City Hall closes at five. Its most efficient relationships begin after nine, usually somewhere with poor lighting, excellent ice, and no municipal seal in sight.
The night shift is not a conspiracy so much as a social calendar with unusually durable consequences. Developers meet consultants. Consultants meet cousins. A permit delayed at lunch becomes a misunderstanding corrected before dessert.
By midnight, every public servant in the room is attending in a private capacity.
Nobody we spoke with described the arrangement as influence. They preferred access, context, or the civic value of keeping communication open. The vocabulary changes according to who is paying for the table.
The city has rules for gifts, meetings, and public records. It has fewer rules for being introduced to the right person while both of you are pretending to celebrate someone else's birthday.
Los Santos loves transparency. It simply looks better in smoked glass.
