When I wrote about my first date with Marquee a few weeks ago, I failed to mention that I returned to the club the very next night. My pride only just got out of rehab.

This time, I was there for another event. I’ll be honest: I don’t even know what the specifics were--only that it had something to do with the empowerment of women in the workplace and that a friend of a friend hooked us up. The crucial detail of the night: for one hour, there was a vodka fueled open-bar.

We arrived promptly at 10:15 p.m. At 10: 30, the bouncer gave me a coy wink as he unhooked the velvet rope to let us in. Or was he reacting to the close proximity of a hair toss from the carefully straightened mane of a supermodel in front of me? Either way, the outcome made me feel a little special. I couldn’t help but feel the promise of this Friday night.

One hour’s worth of free drinks...and my friends and I intended to take advantage of the alcohol. We’d paid $25 to attend the event, so we had to drink more than our money’s worth in order to consider the evening worthwhile. Economically efficiency is always a first priority. Continue here.

I was one of the last people to get on the Bijoux bandwagon as the club’s launch coincided with my temporary retreat from society. Too bad, because the place is a lot of fun. Several new locales have launched in the past months including RDV and Greenhouse, both of which I’ll be formulating written thoughts on soon, but neither of these places got me excited the way Bijoux did.

What’s cool here?

Well, it got me revved up enough to do a top ten list, so here we go:

1. It’s hidden! Nothing gets me more excited than hidden La Esquina-esque places. I think it has something to do with my childhood longing for a secret fort. If I have to traverse a kitchen, scale a secret stairwell, knock three times on an unmarked door, and creep through candlelight down a sketchy hallway, my happy going-out energy starts pumping -- and you have to do all these things and more to get into Bijoux.

The club’s in Meatpacking in the basement bowels of Merkato 55. The entrance is a black door and after negotiating your way inside, you slither through a long hallway, down a staircase (making lefts and rights in sharp sequence), and down another long hallway to a seemingly-standard door at the end marked ‘Employees Only.’ In opening what appears to be an electrical closet or staff bathroom, you reveal a sprawling underground party lair. Continue

I was flabbergasted when Jamie Mulholland and Jayma Cardosa announced they were gutting and redecorating 27^th street nightclub Cain. Sure, 27^th street isn’t what it used to be, but from what I could see, safari-themed Cain wasn’t suffering. The music was always preppy, the promoters plentiful and the dance floor consistently full – maybe with tourists and out-of-towners – but it’s in Chelsea! That’s where hotel concierges tell these people to go.

I have fond memories of when Cain used to be one of the most exclusive clubs in the city. Their chic Italian door people would stare you down with what felt like daggered icicles shooting out of their eyes until you felt too insignificant to even try getting in. Cain’s always been a fun, familiar friend, even if no longer in its prime. I mean, Marquee’s not longer in its ‘prime’ and remains by far the most profitable nightclub in Manhattan. I didn’t think Cain’s owners would want to ‘mess with success,’ but someone got bitten with the rebranding bug and Cain Luxe was born.

Upon hearing this news last month, I started feeling bad for Cain. Had things plummeted to such a low that they needed to add an abbreviation of the world ‘luxury’ to their name just to make the point they were still classy? What was once a hot club now sounded like a child of divorce with a hyphenated surname. I decided I’d have to do a quick swing by and check the place out of myself. Continue

The thing about Halloween landing on a Friday this year is that it gave people the excuse to make it a weekend long event. For some, face painting and sugar-highs started as early as Thursday.

I’ve written in the past about how I’m not a huge Halloween fan. I created a cop-out excuse last year about how ‘every night in New York is Halloween’ (it’s true, every night you can wear anything you want) and ‘going out is hard enough without specific wardrobe requirements.’ These excuses, while nicely crafted, are lame.

The truth: Horror movies make me cry. I get scared easily. I still have horrific memories of supposedly fun haunted houses terrifying me into months of insomnia as a child. I just don’t like dressing up. I really like things to pretty all the time. I’m anal about my skin and can’t imagine putting yucky face paint on it. I so hate being scared myself I can’t even fathom dressing up as something spooky and scaring others.

