Socialista Ain’t Social

I’d like to take a quick moment to ridicule Tenjune’s failed attempt at Halloween décor. See below:
What is that stuff? Bubble gum? Strewn cotton candy? An effort at spider webs? If so, why is it the color of Pepto-Bismol? Note that the crowd seemed generally happy. No one seemed disturbed by this plentiful pink nastiness but me.



This week I finally got myself to Jane Street and West Side Highway to check out Socialista. Was I excited? Not really. I’d just had one too many people ask me ‘Have you been to Socialista yet?’ and was sick of replying in the negative. My underlying motivation for going however, remains that the place is co-owned by my favorite Mafioso Italian in the city, Giuseppe Cipriani along with former Bungalow 8 doorman Armin Amiri. I felt I owed it to Giuseppe to check out his latest creation of exclusivity and frivolity. Just for fun.

On the cab ride over, my friend warned me to lower my expectations.

“They sort of pride themselves on the place always being empty,” he said.

Sigh.

Now I was bracing myself for a sight worse than Rose Bar on a Saturday night – the pool table gathering dust and the place so quiet you can hear scurrying cockroaches. I feel the whole ‘exclusivity’ by keeping a place empty tactic is kind of like cheating. It takes a lot more hard work, energy and talent to keep a club full than it does to just turn everyone away. But then again, that’s assuming these establishments want to make money, which for Socialista isn’t the case. It just exists as Giuseppe and Armin’s ‘pet project.’



Upon ascending the rickety staircase to the main bar my first thought was: “Really? So much freakin’ hype for this?” The place looked like a frail haunted house, and that’s without Halloween decorations. As promised, it was empty. Eight other patrons. Two bar tenders. A DJ. That’s it.

But after ordering a drink and settling into one of the many plush and available mauve couches, the place began to grow on me. The design is minimal, Cuban-style. I felt like I’d landed on the Hollywood set used to shoot Casablanca, which is actually pretty cool. The lounge’s relaxed vibe suggested that a Rick type character might push through the kitchen’s wooden shutters at any time and serenade me with “As Time Goes By.” The fans, the white washed walls, the quiet. Socialista felt like our living room away from home. Which wasn’t what I was expecting at all.



As we got increasingly drunk, we became mesmerized by this Van Gough-like painting to the right of the bar. At first I thought it was a cat with bound feet, but then I starting noticing and counting all the geese.

So there’s everyone’s weekend homework. How many geese do you see?

Pains and Plans

So scratch everything I wrote yesterday about Tavern on the Green capitalizing on Halloween most effectively, I think Giuseppe Cipriani and Roberto Cavalli are going to win the prize. My prediction is that their Halloween event at Cipriani’s 42nd Street on Wednesday is going to put all other activities to shame – and don’t worry, it’s only $200 for general admission (and to think I was impressed by Tavern’s $40 cover…). I highly recommend checking out this randonkulous promo video some underpaid marketing intern at Cipriani’s Incorporated put together for the event here. The link will lead you to ticket and table purchasing info as well if you’ve got some extra Halloween money to burn. If it’s any consolation, I think some of the dough is going to charity.

How exactly remains unclear…



If you don’t want to fork over hundreds of dollars to have a ‘fun’ Halloween, but still want to wait outside in line for hours, I suggest Buddha Bar’s ‘good and evil’ themed event. You decide if you want to show up as an angel or devil, so basically hope of seeing any creative costumes is nil. You can view the official online invite with table price quotes here.

HEAVEN & HELL HALLOWEEN NIGHT
Wednesday, October 31st
Good & Evil will collide at
BUDDHA BAR
Featuring
DJ Stephane Pompougnac
Doors open at 9PM
25 Little West 12th Street

Meatpacking District, NYC
Good or Evil Costume Mandatory

Note the “Costume Mandatory” part of this invitation. Don’t think I’ll be going just because I don’t like the idea of a club telling me what to do, least of all telling me what I can and cannot wear. Besides, angels and devils? Could it get anymore boring than that?

I’ve always liked small clubs where you can check everyone out with one eye glance across the room. I’ve never been a huge Buddha Bar fan since the place is large enough to stable sixty horses. The club’s size makes it difficult to fill up, and frighteningly easy to get lost in. And last time I was there, women were making out with each other in the center of the dance floor surround by men tossing one-dollar bills in their direction. Classy? I think not. Granted Pink is despicable, but to their credit, I’ve never seen women in there act like common strippers. Men acting like strippers, maybe…

The low-key option is Bust-a-Move NYC’s (the more mature Italian rivals of the promotion group Made in Italy NYC) party at I Tre Merli, info below.

