When I lived in
In March 2005, Ania J. traveled to
Since America's a bit behind on the vocalist bandwagon and many clubbers, myself included, don't fully understand what a vocalist is, I sat down with this “rock star angel” to learn about nightlife through her eyes.
The downside of dating someone you go out and have fun with is that you’ll eventually have to see them drunk, at night clubs, post break-up. You’d think that because
So not only are you entering an inevitably awkward, emotionally uncomfortable situation, you’re doing it on dramatic steroids. How to handle such encounters? Let’s explore a few. Full article here.
I wrote months ago about the SoHo club Upstairs in an article entitled Ode to Clubs With Food:
At around 3:30 A.M. Upstairs serves snacks. Mini hamburgers, pizzas, and the best freakin’ French fries with sauces that put McDonalds to shame. These snacks unquestionably save my life. Not only do they start soaking up the excess alcohol in my stomach making me feel more like a human being and less like a swirling ballerina in a perverse city version of the Nutcracker, but they’re delicious and Tapas-size so you never end up overeating … So this entry is my love ode, in incorrect poetic structure, to clubs with food. Because I don’t feel I ever fully appreciated this phenomenon.
My evil genius was onto something. Mere months later, Upstairs launched ‘Downstairs’ - not a bar or extension of the club, but a classic diner. In the ‘late night’ tradition of the venue, the diner’s open from 11 PM to 7 AM, so people who like to eat post-party will have someplace to go other than French Roast and L’Express. The quirk? Danny A., Matthew Isaacs and Jordan Harris decided to pay homage to New York nightlife by naming everything on the menu after Manhattan clubs and promoters, past and present.
Other thoughts of the day:
- Why is the London Bachelor on ABC likable despite the fact that he’s a make-out whore? The kissing fiend is lip-locked in every scene with another woman, often while fellow suitors/competitors watch. I know we all rag on the immaturity of people on reality TV, but I have to give these Bachelor broads props because if some girl was tounging a guy I just kissed (let alone wanted to marry) there’s no way I could calmly watch through a window serenely sipping champagne and gossiping. I’d probably pull some sort of karate move that would land everyone (plus cameramen) in the hospital, or at least the psych ward.
- Why is the city raping Washington Square Park? It used to be so pretty and now it looks like a prison facility. If I were an NYU freshman paying $40,000 a year for a non-campus college and the one outdoor communal space my school had to offer looked like war zone, I’d demand a partial refund. Where will these students unwrap their sandwiches and enjoy picnics in the roped-off grass? More importantly, where will they buy weed from hobos?
Going out too much can make you feel crazy. No locale however can compete on the crazy scale with The Box, Manhattan’s whacky version of a Freak Show, Cabaret, and Dinner Theater rolled tightly into one notoriously high-priced package. All the glittery songs, stripping, contortionists, and acts of defilement start at $2,000 minimum just to sit at a table, further bottle minimums apply after that. FULL ARTICLE HERE.
For those of you who can't make it to New York, enjoy a scandal or are just curious, below’s an ‘Inside The Box’ photo and video tour, mainly the late night crudities since I didn’t get there till 3 AM. Be forewarned that nudity is involved. For my original Box impressions back in 2007 when it first opened, fly here.
Valentine’s Day isn’t only a night for lovers to get ripped off on chef’s tasting menus, evidently every club in the city is taking commercial advantage of the ‘holiday’ as well. Let’s look at some examples:
For starters, we have a “Kiss Kiss” Valentine's Day (whatever that means) hosted by celebrity photographer Patrick McMullan at Kiss & Fly.
Happy Valentines Day
Double Feature
Thursday, February 14th
Special Musical Performances by DJ's
David Morales and Felix Da Housecat
For table reservations call 212.463.0000
For The Love Of The Music
Pink Elephant 527 West 27th Street
http://www.pinkelephantclub.com/
Newcomer Mansion’s decide to take the bloody festivity route and are hosting a “Vampire Valentine’s Day” event where it’s promised that “The whole staff as well as dancers will be in vampire makeup with vampire fangs. And all the aerial acts will be in vamp outfits.” No, thanks. I’d rather skin myself at home watching Scary Movie 3. Halloween once a year is more than enough.