In short, I’m a Halloween loser. But this doesn’t mean I didn’t go out to do a full investigation of Halloween events taking place in the city all weekend long. I realize Halloween is over, we admired the costumes and hopefully ate a year’s worth of candy corn, but before everyone forgets about Halloween completely and refocuses 110% on their idle mind time on New Years, I wanted to put in my quick two cents on the club with the best Halloween decorations.

And my winner is… Continue

Why did the chicken cross the road?

SARAH PALIN:
Well you know, that chicken was crossin' Main Street because the gosh darn economy is so bad that Joe Six Pack and Hockey Mom were chasin' it for dinner.


BARACK OBAMA:
The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a change! The chicken wanted change!


JOHN MC CAIN:
My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.


HILLARY CLINTON:
When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure right from Day One! That every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me.

GEORGE W. BUSH:
We don' t really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

DICK CHENEY:
Where's my gun?

COLIN POWELL:
Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.

BILL CLINTON:
I did not cross the road with that chicken. What is your definition of chicken?

AL GORE:
I invented the chicken.

JOHN KERRY:
Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

AL SHARPTON:
Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN:
We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

NANCY GRACE:
That chicken crossed the road because he's guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks .


PAT BUCHANAN:
To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.


MARTHA STEWART:
No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.


DR SEUSS:
Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY:
To die in the rain, alone .

JERRY FALWELL:
Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain truth? That's why they call it the other side. Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay, too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the
liberal media white washes with seemingly harmless phrases like the other side. That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as simple as that.

GRAND PA:
In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.

BARBARA WALTERS:
Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its lifelong dream of crossing the road.


ARISTOTLE:
It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

JOHN LENNON:
Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in peace.

BILL GATES :
I have just released eChicken 2008, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your check book. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken 2008. This new platform is much more stable and will never crash or need to be rebooted.

ALBERT EINSTEIN:
Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

COLONEL SANDERS:
Did I miss one??

After being in New York for nearly three months, my social scene remains somewhat limited. While MMB tends to frequent the most exclusive nightclubs in the city, her little sister is reluctant to venture out of the East Village. I’m comfortable in the scene I refer to as NYU.S.A.—an address that’s a fusion of college life and New York. Such a combination makes me feel somewhat at home.

But I can’t remain a village idiot forever. When MMB had to leave town on a business trip, she asked me to attend an event at Marquee in her place. She had to talk me through the whole arrangement several times, very slowly, as terms like “nightclub” and “business trip” are somewhat foreign concepts.

How could I say no? It was time to venture out of my comfort zone and discover what a club had to offer.

I had two concerns about going to Marquee:
1) Running into fellow intern and arch nemesis Sushi Girl, who frequents Marquee like a bad case of herpes.

2) Being obviously out of place in a crowd of people exactly like Sushi Girl: impeccably dressed, subtly judgmental, effortlessly bitchy.

But if Marquee’s the most famous club in Manhattan five-years running, I decided it must be worth seeing. My sister wouldn’t feed me to the wolves! Besides, who am I kidding? I rely on subtle judgment and bitchiness in each blog post I write.

How out of place could I be?

I put on a little black dress and very high heels. My headband stayed home. I was ready...I guess.

The event at Marquee was hosted by TruthThroughAction.org, an organization that “brings independent filmmakers together to create edgy film and video content to support the Democratic Party, its issues and candidates.” I think it’s both commendable and effective when people use their own creative energy and channel it towards a greater cause. Be sure to check out the viral videos on the website. While surfing the world wide web, you may also want to take a glance at McCain’s crazy faces. That should be a real push towards “political monogamy”--a status that Truth Through Action promotes through its “I only sleep with Democrats” shirts. Sex doesn’t just sell; it also votes.

Continue here...