Dear friends and friends of friends,
THIS IS A REMINDER FOR THE HALLOWEEN PARTY
ON WEDNESDAY AT I TRE MERLI.
FREE ENTRANCE
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 31
Please join
DJs MASSI & LUCA
@
I TRE MERLI
463 West Broadway Between Prince & Houston Street

This invite gets five Model Behavior stars. Note the word “Free” (who doesn’t love that word?) and that there’s NO mention of costumes / requirements / competitions whatsoever.

In local non-Halloween related news, my DVR suffered a mental relapse and thinks it’s the week of October 15th. This means a week’s worth of my precious programming disappeared into the ether, and I’m never going to get it back. I’d call my cable company to complain, but most interactions I have via phone with Time Warner leave me feeling like I’ve suffered a mental relapse myself. And I need all the brain cells I can get right now. Especially since this song, which I’ve kindly featured below, has been slowly but surely decreasing my intelligence for the past month it’s been stuck in my head. Enjoy watching will.i.am (Get it? Get it? It’s the worst rap name double-entendre ever) molest girls on a beach.

My Halloween MoJo: Missing

I, Model Behavior, a usually fearless partygoer, admit to be so intimidated by the Halloween madness that I fled Tavern on the Green’s Saturday Halloween soirée before even entering the party premises.

Tavern on the Green’s PR people deserve a hearty handshake. I failed to meet anyone in a twenty-mile radius of Manhattan who didn’t know about Tavern’s Halloween shindig in these past two weeks. Invitations went out early and in abundance. Every promoter I’ve ever stumbled across in years united together and to make the place a living madhouse. And here’s the thing about Holidays – it’s an excuse for club owners to financially ass rape the New York population with an extra thrust by charging $40 entrance fees, justified by the concept of a ‘Halloween Party.’

Question: What makes reasonable people accept this kind of brutal monetary abuse? Do people really think some spider webs and a string of glowing pumpkin decorations cost even a fifteenth of the dough clubs reel in by monopolizing on a child’s holiday?

And clubs aren’t the only ones cleverly commercializing on Halloween’s easily exploitive nature. Costume shops somehow convince normally savvy Manhatteners to shell out sixty bucks for a disintegrating cliché costume in a plastic bag that cost $2.50 to produce in Taiwan. How do they do that? How do they get us to accept it?

I’m being the textbook definition of a party pooper, I know. And I apologize. Anyone who follows this blog knows hating on an excuse to party isn’t my nature. But I spent a wretched twenty minutes competing with fallen angels, Mario and Luigi, and a lot of slutty devils for a cab home Saturday evening on Seventh Avenue after I prematurely aborted my evening plans. The city was that overcrowded. I wasn’t drunk, and an especially disorganized trip to Atlantic City on Friday night (is there such thing as an organized trip to a casino?) had cut into my quality weekend costume planning time, which I wasn’t looking forward to anyway. Sober in a sweater and jeans isn’t really the best way to crash a Halloween party, especially when you’re hung over from a frighteningly intense game of blackjack from the night before.

I enjoyed an especially leisurely dinner with Safari Saturday night, so we didn’t even get to Tavern on the Green until around midnight. It was clear from twenty yards away that entering the establishment was a lost cause. Lines branched off in two directions outside the entrance, both so long and winding that they were difficult to follow even while squinting. Mobs larger than anything I’ve seen on 27th street launched themselves through the middle.

Who were all these people?

Another disturbing thing about Holidays…those who consistently stay home on a Saturday night come out for the ‘special occasion’ of Halloween. The city becomes disproportionately packed! The entire party-going system is clogged with outsiders. Which is fine. I have nothing against non-religious-party-goers, although I wish they’d try harder to not get so ripped off.

In order to even out the New York going-out equilibrium, I feel the regulars like me need to stay in. That’s why I was home by one thrity a.m. Safari and I took one look at the throngs outside Tavern, calculated that everyone lucky enough to negotiate a successful entrance would be coughing up $40 for the privilege of buying drinks inside, silently applauded Tavern’s money-making savvy, and high-tailed it out of there as soon as I took these pictures:



A girlfriend of ours who’d wisely arrived at ten p.m. and had a table in the VIP section (Tavern on the Green has a VIP section? Apparently on Halloween they do…) confirmed that the party was fabulously fun. So I’m not bad-mouthing their bash. I like Tavern if only for the sparkly Christmas lights wrapped around all the trees. Cheers to them for monopolizing on Halloween in the most lucrative scheme I’ve seen yet.

I proceeded to observe the Halloween chaos by essentially walking home to Tribeca (since finding a cab was impossible) all the way from Central Park. We swung by some house parties and observed the similarly absurd lines outside Spirit and Cabana (even Cabana had a cover charge! Unimaginable!)

