What’s it like to be a bouncer on Fremont Street?

Darkness replaces the last sunlight on Fremont Street as day turns to night. Then, as if the sun were rising again, brightness from neon letters begins to illuminate the east and the west.

It’s 6 o’clock on a spring Saturday night, and Antwuan Sims is smiling as he removes a flailing man from Atomic Liquors.

“Morning,” he’s ironically greeted by a regular after returning to his post in front of the downtown bar’s large, black door.

Sims says he’s guarded the spot, 917 Fremont St., and its patrons four days a week for the past three months. Guests like the troublesome one on this evening are few and far between.

“Five-hundred smiles” pass him and the glowing red “cocktails” sign overhead during a shift, which is usually from 4 p.m. to 3 a.m., he estimated.

Smiles reciprocated by his own as he holds the door open for each customer, towering over even the tallest guests.

“We wanna give you that experience from the moment you walk in, that, like, it’s a friendly place to be,” he said. “You’re welcome here; you can feel safe.”

The idea resonated that night with one woman, specifically, who had been pestered by the man who was politely and forcefully escorted off the premises — twice.

“I just wanna say thanks,” she said as she embraced Sims on her way out.

Sims and a bartender initially responded to reports that the heckler was harassing the woman by telling him he didn’t have to go home, but he couldn’t stay there.

“He just immediately got up and got really aggressive,” Sims said.

That’s when he was forced to put his tall, muscular stature to use. The drunken man started shouting expletives.

“He called me a ‘Nazi,’” Sims said. “I was like, ‘oh, that’s kinda crazy.’”

And the man still didn’t leave.

“He looked so determined,” Sims said, describing how the man hopped the fence between the bar’s side entrance and Fremont Street after being thrown out the first time.

“Then, it got really mean in the street.”

Sims eventually called rangers for assistance and was rid of the intoxicated man, who could have used training wheels on his bicycle as he rode off, falling twice as he pedaled away.

“This is the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me so far,” he said. “My buddy told me it’s about to get crazy, like, it’s the right time of year for that.”

He means summer.

“Once it gets warmer, everyone starts acting up.”

On a typical night, though, the host from upstate New York says he spends the wee hours of the morning warming guests with heat lamps and his presence.

Douglas Seitsinger, a keeper of the Atomic Liquors and Bunkhouse Saloon gates, agreed with Sims’ hospitality model.

As the first person to greet those who enter both bars multiple nights a week, Seitsinger looks at his security position more like that of an ambassador, he said.

Don’t let his calm demeanor fool you, though.

“I’ve got an eye out on everything,” he said, standing near the ticket booth at Bunkhouse, ready to check IDs.

It’s the weekend of the Neon Reverb festival, and thousands are flooding the floors of bars up and down the Fremont East Entertainment District.

Seitsinger’s two years at Atomic and ten door gigs at Bunkhouse, where Eleventh and Fremont streets meet, have prepared him for any madness that may ensue.

“Weekend nights are very busy,” he said. Anywhere from 800 to 1,200 people will walk through his doors, but most of them won’t start any trouble.

Calling it a “by-product” of the downtown gentrification, he said many of the people who would have started trouble in the past now know better than to come inside.

When someone needs escorting, it’s usually because he or she is too touchy-feely with the staff. It rarely escalates to force, Seitsinger said.

From 7 p.m. to 2:30 a.m., when he’s guarding Bunkhouse on bustling nights, “it’s smooth as glass.”

The difference between the calm at Atomic and the calm at Bunkhouse, he says: people come to Atomic with a goal of drinking alcohol, and people come to Bunkhouse with a goal of listening to music.

Still, crowds at both are typically not rowdy and are always under control.

Closer to the tourist-packed Fremont canopy, past a pile of puke, speakers blasting Mariah Carey and several homeless people sitting at the feet of drunk, stumbling men and women, Max Pierre stands stoically, guarding Commonwealth, best-known for its hip-hop playlists and rooftop bar.

Up to 1,500 people will be counted by his silver clicker by the night’s end.

“The craziest thing I’ve ever seen, I mean, besides people being overly-drunk, acting a fool, throwing up,” he said, was when “some guy threw up all over the men’s bathroom. I mean, literally, everywhere.”

First responders, Pierre called them, are inside the club, 525 Fremont St., and ready at a moment’s notice to intervene with unwelcome patrons. His job is to ensure they don’t return.

It’s also to make women feel younger than they are.

“We try to flatter everybody,” he said to one, baffled by his request for her ID.

“Well, it works,” she responded.

It’s a line he’d use again and again.

“Are you serious,” another woman asked as she fumbled for ID. “What about grey hair, doesn’t that matter,” she went on, laughing as she dug through her purse.

“It’s just policy, that’s all,” Pierre told her.

Pierre, like Sims and Seitsinger, secures his building with a smile brighter than the street it’s on.

The pleasant mood is indicative of the atmosphere at downtown bars, Pierre says.

“I’ve worked at the Hard Rock, I’ve worked at Hyde, I’ve worked at Gallery,” he explained of his security guard jobs in Las Vegas, comparing those on Las Vegas Boulevard to those on Fremont Street.

Atmospheres at downtown nightclubs are more casual and intimate than those on the Strip, making them easier to patrol, Pierre said. Plus, black tie attire is not required.

“It’s a lot more personable down here,” he said. “It’s chill, it’s laid back, I’m not in a suit.”

Contact Kimberly De La Cruz at kdelacruz@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5244. Find her on Twitter: @KimberlyinLV