And then, when in doubt about how to handle a party, just “masquerade” it and you can’t really go wrong. Soon-to-be-closed Lotus (who knew this venue was still alive and kicking?) is hosting a Valentine’s Day Masquerade Ball which they claim will include: kissing booths, eye candy, cupid, and ‘love.’ Wow. Kissing booths? Who knew this concept had been licensed beyond middle school gyms?
So being a masochist, I’ll probably try to hit up all of these events, in some sort of strategic order. Hey, a fake holiday’s only beneficial purpose is an extra excuse to party. And if the night goes really well, there’s always the chance of ending up at Mason Dixon for a honky tonk mechanical bull riding Valentine’s Day.
It’s time to set a record.
1. This actually might go in the category of “more than mildly entertaining.” I somehow landed at Kiss and Fly on Saturday night and as I stood at a slightly elevated table surveying the crowd in a typical drunken cry for help, I was continually jabbed in the crotch by the flailing arms of a couple madly making out on the dance floor inches below me. This situation was made less uninteresting when a man in a black dress coat approached the couple, ripped them apart, flipped the girl around and began intensely making out with her as well. Boy #1’s jaw dropped, but he adjusted to the sharing idea in two seconds flat and continued to grind up against the girl as she macked face with the second male entity.
If any of these people knew each other remained unclear. The girl flipped around once again to immediately lip lock with her original partner, and black-dress-coat-man proceeded to stick his hand up her very tiny dress and finger her on the dance floor. Yes, while she’s making out with Boy #1. And yes, right in front of me where I looked down upon the raunchy threesome in awe, confusion and amazement. I hadn’t seen a performance like this since the girls accepting cash like strippers at Buddha Bar.
2. Since reality TV is all we got these days, I was excited about Make Me a Supermodel the new Project Runway / America’s Next Top Model hybrid show hosted by Niki Taylor and Tyson Beckford. Anything that gets male models on my TV set is good. I find it sort of unfair that women are objectified on every network, but a male model show remains impossible to find. The bad news, however, is host Niki Taylor. Someone needs to take away this woman’s right to be on TV.
As you may imagine, Make Me a Supermodel isn’t that stimulating a show. It’s essentially America’s Next Top Model if you took away any semblance of class (which the show doesn’t have a lot of to begin with) and got the models naked every episode.
THE MODELS ARE LITERALLY NAKED (OFTEN MAKING OUT) IN EVERY EPISODE.
I’m sure some bigwig exec genius figured out the correlation between naked hot people performing acts of mild porn and high ratings, but this is still a little too much nudity to stomach. If I were in this competition I’d drop out immediately. Because if you’re going to stoop that low you might as well get PAID to be naked rather than reveal yourself for free on network television every night. Plus, Make Me a Supermodel lets “America decide” which of the three worst models should go home.
“America’s” qualified to make these kind of decisions since when….?
But ultimately, this trainwreck of a show is really a vehicle for aging Niki Taylor to humiliate herself in mid-age. Let’s put it this way: Whatever the superstar on-camera quality that Tyra posses in the gallons, Niki Taylor doesn’t have in droplets. I think the middle school MC for my school play at age twelve was a better announcer than Taylor. Listening to her is like being read aloud to from a children’s storybook. Except that brother’s Grimm would be more interesting than anything she’s saying.
While Tyra gives an in depth critique and entertaining analysis of her models, Niki repeats statements like this, slowly, painfully and without energy, on a weekly basis:
your photo is fabulous and
you rocked the runway
you are this week's winner
you may leave the catwalk
No details. No analysis. No enthusiasm. No complex verbs.
Some models work well on TV. Tyra epitomizes this concept, Rebecca Romijn kicks ass as a transvestite on Ugly Betty, and Heidi Klum’s incredibly adorable, energetic, and drop-dead gorgeous on Project Runway. With Niki Taylor, it’s impossible to even imagine this woman once was a supermodel. And it’s not about the fact that she looks like your average soccer mom in way too tight clothing; it’s about that fact that some people just aren’t good on-camera.