The good news is that if I have the willpower, I can redeem myself Wednesday night – the official day of Old Hallows Eve. Word on the street is that Cipriani’s 42nd street is throwing some sort of Wednesday night Halloween ‘ball’ in collaboration with Roberto Cavalli vodka, Pink’s hosting a ‘disco inferno,’ and the Italians will be rocking their own mini party at I Tre Merli in SoHo. I’m posting Pink’s invite below because I appreciate the way they’ve phrased “costumes highly encouraged,” instead of “required” or even worse, that there will be a “costume competition.”

Please join us Next 
Wednesday, October 31st


for the 

DISCO INFERNO


Halloween Party

 at 

Pink Elephant


with music by Miami's
 Mr. Maurizio


Costumes Highly Encouraged 


527 West 27th Street, New York
212.463.0000

www.pinkelephtantclub.com

For once I say “thank you” Pink for the thoughtful “highly encouraged” phrasing. Isn’t life challenging and competitive enough without costume requirements infiltrating our Holidays?

Sorry, sorry.

I’ll try to locate my Halloween mojo by Wednesday.

Green Fairies, Flappers, Tuxedos…Oh MY!

I’ve been a bad blog poster this week, but I’m chalk full of excuses, none of which are particularly interesting except one:

I drank an entire bottle of absinthe and recovery time was slightly longer than expected.

Okay…

I didn’t drink an entire bottle. I shared a mini bottle with a close friend. But considering that stuff in like 300% alcohol and I’m a lightweight, the result was still hallucinatory. We’d been drinking rum and coke for two hours when my friend remembered she had a stash of absinthe left over from a recent trip to Prague. It was then that I announced we were going to drink all of it.

“Why?” She said cocking her head. This was just a normal, rainy, New York City night out. There were no great reunions, birthdays or charity events to crash ahead of us.

“Because tonight,” I replied, already tipsy, “I want to be one of those people. Those people who can’t properly walk, those people others look upon in disgust while being secretly jealous because they’d pay cash money to be as outrageously drunk and elated as us.”

I’d been sick and housebound for over a week. I was finally going out, and like a caged animal, was running on overdrive since I’d been bed bound for so long.

I also have a theory that planned party nights tend to fail. Anytime someone says, “tonight’s going to be a wild night,” prepare for mediocrity. Once the expectation for debauchery has been set up, a subtle pressure creeps in and ruins everyone’s sense of carefree relaxation. Predicting outrageous fun is like shooting yourself in the foot before even strapping on stilettos. Because in my experience, the best nights always occur at random. When you’re utterly relaxed, in good company, with no high profile plans and zero expectations. It’s then that you realize you have a bottle of unopened absinthe in your desk drawer. That it’s raining, but you don’t care. That there’s no need for concrete plans when you can just follow wherever the sparkles and Green Fairies you’re now hallucinating happen to take you.

The last time I’d drank absinthe was at age seventeen in Italy. I’d ended up naked on a city rooftop with a bunch of friends screaming obscenities at the Milanese skyline. I passed out in a sleeping bag on the apartment building’s garden terrace. At some point the next morning, my friend and the previous night’s host stole the keys to his dad’s Lamborghini and drove me home.

We’d done absinthe that night the proper way. With sugar (or salt?) – the details are blurry – lighting it on fire and consuming the liquid in warmed shot glasses. This time around, my friend and I forewent all such formalities. We just swigged the whole bottle passing it back and forth – no sugar, salt, or fire aiding the consumption process. We’d scream at regular intervals at the immense disgustingness of the taste. It was like drinking gasoline. It’s a miracle one of us didn’t puke right then and there.

Needless to say, the rest of the night we bounced around like teenagers on ecstasy and my entire prophecy of being those people was fulfilled to the highest extent. We went to D’Or and fueled our inappropriate state with vodka. By the time we went to a club at 2 a.m. I was craving champagne and was sure that a glass of bubbly would help all the liquids I’d consumed that night magically blend together.

Again, how I didn’t end up as one of those people who’s carried out of a club unconscious or one of those girls who randomly begins throwing up on herself remains a mystery. I just danced like a machine all night. And according to texts and phone calls from the next day, I’d apparently run into a bunch of friends and going-out regulars that I know and had failed to say ‘hello’ or make eye contact with any of them. Jumping up and down elated sporting a sloppy grin seemed to be the only activity on my agenda. Or as my friend put it: “We were in our own little Absinthe bubble.”

I almost wish I had gotten sick so I wouldn’t be so blatantly re-craving the experience.