Last night, I did something I probably should’ve made a priority to do long ago – spent an evening at Meatpacking’s members only British club the SoHo House. The door policy is extremely intimidating, as in if you’re not a member, a hotel guest, or someone whose first and last name was put with the concierge by a member, they’re not letting you within touching distance of the elevator button. Since the main lobby is the size of a studio apartment, entrance negotiations that aren’t swiftly confirmed are off-the-charts awkward. There’s no space in which to ‘hang out chill’ and the staff doesn’t want anyone who’s not paparazzi-worthy polluting their child-size lobby. SoHo House’s first floor entrance represents the philosophy of the club itself. It’s simple, actually. You’re either ‘in’ or you’re ‘out.’

Loitering hopefuls not allowed. Continue

I hid my head in a hole during fashion week and one of the many things I missed was the opening of new nightlife locale Mr. West on 22^nd and 11^th ave. Their claim to fame is hosting Zac Posen’s party post runway show.

In traditional New York style, the place isn’t actually ‘new.’ It’s Opus 22 gutted and redesigned by Danny Devine and partner DJ Jes Ske. (Am I the only one who has no idea how to pronounce his name?)

Anyway, I had no intention of going out to dance last Thursday as my evening plans involved an art gallery party and quiet mingling. I’d forgotten, however, that art gallery parties have open bars (I mean, of course, they’re trying to get you drunk enough to pay twenty thousand dollars for an abstract painting of a plastic clock). With encouragement from some naughty friends, the evening turned into more than just the art appreciation session I’d anticipated.

This is how after several fun-filled stops to nearby friends’ house parties, I ended up at 1 AM exhausted in a taxi I thought was taking me home, which my girlfriend Safari had actually directed to Mr. West.

Hijacked.

Continue

As clubs got increasingly smaller and only needed to let ten people in every hour, the role of the doorperson dramatically changed. The door guy went from someone who was constantly stressed and permanently outside maniacally waving a clipboard to someone who has relatively nothing to do.

If your club’s capacity is eighty, meaning the doorperson will probably only let in around ninety people in the six hour span of an evening, that makes for a night’s work equivalent in boredom to manning the late shift at an off-road gas station in Kansas. Outside a club, everyone wants in and therefore perpetually harasses the doorperson with pleas of ‘I know so and so,’ and ‘I’m with girls!’ regardless of the fact that the door guy has neither the ability to make the locale any larger nor the authority to make the ostentatious door policy any less strict.

It therefore comes as no great surprise that in an effort to avoid boredom and persistent pestering, the doorman will take refuge inside the club. Often for chunks as large as twenty to thirty minutes at a time.

Does no one else find this absurd? Continue

After nearly two months of avoiding the New York nightlife scene, I succumbed this past weekend to a night out on the town. I learned that Upstairs was closed (on a Friday night – odd!) so we subsequently ended up at the Eldridge, heralded as the newest, smallest, best thing since Bungalow 8.

Is it just me or are New York places shrinking?

It’s like opening those Russian dolls which always have a smaller one inside. That’s been my experience with nightlife. Each new locale gets increasingly tinier, as well as increasingly far away from Chelsea.

When I go to a nightclub, especially a Hamptons nightclub, I’m not expecting refinement. I’m not anticipating costumer service or comfort or access to the bathroom. I’m pretty much prepared to be trapped in a body lock between those two crazy Swedish girls prostituting themselves, inhaling the stench of cigarettes, fresh vomit and weed. Often, consequently, I’m not even expecting to have a good time.

Even with these impressively low expectations, I found myself shocked by this.

This is the ripped and holey banquet couch at Dune which patrons pay upwards of 2K to sit at, stand on, or apparently, violate. This photo captures what I find paradoxical and intriguing about the Hamptons.

How can a theoretically elite and successful club, complete with celebrity sightings, promotional events and outrageous prices, get away with decorum like this?

If this couch, subpar to a McDonald’s booth, was presented to a bottle service group in the city, they’d immediately go elsewhere. In the Hamptons, the bottle service group literally and figuratively jumps on it, accepting the grimy booth as just another part of the preposterous Hamptons financial defilement package we submit ourselves to weekend after weekend, without really knowing why.

I’ve written before about how Hamptons wackiness often inspires a Zen-like attitude, an acceptance of ‘loss of control.’ And I think this passive acceptance crosses over into every element of summering on Long Island. Article Continues Here...

