The Plaza, known primarily as a mid-town tourist venue and home to the delightful brat Eloise, seems to want a slice of the city’s nightlife party pie. In an operation that involved tenting off their lobby bar with heavy velvet curtains and installing a doorman and DJ, the Plaza now hosts its own mini lounge, seeped in darkness, elegance and plush fabrics. Currently, scattered hotel guests and large groups from New York’s nightlife circuit (imported by promoters who are selling the Plaza as a ‘pre-party’ spot) stake out on opposite sides of the venue. Busboys in tuxes navigate between them. The atmosphere is somewhat surreal, reminding me of the private, chronically un-crowded hotel bars in London, like the Sanderson’s impenetrable Purple Bar.

A major plus of the Plaza opposed to other lounges, is that the music remains at a tasteful level, making conversation with fellow humans an actual possibility. There’s also something undeniably magical about a New York staple building like the Plaza Hotel: the marble floors, the shiny bellman, the buttoned uniforms, the quality furnishings, the sparkling chandeliers. One feels privileged to be here, and for Manhattan ladies who like to dress up and dawn jewelry, this is the perfect place to debut a cocktail number.

The Plaza lounge is a new nightlife initiative, quiet at the moment with promise of becoming a bustling pre-clubbing staple. My experience was so calming, serene, and in stark contrast to normal pre-parties, that I’m sort of hoping the place doesn’t get crazy anytime soon.

Photo Tour below:

The lone interior doorman pulls back the red velvet rope. White tuxedos? Yes, please.

A clubbing crew enjoys drinks before heading to Upstairs.

Impressive glowing décor.

The Ladies Bathroom flower arrangement. A few giant steps above anything you’d see at a typical nightlife venue.

The even more gigantic entry-way flower arrangement, complete with overarching wreath, which is several times the size of an actual human being. [Note the person seated in the corner as a point of reference.]

Update! Update!

The Kiss & Fly cone has multiplied. [Old photo above] There are now TWO. Note the new side view photo I took to properly showcase this point.

I guess I thought that by drawing attention to it via the Internet, the cone would somehow magically disappear and get removed by a Kiss & Fly janitor who’s also a devout reader of my blog.

Not the case!

In fact, the opposite has occurred. The club seems to be promoting the mysterious bathroom stall (rumored as a coke room, but this can’t be true because the stall doesn’t even have a proper door and Kiss is not a place like Upstairs, geez) as a traffic cone hosting facility.

Fix this toilet already or just riddle me a reason for this bizarre set up!

I almost brought up Issue Cone with one of the owners last night over casual conversation, but then realized he might not find it so amusing that I write about the intimate quirks of his club online for sport. I was also way too drunk to conduct a proper interview and figured he’d might think I was dropping acid when all my questions revolved around an orange construction object I’ve fondly named Earl. Plus, it’s in the women’s room. Is he even aware?

I’ll work on getting an eventual statement from him. More disconcerting at the moment, is the fact that my favorite part about journeying to Kiss & Fly is not the music, free drinks, good-looking revelers or really pretty disco ball, but rather my nightly check-up on the cone.

In less interesting news, Kiss also got their Amazon-braided dancers completely halter free bikini tops. Take a look. No back strap. No front strap. No strap in between. How do these things stay on their shaking lady parts? If it’s adhesive and they have to glue feathers to their breasts, I really hope they’re getting paid extra for that.

More mysteries, unsolved.

I woke up this past Saturday at 10 am still drunk from Friday night at Cain and instinctually knowing there was no way I’d be spending the rest of the weekend in the city. My Hamptons escape house would be too crazy for my hung over mind to handle so I eliminated Long Island as an option (last weekend the house was overcrowded and loud to the point that sleep became an impossibility. Girls with cars actually drove back to Manhattan to flee the madness at 3, 4 and 5 AM in the morning – it was that bad.) So without leaving bed, I lurched for my cell phone and dialed an ex-boyfriend from college who I knew had a share house in the fabled Jersey Shore.

After we caught up on each other’s Friday nights, I discovered he happened to be at Penn Station heading to the shore as we spoke. The proceeding conversation went something like this:

Me: So, any chance of you inviting me?

Um…well, you should definitely come out another weekend.

Why not now?

It’s only my second weekend out there myself. I haven’t been since Memorial Day. I don’t even know how to get there with the train.

That’s a dumb excuse. Obviously you’re going to figure out how to get there with the train. Why can’t I come?

[Really awkward pause.]

Me: We don’t have to sleep in the same room. You don’t even have to make-out when we’re get drunk. I just want to be poolside. I need to leave the city.