Tune into Make Me a Supermodel on Bravo if you want to check it all out.
Ever since the weather turned beach appropriate, my house slipped into a routine of heading to Jose Ignacio beach mere moments after waking up. My eyes would flutter open to Cavalli’s crazy, pop, created-by-a-12-year-old girl iPod playlist blasting from across the hall and I’d know I had approximately six minutes to pee, wash my face, put on a swimsuit, pull together a beach bag, and get my ass in our train wreck of a car before he drove us Shumaker-style to the beach.
We’d usually get to the ocean around two, which sounds late but keep in mind we usually went to bed at 6 A.M. and the sun never set before nine thirty at night. I’d begun playing racquetball in the tide in an attempt to get some exercise other than walking through cow fields in heels. Some buzz-kill ex-bartender had quoted me the number of calories in Mojitos and other mixed drinks at a recent party. These aren’t numbers you want to know when on a summer vacation that involves alcoholism and no gyms. Besides, I’d learned in Puglia that racquetball on the beach is an excellent way to meet people as your little ball routinely hits passerbys who then tend to stop, pick up the ball, and assuming their not mortally wounded, chat with you.
That evening, the ladies in our house attended a traditional Argentine barbeque hosted by Argentine guys we’d met at Setai the night prior. In traditional Punta fashion, we got completely lost trying to get there. Also in traditional Punta fashion, we phoned the host for help and were asked to describe our location…
“We’re on an anonymous side street off the Brava ocean side number 38, near a stone wall and a house called the ‘La Marina.’”
And again in traditional Punta fashion, we were told to wait for a member of the party to come and retrieve us. We were parked on a side street with no name that I knew our rescuer would never find, but we didn’t want to pull onto the main street as the Brava’s a mini highway with no breakdown lane. Guess Uruguayan drivers never have accidents. Since we weren’t that great at driving stick anyway we decided our only option was to stay put, and since I was the only girl wearing flats, it was voted that I should hike down to the Brava in the pitch black and stand on the side of the road like a blonde prostitute to try and hail down our rescuer. And clearly, since I was so hungry for some home-cooked sausage, I agreed to this plan.
I only had to stand on the side of the road, ocean breeze in my face, for about two minutes before a car slowed. I tentatively approached and realized it was one of the cute friends of the guys my girlfriends had been talking to at Setai. I hopped in his vehicle, directed him to our car off the main road, then stayed with him as my girlfriends in our car followed us to the party location, which note: We never in a million years would have found on our own.
Any time spent getting to this place was well worth it. The meat was abundant and one of the hosts had a college minor in grilling.
I drank a bucket of champagne and once buzzed, interviewed an adorable married Argentinean couple about their recent wedding. As the wine bottles got increasingly empty, one of my friends disappeared for “a walk” with an Argentine guy who’d been not-so-subtly kissing the back of her neck all night. Another girlfriend got lost in the void that was the over packed living room and another had been “in the bathroom” for thirty minutes. I decided it was time to take action and move to my next location: A Brazilian house party in an area of Punta called “Beverly Hills.” I’d been there before and some of my other New York friends were pre gaming there before clubbing.
The problem: Transportation.
After politely asking several of the party hosts to call me a cab, one of the guys finally broke the news to me that, “I’d never get a cab, and even if I did, it’d get lost.” Then the cute Argentine who’d been sent as our rescuer earlier in the night extricated himself from a sea of partying women and volunteered to drive me. I fake protested for five minutes. In ten, we were in his car getting lost.
After a series of wrong turns, we miraculously ended up getting to my final destination without any significant time wasted. I tried to convince him to come in and join the second party with me, but to no avail. He had to get back to his friends, and I sincerely thanked him for his generous chauffer duties.
The Brazilian party was just as magnificent as it was the last time – fantastic music, speakers the size of my apartment, pool house, champagne, the party scattered around the acres of lawn. My main friend there we’ll call Prince, and no, don’t think Purple Rain. In one of our introductory conversations in New York many months prior, he’d claimed to be “The Prince of Punta,” a claim that proved to be utterly legit as he’d been showing me an excellent time while simultaneously acting as camp consoler / coordinator / PR for the entire peninsula. Later, he organized everyone’s transportation in 6 different cars to Crobar and somehow got our party of thirty all past the nasty doormen.
