Friday I was at Johnny Utah’s. This place isn’t your usual club party. It’s more for people who are into bars and don’t want to deal with door trouble or paying cover. It’s the in-between corporate or PR girl type of crowd looking to have a beer and a laugh instead of champagne (which we actually get at the promo tables…huh). Friday I myself was actually in awe. When the emcee came on and started hyping the crowd, the DJ hitting some hip hop music, the crowd went absolutely insane. The emcee had to fend off people fighting to ride the infamous Johnny Utah mechanical bull. That’s what you call a successful night. Now what needs to happen is to bring that same energy to Mondays at  Johnny Utah’s. Let’s see how it goes this Monday.

Right after Johnny Utah’s, I took my crew down to Citrine since the owner David R. had asked me to come check it out. He runs a corporation called the Impulse Group. They’re basically are similar to Strategic Group (Noah Tepperberg for Marquee and Avenue) but not as potent. Impulse has under its wing the nightclub Citrine, Puffy’s Tavern, and just recently Johnny Utah’s…that’s a little inside scoop for you non-clubbers. Citrine had a good-looking crowd. The doormen Spencer and Han are from the good ole’ ClimaxVIP.com (very good guys that are very serious about the nightlife business and to me, very trustworthy people). Citrine charges a cover now. That’s news to me ever, and I used to work there on Thursdays some time ago.

We stayed at Citrine only an hour and a half and then went to Simyone the new EMM group spot (Mark Birnbaum Eugene Remm-I think Simyone is the name of Eugene’s Grandfather, hence the new name of the club. Those two always have some interesting reason for naming their clubs.) Obviously, they moved Alex Julian from Tenjune and now have him running the door at the old Lotus (aka the new Simyone). A lot of hot girls and good-looking guys here, then also the average looking guys that are friends with the owners of course and spend a lot of money. All of the who’s who was there etc., the usual BS for a brand new club when opening. Ellington Keys (as I mentioned before) is the # 1 model promoter. I saw him at Simyone with all his models and his partner Isaih (not sure if that spelling is correct). These are the guys who have taken the crown of being able to bring out ONLY MODELS. The Tenjune staff came through late night to chill out at  their new home. Tyson Beckford told me he loves the spot, so I wanted to see how good it really was. Eugene Remm was spinning.

The lowdown on the Simyone layout: You walk down some stairs after getting past the doorman. There’s some winding until you reach a long room. At the end of the room, is a doorway which then forms a “T.” Walking through this second doorway you can look left and right and there is another room filled with…tables (of course). On the walls in this room are funny-enough photographs of X-Rays, and when the colorful lighting passes behind it you can actually see the X-Ray. Then, they vanish. The ceiling’s low with a lot of color, while at the same time floor is black and roof is black.

I will have more information on La Pomme for you. I think I might stay on this Thursday to try it out again. I personally hope it’s more full this Thursday, because the venue itself is phenomenal.

Last week, I started the holiday season off right by going to the Stoli Holiday Party at Cain-Luxe, the new Cain. I’d never been to Cain before, new or old. So, when Miss Model Behavior offered me her invite to the event, I beat down the little loser inside of me whining, “but Stylista is on the CW tonight!” and jumped at the opportunity.

As an East Villager and a bit of a homebody, places located around double digit avenues are like far-off, distant lands. Going somewhere between 10th and 11th Avenue sounds almost fictional to me, like getting on Platform 9 3/4 to go to Hogwarts.

My roommate and I made the four-block, two-and-a-half-avenue trek from the subway station to the club and, I’ll admit, the journey did feel a bit strenuous in my high heels. A mash-up “Climb Every Mountain” and “Walk it Out” played in my head throughout the trudge. Hopefully the club would offer a better soundtrack.

As we neared 11th Avenue, I spotted two girls in khaki onesie uniforms and huge fur hats. This had to be it. My hunch was confirmed by the tiny placard that read “Cain” next to the massive double doors. We approached the girls. One of them was holding The List.

I gave them my name.

Nothing.

I gave them Miss Model Behavior’s name.

Nope.

Uh oh. Okay, well, I had one more shot–this guy MMB had told me to contact in case trouble arose.

“Uh, I’m supposed to get in touch with Jordan Harris if there’s any problem getting in.”

