Princes in Pink

So I’m back in civilization aka America and decided to start my reentry to Manhattan with a bang. My return fortuitously coincided with the reopening of my favorite douchey club location Pink Elephant. ‘Reopening’ you may ask? That’s right. Much to the dismay of New York alcoholics, the club closed for a week to undergo important renovations like shining the disco ball and buffering the floors to mask patrons nightly puke stains. This Wednesday it reopened and Manhattan nightlife junkies were happier than children. The place filled up especially early and patrons enjoyed many benefits of the ‘renovation’ such as a new and improved entrance with Veuve Clicquot bottles now lining the walls and a new, blinding neon green light show – none of which I noticed as new but had pointed out to me. I’m not an observant person. Especially when in a Pink Elephant state of mind.

Some bad news is that Pink has stooped to the level of Donald Trump and made their own vodka.



The good news is that it went down frighteningly easy. I suspect it might be ‘imported’ from Arkansas. But the real highlight of Wednesday evening was the hateful song ‘Last Night a DJ Saved My Life’ finally resonated with me for the first time. I LOVED the music at Pink last night and expressed this sentiment by screaming out sexual things I wanted to do to the DJ at various moments throughout the night. Who is he? His name DJ Roctakon and while his name’s kind of silly sand sounds like a dinosaur species, he brought an energy to Pink I didn’t think possible. Why I want to insert your own sexual fantasy here] to him is because he sublimely balanced house with commercial music while throwing in some mellow hip-hop. I mean, who can do that? Most DJs are tribal house junkies or hip hop fiends. This guy blended those genres together while adding classics like ‘Jessie’s Girl’ and ‘La Bamba’ without it sounding the least bit weird. I marveled at Mr. Roctakon abilities, and wanted to climb over into the DJ booth just to make sure he didn’t have my iPod back there as he was spinning my own personal hit list. I planned to become this guy’s groupie but after stalking him on the web have realized that he’s already left our island to spin at Mansion in Miami.

Thursday night Bartok arrived so staying in and coddling my massive hangover wasn’t even an option. Luckily a long shower and Excedrin quickly put me back on the party train. I planned to spend the evening at Cipriani’s but my girls and I were lured back yet again to Pink after my friend invited us to hang out with him as he was hosting the Prince of Saudi Arabia and his entourage in New York. The thought of going to Pink two nights in a row made my brain want to bleed, but my friends and I figured we should probably show up and try to make the prince marry at least one of us.

Hence we ended up meeting the prince and doing whatever girls do at Pink (Dance? Sway back and forth? Look retarded?) at his table. You’d think this would set the stage for a killer evening, right? Wrong. The truth is that after the superbness that was DJ Roctakon, Pink’s house DJ’s music sounded especially crappy. I feel like he takes lounge CDs and just cranks up their volume so it sounds like innovative house, and expects everyone to be shit-faced enough to accept this as ‘cool’ (which, granted, they are). Also, the prince’s entourage of guy friends was rather large. As in so large it was difficult to move / get into close proximity of one of the two tables where the massive amounts of alcohol were stocked. His four enormous bodyguards (who doubled as bartenders) made this already claustrophobic situation only more uncomfortable. And since most people still haven’t got the memo that Wednesday has replaced Thursday as Pink’s ‘in’ night (at least in my book), the club was overflowing with normal Thursday eurotrash as well.

When the prince’s bodyguards decided to rope off our table with those black dividers used to make airport check-in lines, I had had enough. Now there was no escape. It was impossible to leave to go to the bathroom and equally difficult to return, unless you limbo-ed under the dividers, which I did many times much to the bodyguards amusement. Besides, how exactly do these tiny plastic dividers protect Mr. Prince in anyway? I mean, I don’t think they’d really deter a bullet or a crazy assassin wielding a knife.

So I went into Pink’s hallway to make some calls about where else we could pass our already blurry night and ran into the Made in Italy crowd, all fresh off an AlItilia flight, just like me. So we transferred over to their table where activities such as breathing and standing on two legs were blissfully realities. Bartok and I wandered a bit, but she became frantic and traumatized as the new, industrial strength, post-renovation fog machine kept deafening and blinding her. After she’d screamed at the top of her lungs, ‘I feel like Helen Keller and can’t take it anymore,’ six times I knew it was time to go home.

The good news is that for the first time in my New York life my cab driver spoke English. The bad news, was that he was actually engaged in phone sex with someone (his wife?), which spiced up my ride home and broadened my dirty talk vocabulary. He picked me up when it was past five am and I guess he figures all his passengers at this hour are probably too drunk to listen / care, which was partially true. I stumbled home, made mac and cheese and enjoyed watching the new acne Murad complex infomercials on my television. I found them extremely moving, especially the before and after pictures, but eventually (thank god) I slithered to bed.

So partying with princes isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.