This week’s nightlife crazy award goes to the lovely narcoleptic boy I saw in Chelsea. The young lad managed to sleep through the night undisturbed, despite his bed being the rowdy, center floor table of Cain. The music wailed at deafening megawatts while drunken revelers celebrated Friday’s long anticipated arrival with stomps and cheers. Neither this, nor the bountiful leaps of the young man in red and white sneakers beside his head, woke our Rip Van Winkle.

Napping boy was evicted onto the 27^th street sidewalk around the same time my roommate and I voluntarily left. He was still half-asleep and seemed ready to spoon with the nearby dumpster. Having drank, danced, and hovered over his snoozing body for the past two hours at the adjacent table, I felt a kinship toward the fellow and tried to halt the trash can spooning process and help him into a cab. Article Continues Here...

[Goa, LA]

Anyone living in a major metropolis is the often unwilling recipient of emails, texts, and spam from promoters whose job it is to get us out having a goodtime (and for men consequently, spending money.) Some promoter messages are polite and tasteful, others unrelentingly annoying, some comedic, and many, pure trash. This astonishing example of a promoter email invitation arrives all the way from Los Angeles. While I insisted the level of douchiness meant it had to be a joke, let me assure you it’s certifiably real.

[Redacted],

I've been far too busy working on my tan and

researching calf implant surgery to write you a
lengthy email today... so I will simply warn you
that tomorrow night at Goa (Friday) we are hosting
[redacted] Model Management's 5th Anniversary Party,
and the only non-beautiful people to crack the
velvet ropes will be our busboys and even they
have IMDB rap sheets that when laid end to end
would cover Fabio's man-breasts 16 times.

Let me know if you'd like to join us. There is no
list, simply ask for [redacted] at the door and tell
him I invited you. If you have been hitting the
gym and doing your teeth whitening sessions like
you are supposed to you will be ushered inside
with the speed of a bullet train as the onlookers
corraled on the wrong side of the rope eye-fuck
you in glorious envy.

See you on the inside.

X.

P.S. If you are REALLY fucking cool and/or an
aspiring star fucker you should also come to the
smaller, more intimate party I am now throwing
every Saturday night at a location I would rather
not mention here. Ask me about it if you are
ridiculously good looking...

Article continues here...

Since its inauguration, I’ve perpetually found myself confused when writing about Meatpacking hotspot Kiss & Fly. On the one hand, they copied the décor and vibe of Pink Elephant disco ball by disco ball and are home to dirt-encrusted outdoor traffic cones and even worse, rumored B&T. On the other hand, Pink was getting old anyway, Kiss boasts an impressive ambiance, I’ve never noticed nor been bothered by the rumored B&T, and what better spot does zone-Little West 12th have to offer?

Often, you begin nights at Kiss in a desolate empty arena. I usually enter the club at 12:30pm scowling, not just because of the irritating, indoor security check point guy whose job is to annoy you into checking you coat. The dance floor’s empty, the tables few and far between, and the entire club resembles the Siberian desert. The only sound is the wind whispering across the landscape i.e. the air conditioning vents humming to the non-movement of disappointed guests. You’ll sit and start clicking on your cell phone S.O.S.ing for alternate plans and somehow, consistently, magically, inexplicably, when you shut your phone and stand back up the club’s transformed to look like this:

The words “Lily Pond” make me think of frogs, ducklings, lily pads, flowers and children’s literature. Interestingly enough, it’s actually the name of a nightclub in East Hampton. I got over my “What they were thinking?!” distress and decided I wouldn’t let the fact that the club sounded like a five-year-old’s favorite book prejudice my opinion. Yet trying to scope out the place with an open mind remained additionally challenging since Lily Pond’s rep at the poolside Hampton’s conversations I’d been eavesdropping on wasn’t positive. It seemed like I’d heard Hamptonite after Hamptonite hating on the place describing it as “a dump,” “Guido-central,” and “the worst night of my life.”

Yikes!

The snobs in South Hampton and beyond also complained about the club’s distance, describing it as “a long haul” compared to Pink Elephant or Dune.