“Ohhhhh. They’re with Jorrrdan,” the girls exclaimed. It was like that moment in the Wizard of Oz when the gatekeeper exclaims, “Well, that’s a horse of a different color!” and lets the gang into the Emerald City.

Except Cain was way better than the Emerald City.

Upon entering the club, another girl in khaki and a fur hat handed me a USB thumb drive packaged in a mini-bottle of Stoli Blackberry Vodka–the specific alcohol promoted at the event. My inner loser finally boarded the party train.

Next, we moved to the open bar, where I ordered a “dark tea”–iced tea and blackberry vodka. Delicious.

Roommate and I spent the next twenty minutes enjoying drinks and admiring the club’s jungle motif, as well as the attractive quartet of gay men dancing together.

The music was fantastic–I’m always impressed by DJs who actually DJ. No song was ever played without a special twist, interesting remix, innovative mash-up, etc. Everything, from Prince to T.I., sounded a little new, a little different. Plus, apparently Cain has dropped some serious dough to create a state-of-the-art sound system. I’m used to college parties with scratchy sound systems from past decades and base beats that make your insides vibrate. In Cain, the music is smooth, like butter.

Over the next few hours, the club filled up, the quartet turned into a cluster, the drinks started to taste better, the music sounded sweeter, and I even met my secret password, Jordan Harris.

I expected either some swanky operator or a neurotic New Yorker (why do I always assume that people are going to be crazy?), but Jordan Harris, wearing a baseball cap and a flannel, was incredibly nice, shockingly approachable, and he clearly knew how to throw a good party. I remember thinking, in my state of, uh, slight intoxication, Who cares if Santa Clause is coming to town if this guy is already here? Luckily, I wasn’t quite drunk enough to share this thought with him.

The evening was well worth the journey. I loved the music. I loved the open bar. I loved Cain. I had that warm, happy feeling inside, like on Christmas morning so many years ago when I woke up and found Santa had given me my very own American Girl doll. Or maybe I was just drunk.

Because we were running on blackberry vodka, the walk back felt effortless. I love how energy efficient alcohol can be. Later, as I finally tucked myself into bed, visions of Stoli drinks danced in my head.

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.

I’d worn a sparkling black and silver headband that everyone just loved. I could tell by the way that people smiled and pointed at me. Enthused, I decided to send a quick text to another friend about plans for later in the evening. It was Friday and I was ready for a late night. But as I opened my phone and attempted to type the text, the vodka reared its ugly head and sucker punched me in the face, sending me spinning. Oh, the spinning.

I didn’t feel buzzed. I didn’t feel drunk. I just felt ill. Horribly ill. And angry.

I recently finished college, a four year program designed to educate an individual about alcohol intake through hands-on experience. Such training should theoretically result in an expanded tolerance and a keen awareness of one’s limits.

But just when I think I’m all grown up and prepared for real life, my world spirals out of control. I tumbled out of Marquee, confused friends in tow. One loyal confidante reentered the club to retrieve my jacket, despite my pleas to, “Leave it! Leave it! It’s nothing to me now!”

As another friend and I waited outside, a guy tried to sell us Ecstasy. Apparently it was obvious to any Tom, Dick, or harried drug dealer that I was in need of a serious pick-me-up.

“I dthon’t dooo druugth!” I told him–the combination of drunk and cold induced a speech impediment best described as delightfully tacky, yet unrefined. It’s not often that one is filled with the essence of a Hooters bar, particularly not in front of Marquee. We needed to go. Immediately.

Just in the nick of time, my courageous friend emerged from the club with my coat in hand. We hailed a cab and were off!

…Until 2 blocks and half an avenue later when I suddenly felt like we’d kicked into Warp drive. As someone prone to motion sickness, particularly car sickness, this high-speed sensation is a personal nightmare of mine. At the red light I told my friends, “I gotta get out of here,” and gracelessly dumped myself onto the pavement.

After an avenue and three blocks on foot, my friends convinced me to get into another cab. This time, I rode in the front seat with my head hanging out the window like a dog.

The next day, after sending out a sad little batch of apologetic text messages, I solemnly vowed never to drink again. For one week. As someone who feels a bit of nostalgia for college, I guess it’s a comfort to know that the lessons continue beyond four years of formal instruction. In this case, I learned that, just as with Mexican food, sex, and grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s after 5:00 p.m., an open bar should be approached with enthusiasm, but also a bit of caution.