It’s not that, it’s –

You won’t even have to talk to me. I’ll bring a book.

I definitely want you to come out another weekend –

Other weekends you’ll be at weddings and I’ll be in the Hamptons. Seize the present moment.

I just –

It’ll be more fun with me there goddammit!

Well, I can pick you up at Spring Lake…

DING! DING!! DING!!! Victory!

Children, take this as a lesson as to where persistence can get you.

I’d write about my psychological theory ‘the crazy girl approach to love’ that came into play here, the theory that men really just want to be told what to do, but I already wrote that article here.

It wasn’t until halfway there on the train an hour later that I sobered up and became fully conscious of what I’d done. I was entering the land of frat boys, Guidos and sideways baseball caps without mental preparation or body armor. New Jersey Transit was propelling me directly into the jaws of the New York summer destination famous for its lack of class.

House party activities that ensued included beer pong, quarters, consuming Coors Light, eating Dominos, and this endlessly amusing game called cornhole with which I became obsessed. After defeating every person in the house and their guests, I wanted to continue playing. When I started envisioning myself conquering the cornhole sport at the next Olympic games while wearing one of those beer dispenser helmets with a wrap around straw, I knew I’d developed a problem and made myself stop. For more information about cornhole, I suggest viewing this highly entertaining video.

Ala’ Hamptons, drinking in the Jersey Shore begins around noon and continues throughout the day. The only difference is you’re drinking from a keg instead of a bottle Stella Artois and downing jello shots instead of vintage Patron. With the average age being twenty-five instead of thirty-five, the snood factor eliminated, and any form of pretentiousness or self-respect out the window, the possibility for childish fun is quadruple what you’d experience in the Hamptons. Since there are a lot of college or fraternity/sorority reunion share houses on the shore, maturity is minimal.

Unlike the Hamptons where posh nightclubs are the 1 AM after dark activity, in Jersey you venture to spots that sport cheap liquor and seven dollar lobster, like the Parker House in Sea Girt. Five dollars gets you in, then the wrap around porch with hanging plants, softly spinning antique ceiling fans, rowdy, upstairs, Top Forty dance fest and theoretically quieter downstairs, are all yours to enjoy. The place is at full force with the energy of Pink Elephant by 10 PM. The place shuts down at 12:30, making the shore an “earlier” vacation destination than the Hamptons, which I appreciated.


Lack of cabs and lack of people who remembered to stuff their ID into their beach sarong prevented us from exploring Edgars, the lone club in this area which adopts Parker House patrons post midnight. While I’ve never considered myself a Jersey Shore type of girl, my strong craving to play cornhole again might get me back there and reporting on Edgars sooner than I think. Stay tuned.

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.

Every time my roommate and I prompted the boy with questions like, “Where do you live?” and “Can you say your address?” he would only slur back crudities and bark that he wanted to be left alone. He consistently mumbled something about “calling Jim” and in clumsy slumber, immediately dropped his cell phone the moment he located it. Even after we retrieved and returned his phone, Rip Van Winkle continued to rudely shun our assistance. At this point, we gave up and scurried into a taxi ourselves, hoping this “Jim” character wasn’t an utter deadbeat and might eventually come to his friend’s rescue.

If you saw a sweet blonde boy sleeping with a trashcan on 27^th street this weekend, you now know the whole story.

[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.

P.S. If you are REALLY f**king cool and/or an
aspiring star f**ker 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…

One hopes this author, at least to a certain degree, is poking fun at himself and his lifestyle in a hyperbolic fashion intended to make his recipients laugh (we do truly hope, because I don’t know how safe I feel living in a world with real-life Ari Gold’s taking on promoter jobs, dictating prose like this without sarcasm.) If this LA promoter’s intention was self-mockery, I applaud him for the entertainment and putting the ridiculousness of Hollywood straightforwardly out there. This might be a more admirable approach than the often subtler East Coast promoters who are afraid to get blatant and say it like it is. East Coast promoter examples:

Promoter language: “Yeah, I guess your friend can come. Is she cute?”
Translation: I need models only, no exceptions.

Promoter language: “Not sure if I can get three guys in.”
Translation: If you’re not buying bottles, stop wasting my time.

I guess it’s up to each individual promoter to navigate disclosing the harsh cruelty of the nightlife world, while still convincing their guests to partake. Is extreme subtlety or tough love the best approach? I don’t know. What I do know is regardless of the fact that I rarely go to LA, I want to get on this promoter’s permanent mailing list.