I stayed in East Hampton this weekend around so the distance complaints were nixed. We were there in our insanely over-priced taxi in ten minutes. (Note: Taxi drivers in the Hamptons like to charge you ‘per head’ so they can make upwards of $100 dollars on inter-town rides. P.S. Meter’s are non-existent). Full article here

Tenjune is one of those clubs I’ve always resisted getting intimate with, hanging out there a handful of times but always in passing. For some unknown reason, my friends have always framed the idea as:

“Let’s swing by Tenjune,” as opposed to, “Let’s spend the night at Tenjune.”

I wrote about my mild dislike of the place and briefly made fun of their Halloween decorations, only to realize recently that I never really gave this establishment a fair chance. So I set up my Saturday evening with the intention of scoping out this hotspot for real.

I tagged along with a promoter and therefore experienced a stress-free, smooth entry around 12:15 AM. Yes it was mad early, and the inside of the club reflected this. While the dance floor and bar were cluttered with people, the surrounding, elevated VIP section remained void of human activity. This made the club surprisingly comfortable and I relished in the fact that my friends and I could dance without having our noses pressed up into one another’s sweat glands. Sweat was nowhere to be found in fact, since Alaskan-style air blast through the club’s vents at high frequency. I’d recently purchased a fashion statement of a jacket that I enjoyed showing off so didn’t mind, but my heart went out to the sundress-clad ladies suddenly smothered in goosebumps.

The DJ spun everything from rap to Billy Joel to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song to Ministry of Sound in a surprisingly smooth flow. The club’s population count and temperature rose naturally over the next half-hour and it wasn’t until one of my guy friends elbowed me in the ribs while performing a head jerk that I realized the man in the table next to us was Kanye West.

Kanye West!?!?

part 1 here

As she described, “Their boobs are bigger than my butt cheeks.” Actually, they were two times bigger.

We were told they were visiting from Miami. I’ve never been to Miami and therefore just assumed that every girl in Miami looked liked a Barbie with a double-G size chest which cost a lot of Gs. That’s just what television taught me. But these girls were super nice. They didn’t speak unless spoken to (which for some reason, I didn’t find weird) and in an emergency lip gloss crisis in the car (the emergency being I needed gloss in a more pinkish shade of red), stripper #1 bust open her purse and provided me with a lip gloss pharmacy – literally a mini Sephora store with various options in every shade. Then Bartok complained that she wanted blush to make her cheekbones pop. Out of the magic bag, stripper #1 clicked open a blush compact and said,

“Don’t worry, I’ll pop you.”

Full make up service in the back seat of the car! And I think I’m being feminine when I deign to carry gum? I could get used to this.

The next day, after one of the boys in the house mysteriously sent the strippers away (most likely because they’d fulfilled whatever their assigned duty had been the night before, while I was passed out), I, concerned, asked where they went.

“You know they were strippers, right?” He replied.

“NO!” I said. I was genuinely shocked.

“You think normal people have boobs like that?”

“I thought it was normal in Miami.”

He shook his head at me, sighed, and continued to swig a bottle of white wine. Wrong. Wrong Again. About the chef and nightclub Dune here...

Exactly one year ago, I voyaged to the Hamptons for the very first time. The experience was not…how to put it kindly…a positive.

Everyone has their own going out style. Some like to make a theatrical production of the night with designer clothes, extras, cameras and mass texts. Others like to sneak out of their apartments at 1 A.M. without telling a soul. Some of us like to pregame profusely. Others nurse one drink the whole night.

This range of styles came sharply into focus for me after an increasing number of party arguments I’d experienced with one of my newer friends. The dilemma every night was essentially this: I wanted to go wherever my friends were going so that we’d have a table, home base, and people to keep an eye on us (safety in numbers). And she wanted to go someplace just her and I.

Apparently, I’m a pack mentality going out person.

She is not.

And I never even realized this about myself!

Maybe I’m an insecure partier, but I like to enjoy a club with all my friends around me (preferably multiple groups of friends around me) and usually with someone who’s acting as leader / entrance aficionado / alcohol provider. I find that this leaves me with less to worry about.

Full article and my second fun poll here