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.

My friend T and I strutted into Marquee at 9:00 PM and immediately downed two cocktails. We surveyed our surroundings, unsure of our next move. The club had a projector that showed behind-the-scenes footage of the “I only sleep with Democrats” photo shoots. Sleek photographs hung on the back wall and blue balloons floated in a few tastefully scattered bundles around the crowded interior. This Democratic party looked good.

The DJ was fantastic, playing everything from Rihanna to Jay-Z to Oasis to Pat Benatar, each song dressed up with irresistibly danceable beats. There was also a live performance by Madison, who boasted an oversized white oxford with Obama’s face printed on the back of it. She too had solid dance music to contribute.

Yet no one was dancing. I wasn’t completely naive. I never assumed that the inside of a New York club was going to look like the Britney’s “I’m a Slave 4 U” music video. But I did think that signs of life would extend beyond the occasional shudder and twitch from a collective crowd. Perhaps it was just too early. After all, nightclubs thrive in the after-hours.

But the music! It was too good not to enjoy. I hadn’t felt this compelled to dance since my last drunken college frat party when I ended up dancing on a Beirut table to “Shake Ya Tailfeather,” only to land flat on my face in what I tried to play off as an attempted crowd-surf. T and I tossed our inhibitions aside like empty beer cans and began to bust out in full force: flailing arms, shimmying shoulders, I don’t even know what was happening with the lower half of my body but, word to the wise, doing the running man in heels is both difficult and dangerous.

It may sound outlandish and embarrassing, but T and I were having a great time. With each new song, we’d let out a wooo of excitement, another tradition of college partying that didn’t seem to carry over into the Marquee scene. The rest of the room became a blur until some youngish guy approached us.

“You guys are like, the only people dancing,” He told us.

We gave him a nod and a shrug. People stating the obvious don’t tend to hold our interest.

“What are you, like, 18?” He asked skeptically

“Yeahhhh.” T exclaimed while breaking into a ridiculous pelvic thrust. “It’s her 18th birthday!” As she pointed to me. “Birthday girrrrl!”

I think that T prefers acting drunk to actually being drunk. This guy propelled her into full force faux-toxication. We probably appeared to be the drunkest, most immature people there.

I took a look around the club.

We were definitely the most immature people there.

But no one cared. Yeah, it probably looked a little like Romy and Michelle’s Marquee Intrusion if anyone was seriously surveying the scene, but everyone was immersed in his or her own Marquee experience.

Almost everyone.

T noticed her strapless dress had slipped down to an almost inappropriate level–then she noticed that a guy standing a few feet away had also noticed and continued to unabashedly stare and grin even after she had readjusted her apparel. She shot him a glance that said, “You are testing my gag reflex.” While a glare of death can sometimes be interpreted as sultry, there’s really nothing ambiguous about a pre-puke face. He continued staring. Since T wasn’t about to follow through and pull the trigger in the middle of Marquee, we decided it was time to leave.

Though Marquee wasn’t quite the scene we were accustomed to, like so much of New York, I walked away thinking, “I could get used to this.”

Last Friday, I went to Italy, Russia, India and Greece.

Hence why Nadia decided to transform the gift basket from blah to breathtaking artwork. She decided that each basket should represent the experience of another country – you can send someone Venice, Moscow or the Taj Mahal. Included in a Venetian basket aren’t just Italian eatables, but masks, Italian slippers, a CD with the music of a masked ball and scented candles for the occasion. You’re literally sending someone a little corner of the world, and let’s face it, the mask is going to provide hours of giddy entertainment and you’ll probably use the slippers for life.


Essentially, you’re hand delivering someone the mood of an exotic location along with gifts they might actually use. I thought this was light years more inventive than your standard bottle of wine, apples and if you’re lucky, cheese.

A cultural around the world tour before 8pm on a weeknight without the help of my DVR or the travel channel? Again, please!

Promoters: the species of social leeches endlessly harassing us for our free time. I love writing about these New York party organizers because I find their tactics (mass text messaging, Evites, mass emails, personalized emails, facebook harassment, casual texts, guilt-trip texts, phone solicitation) endlessly fascinating. I thought I’d seen it all. I thought no promoter text message could have the power to shock me.