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:

[All photos compliments of the talented Emma Cleary and her very large camera]

Kiss & Fly does deserve the award for consistently filling up, usually with exceptional energy. Just don’t expect it to happen before 1:30am. Recently, their Thursday night party has featured a live sax player, adding a dynamic element to the music and infiltrating the soul of the crowd. Also adding to the scene is the cabaret-style sparkle dancers, who pitch in with a dash of sensuality and exoticism.

Everyone here seems to be having a good time…

If someone could teach me how to braid my hair in this Laura Croft meets Tarzan up-do that’d be great.

And perhaps it’s true or perhaps I just like to see it this way, but I always enjoy thinking of Pink Elephant and Kiss & Fly in a kind of brutal rivalry for the same sceney house-music crowd. Whether this is the case or not, I want to know: Who is winning?

Yesterday, I wrote about suburban summer barbecues, yet there’s no need to maneuver into the wilderness to enjoy a fiesta with charcoaled hotdogs and toasted buns (hee!). Central Park’s Tavern on the Green launched its first garden party of the season last Thursday, an event which will continue every Thursday 6pm – 2am for the remainder of the summer. This isn’t news as they held the same weekly soirée last year and got me complaining about their depleted staff and inefficient drink ticket system.

Any savvy city promoter buses their entourages up to Tavern on the Green’s pre-party since it allows them to get paid for an extra gig before herding everyone to whichever club they’ve previously contracted their soul to. Tavern’s outdoor party is a no brainer for

1. promoters,
2. anyone who lives uptown and
3. any mid-town business person craving a happy hour

resulting in ridiculous crowds, made bearable by the fact that they’re staggered throughout the lengthy evening. Five dollars gets you in, then it’s up to you to use deductive reasoning and brute force to navigate the drink ticket system and battle towards the teeny-tiny bar.

This party attracts an older generation because of its early start time and location in prehistoric Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Nix the option of getting drunk since the crowd and obstacle course of a bar set-up make alcohol wholly inaccessible. But that doesn’t mean you’ll go thirsty. Last week, a new energy drink called Verve promoted itself by providing much appreciated free samples. I slurped their pomegranate flavored health beverage the entire night while gazing at the hanging lanterns and silver stars, finding myself 100% relaxed and content.

Sure the median age may be forty, the music somewhat cheesy and drink line atrocious, but what other outdoor New York venue could create an aura of such intense tranquility? At Tavern, you’ll be dancing under the stars with a freshly grilled burger in your hand. If that’s not a stellar summer combination, I don’t know what is.

An additional plus about the fair weather aside from the obvious sun, spring hook-ups and sudden bouts of personal optimism, is the emergence of a new kind of party – the daytime party, which I’ve written about briefly here. Somehow, once a bathing suit is considered appropriate 24-hour clothing, it also becomes acceptable to start drinking all. day. long.

Let’s think about this.

In December, if a group of friends sat indoors around a television consuming alcohol from 12pm onward in a weekend long frenzy, moving from innocuous beer to wine to mojitos to deadly vodka shots all before dark, they’d be labeled as reclusive, depressed alcoholics. Yet switch December for June, put everyone around a swimming pool instead of a TV, throw some beef patties on a nearby griddle, and suddenly this kind of behavior is not only acceptable but encouraged. The scene no longer resembles a crybaby musical, but rather healthy, stylish adults making the most of the nice weather.

These bacchanalian events are usually enabled by the seemingly-innocent concept of a barbeque. Note that no one ever says, “Why don’t you come over and get sloshed with me tomorrow afternoon?” They say, “Why don’t you come over to my barbeque tomorrow afternoon?” which essentially means the same thing. Observe that daytime summer drinkers avoid the word “party,” lest it make them sound like the addict they truly are. Admitting you’re “partying” during the day is deemed immature and over-the-top. Yet there’s nothing wrong with friends getting together to eat. The fact that your friends group is in the hundreds and crates of alcohol have been purchased in bulk for the occasion is incidental. People need a beverage with their burger, right?

Hence why even hardcore winter drinkers will feel their liver convulse through the crash course that is the sunny barbeque months. And by barbeque I do mean party. If we define a party as a social gathering for pleasure or amusement, usually with music and drinking, what goes on summer afternoons poolside fits this description to a tee. And if you’re in a place like the Hamptons for example, the festivities continue into the clubs all night long. Instead of arriving at a club with three or four drinks in your system like you might in the city, you arrive with twenty-three drinks in your system with the insane expectation to consume the same amount of club alcohol. This helps explain why I’ve seen the most wasted partiers of my life in the Hamptons.

How to survive this seductive summer debauchery?