* * *

In other local news, this Wednesday was Goldbar’s doorman Jamie’s birthday bash at Cain. I initially didn’t even recognize Jamie at the party since he wasn’t wearing a scowl and generally announcing, “We can’t accommodate you,” to every non-regular in line. It’s always fascinating to observe door people away from their door, and come to find out, inside a club Jamie is charming, generous, hospitable and frighteningly attractive. Especially, with his British accent and tuxedo (second from the right).


Cain had been completely redecorated for the event with glistening chandeliers (that looked legitimately expensive) and brothel-like red velvet curtains. The safari theme (which we’re all a little sick of after three years) had been stomped out. I appreciated the change and thought the decoration staff deserved whatever a Chelsea nightclub workers version of an Emmy is.




Adding to the already vibrant festivities were the tuxes, pre-mature Halloween costumes, and fabulous flapper girls.

Even as a Halloween hater, I take my hat off to the flapper women whom I believe did a noteworthy job of balancing sexy and chic in their costumes.

This should be a big weekend for costume taunting.

Let’s see what the city has in store…

Musings While in Hibernation

Since I’m still too ill to go out and party, I’ve resorted to the next best thing – stalking the web for photos of myself partying. Sound pathetic? It is. So I came across a bunch of photos taken on one of these recent evenings and to my dismay found that I look absolutely horrible in every single one (um, no…I’m not providing the links).

WTF?

Usually these semi-professional event photographer people take good photos. Usually I’m out in a place that’s dark enough with such an impressive amount of make-up on that I always come across looking acceptable. Usually, I pass for having a sense of style.

Not on the night these photos were taken.

First of all, I’m wearing a top and leggings that don’t match. Two, the top isn’t a top anyone should wear with leggings. Three, I’m way shiny, and silly, and look lost. Four, my hair looks drier than hay, and fake.

At the particular party where these photos where taken, there happened to also be in attendance a young woman I especially dislike. Everyone has people in this world we scribble on our imaginary hit list, either because they trash talk our friends, are clueless about proper social behavior, are extremely enviable, or have fucked the guy we like (in my case with this woman, all four). The worst part about this group of online photos is that however much I look awful, my nemesis looks fabulous. She’s a knockout in every frame! I’d say we’re tied for the number of photo opts, but while I look impressively undesirable, she’s glowing like a Victoria’s Secret model. Her outfit was also casual, classy, and…perfect.

Guess you can’t win ‘em all.

Other Discoveries…

Milano cookies. They’re great. I vote them Pepperidge Farm's greatest invention, although everything that company flings out the oven is pretty damn good. I’ve had a thing for Milanos since fourth grade. By the time I hit middle school, some crafty market analysts looking to suck more money out of the average American shopper came out with the idea of Mint Milanos, Double Chocolate Milanos, Strawberry Milanos and now in a diet conscious age, Sugar Free Milanos. I’m not a huge experimenter and I hate mint except for when in toothpaste or breath deodorizers, so I’ve been a solid Double Chocolate Milano cookie eater ever since the multi-branding.

So why Milanos and not Chessmen?

Milanos have the prefect amount of sugar in them. They taste great with milk and they’re not large, so you don’t have the mental responsibility of consuming a whole cookie. Plus the package seems to last forever. There are three layers of crunchy vanilla chocolate morsels. So your stash never seems to end. This cookie is the perfect pick me up, not to mention it’s named after one of my favorite cities. Wow. I just realized I’m blogging about cookies. I blame my Dayquil. Moving on…

Not looking forward to…

Halloween. When I got my fist New York apartment I stalked up on candy hoping to coo at some cute kids dressed up as ladybugs or Sponge Bob Square Pants.

No one came!

So staying in isn’t a fun option. Even less of a good time though, seems to be going out. The city’s a madhouse, and that parade is insane. Are throbbing crowds of drunken freaks dressed like Lord of Rings characters people’s idea of a good time? We all know I like an excuse to party, I’ve just never got on the Halloween bandwagon. I hate dressing up. I hate playing pretend. I loathe haunted houses, creepy music and I really, really don’t like being scared (Jodie Foster’s movie Contact terrified me, okay? I’m a wimp). I also feel Halloween has lost a lot of its charm (assuming it had some) and has become an excuse for girls to dress up like especially ostentatious prostitutes and not be properly ridiculed for it. For more visual costume examples, I refer you to Take a Memo’s blog entry here.

So what are you all doing for Halloween? Is anyone feeling the ‘come up with an amazing costume to get into to [insert friend’s name]’s slamming Halloween party’ pressure?

Isn’t life stressful enough?

Between Diddy’s white party, Planet Pink’s silver night and the various Italian toga parties it’s like every evening requires its own special ensemble. Doesn’t the universe know that outfit selecting process for females is intrinsically complex as is?

That’s the end of my rant for now.

Time to sedate myself with more meds…