that has agreed to ship its goods via Ecuatorian Express. The two companies struck their business partnership through a Hi-Net function.
When asked why, after five months, the brothers hadn’t begun dating other members, Edy Vizcaino said, “If you go looking for love, you just might be trying too hard. Right now, I’m working on establishing good friends with women. Romance may come later. That’s my policy.
“If I find the right girl here, I’d be glad to get serious. But right now, I’m a dedicated workaholic.”