According to my sources, the only way the owner of Crobar could get a building permit in La Barra was to make the club one hundred percent sound proof. So I think Crobar’s budget went primarily towards soundproofing and not towards decorating: The space looks like one of those grey cement cinder blocks one often sees strewn around construction sites.
In true Crobar style, the music pulsated pure techno. The club was absolutely enormous with six dance floors and multiple levels. If I hadn’t been clutching someone in our party’s hand for dear life, I would probably made a wrong turn and still be lost in Crobar Punta at this very moment.
We followed the Prince who proceeded to negotiate everyone’s entrance into the VIP. I then began a lengthy dialogue with one of the Prince’s male friends, Jim from New York, which culminated in an argument that went like this:
Him: “Make out with me.”
Me: “No.”
Him: “Make out with me.”
Me: “No. But we can thumb wrestle.”
It made sense at time.
And we actually did thumb wrestle in Crobar. In retrospect, I think he and I were forced into one another’s company as we were the only two English speakers left standing. Despite the occasional make out controversy, we got along swimmingly, and I’m sure the Brazilians got a laugh out of the two inebriated New Yorkers thumb wrestling whilst downing champagne in a techno club.
When we couldn’t take the abusive music anymore, we decided to share a cab home. I insisted the cab drop me off first as I lived in La Barra, but in some kind of inebriated misunderstanding / language barrier with the cabbie, the driver ended up stopping the meter at my place. Jim paid despite my resistance that we weren’t at his house yet and the taxi blew dirt in our face as it sped away.
So Jim and I wobbled inside and crashed onto my living room couch. The fact that it was light out indicated that it might be time to sober up, so I put together a platter of cookies for Jim and tried to convince him to eat, call a cab, and get out of my living room. We didn’t have a spare bed and the sofa wasn’t really an option since I was living with five other people. Two of my long lost housemates, last seen at the Argentine barbeque, returned from partying shortly thereafter to see me exhaughsted on the couch and Jim, horizontal, nestling on my shoulder. I tried to explain that despite all evidence to the contrary, me and this guy were not hooking up, but my housemates were too drunk to care. They stumbled into their rooms and I decided to take drastic action and call the Prince since I knew Jim was staying with him.
He’d just left Crobar.
“Hi Prince,” I said. “MB here. Do you think you could swing by and collect Jim from my house?”
The Prince profusely apologized and scolded us for leaving the club without his supervision. Since we both knew he’d never find my place, which naturally was on a dirt road with no name, we arranged to meet at the main street at number 48, a short walk from my place. So weary Jim and I, arm and arm, trudged down toward the ocean, main street, and most glorious sunrise I’d ever seen, still munching on crackers. As we waited on the pavement, I realized this was the second time in one night I was waiting on the side of a road. Hot.
The Prince pulled up mere moments later and agreed to drive me the three blocks up the hill back to my house. Jim fell into the backseat and I got into the front, at which point the Prince announced:
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
It was a little too early in the morning for these kinds of riddles.
“The good news,” I croaked, weakly. Who wants bad news at 7 A.M.?
“The good news is that Jim won’t be sleeping at your house.” The Prince then pulled a quick 180 and burned rubber as the car lurched forward. “The bad news is you’re coming with me to the after party.”
Me: “After party!?!?!??!”
I whipped around in the car like a caged animal, looking back in the direction of my house, which was quickly receding into the distance.
“This is kidnapping,” I announced to no one in particular. The Prince just smiled and accelerated. Keep in mind it’s now easily seven thirty in the morning and broad daylight. And I was already fantasizing about the orgasmic moment when my head would hit my pillow.
So we ended up NASCAR-style racing a fellow Brazilian playboy with three girls in his red convertible two seater Mercedes over the La Barra bridge back to the original Brazilian house party for Brazilian after hours which included swimming, dancing, drinking and believe it or not – a game of tag.
If that’s not a partying endurance test, I don’t know what is.
To Be Continued…