I’d say hold off on drinking until you’ve eaten at least something from the grill. Stick with light beer or sparkling wine for as long as possible. I’d also recommend not mixing your poisons, so going from champagne to wine to tequila-infused mojitos to beer to rum-infused mojitos to vodka, as I did Sunday afternoon, probably isn’t the best idea if you want to be functional at any point in the next 48-hours. Most importantly, hide your car keys in a flower bush and don’t try anything too crazy off the diving board. By August our communal tolerance will have gone up and the sinful summer barbeque won’t cause such wreckage…hopefully.

If we were to rate New York clubs solely on their bathroom facilities, who would win?

Definitely not meatpacking’s Kiss and Fly, who’ve had this lovely traffic cone in their handicapped bathroom, rendering it unusable, for the third week in a row. On the one hand, I doubt a lot of patrons frequent Kiss and Fly in wheelchairs. On the other hand, why has a dirty, painfully orange construction tool taken up permanent residence in a theoretically ‘chic’ New York establishment?

I want answers about the cone, which for me, has become one of those quirky clubbing enigmas; an unsolvable mystery. I crave to understand. Did Kiss and Fly, commended for its expensive ambiance – Romanesque arches and fresco painted ceilings – not leave room in its million dollar+ budget for a utilities closet?

Is the cone a signal that the toilet’s out of order? (A cone’s a little extreme; wouldn’t an “out of order” paper sign or locking the door suffice? This is what they’ve done in their two other “out of order” bathrooms.)

Is it intended to direct women through the handicapped entrance to the main bathroom stalls? (Drunk girls aren’t that stupid)

Is it for occasional outdoor use and the toilet’s just an odd choice of a storage facility? (Don’t think so, because the cone’s never been seen missing from its perch).

Is it some sort of secret weapon?

An object of extreme sentimental value to the owner?

Of course, the most likely explanation is that this bathroom (currently being used as the ladies room entrance way - also weird) is broken.

My next perturbing question is why has it taken the club over three weeks to fix it?!?!?

Guess they have an strong affinity for constructions tools over plumbers.

Ah, the Hamptons (sigh). Home of the $13 bagel and $150 cab rides. If that’s not enough for you, hop into your convertible and take a cruise over to the only place perhaps hipper than South Hampton itself, Shelter Island’s Sunset Beach. Here social hour starts at around 4pm, getting rowdier and rowdier through sunset. After dark, it’s time for more $14 white peach cocktails and frolicking in the sand until the last ferry ride back to mainland reality at 1:15 AM.

The $25 price tag for a platter of carrot sticks isn’t the only thing that’s unbelievable about this place. Sunset Beach is like being transported to a European Riviera on a seven minute, as opposed to seven week, boat ride. You lounge and socialize at the café with strangers (European). You can even rent overpriced lounge chairs on the beach (European). And they even give you glass beverage containers and expensive-looking cutlery, despite that fact that you’re wearing a bikini (also European). The entire experience reminded me of La Huella, the seaside hotspot in Jose Ignacio near Punta del Este – the WASPY American version, of course.

The best news of all is that despite the fact nearly one-third of Shelter Island is owned by The Nature Conservancy and kept in a forever-wild state; its remaining 5,000 acres are big enough to host every single person you’ve ever partied with in Manhattan.

That’s right.

Make sure the sunscreen on your face is rubbed in, because I can guarantee you’ll be bumping elbows with people you never thought you’d see sober (let alone awake in daylight hours, and in swim attire). You might even discover many of your party animal acquaintances have (gasp!) children or (gasp!) wives. I’d recommend bringing shades to guise any bouts of shock that might scramble through your eyes as you run into faces you only thought you’d see distortedly on drunken nights at Kiss & Fly. I for example ran into:

1. A lovable womanizer I know from both Manhattan and Punta, who in a previous incident bit my nail off in a South American nightclub.

2. My philandering ex-boss from half a decade ago who owns New York clubs and restaurants. He used to have us organize his venue’s seating arrangements so he could go on dates while being out of eyesight of his pregnant girlfriend, who’d eat at the restaurant every night.

3. A former model who on previous occasions had threatened to kill me for speaking to her meal ticket, I mean boyfriend, who wasn’t only my co-worker but longtime friend (not to mention I wasn’t even single at the time…)

This unexpected treasure trove of old acquaintances had me sneaking out Sunset Beach café’s back exit, through the kitchen and past the staff porta-potties fugitive style. Nonetheless, not even a run-in with a girl who used to voicemail me death threats could put in dent in the natural beauty or serenity of this place.

As a summer party destination, it’s worth checking out for sure.