I was wrong.

I wrote a past article about fromoters (deluded friends who harbor the illusion they’re a hot city promoter, doing this dirty job voluntarily, sans pay). I’d like to introduce another category: The no-moter. This is the promoter you’ve said no to a thousand times. The promoter you perhaps never even went out with in the first place. Who you perhaps don’t even know! How they even have your number remains an enigma. Yet they text you daily anyway.

I’m doing a [insert famous sports team] celebrity event tonight with [insert semi-celebrity name] and [insert a rapper’s name] performing at [Marquee / Tenjune] with [insert DJ you’ve never heard of] from San Tropez. Say my name@door, tons of bottlezz. Are you coming?

You’d think after sending a target messages like this for 367 days with no response EVER, the promoter might remove the prey from their phone’s intricate mailing system and save everyone the AT&T charge of ten cents. But no. Promoter lists are kind of like a tramp stamp. They’re with you for life. And don’t bother texting the no-moter about getting yourself removed from his mailing, because not even he knows how to remove you. His phone’s hooked up to computers which are hooked up to interns which are hooked up to facebook which relay some technical code which births crazy digital mailing lists that only an IT guy from India could understand. Finding a needle in a haystack while drunk and blindfolded would take less time than locating your name in this jumbled promotional spamming method.

I’d like to preface the following incident by reiterating that no-motors are not bad people.

They’re just people you don’t know. I, like many, happen to have very close friends who promote. My loyalties are therefore tied. The ‘no’ answer (or rather non-response) isn’t because I think I’m too good to go out with you, I just have a prior allegiance to people I actually know.

In an iPhone mishap in which I meant to call a friend of mine we’ll call Tim, I accidently called no-motor Tim. It took a solid five minutes of me positing ‘why does your voice sound so different?’ and ‘why do you keep harping about Pink Elephant?’ until I realized I wasn’t talking to my friend Tim, but Tim the promoter I never go out with. I explained to no-motor Tim in the nicest was possible that I’d actually contacted him by mistake, yet he still interpreted my phone call as me finally coming around and craving to go out with him that night.

I’ve only met no-motor Tim a handful of times, but he seems to take the constant rejection of promoter existence more personally than his younger, hotter promoter counterparts. While I’d definitely be open to going out with him, partying doesn’t pay me. My two jobs pay me. So I need to be energized and lucid which translates to only go out occasionally. And when you’re going out occasionally, chances are you’re going to want to spend it with your friends.

Despite my best efforts at clarification, no-motor Tim insisted that I was making an appearance at his party that night, which of course I didn’t because I had plans with my friend Tim, the person I’d actually meant to call. No-motor Tim consequently got angry.

The promotional text I got the next day:

MB, I heard from a girl that you gained weight. I’m deleting you from my phone list. I’m sorry. Clubs want me with skinny girls only.

Woah! Low blow!

Will he actually delete me from whatever jumbled promotional spamming method he uses?

At this point, I could only be so lucky.

Yesterday I found myself the only girl in a room full of caveman-like boys, who intently watched the All Star game with beer in hand. Most were still in corporate attire, but ties had been loosened and shirts un-cuffed. I sort of felt like I was inside one of those National Geographic specials. I was the explorer in a cute tan outfit with a camouflage hardhat and a necklace of binoculars observing a watering hole of man beasts alone in their natural habitat. I thought I might get a sneak peak into the inner workings of the male mind and come out of the situation with the inside skinny on what guys talk about when they’re alone (How much they trash talk their girlfriends? What they’re really think about during your heart to heart talks? How to decipher the male grunt?).

Sadly, this didn’t happen. I had to prop my head up with pillows just to keep myself from passing out in boredom. All they talked about was their jobs, the economy, the stock market, the baseball game, the players’ stats and personal histories and this website called Where the Hell is Matt.

Zzzzzzz. Zzzzzzzzz.

So I started asking questions about game to keep myself awake like, “Why is that player so much larger than that player?” and “Why are they all wearing jerseys from different teams?” and screaming, “This is so confusing!” At which point the host locked me in his bedroom with his Guitar Hero so they could watch in peace. Anyway…this entire boy experience reminded me of an apartment party I attended a few weeks ago, a party pad I’ve titled, “Where Good Boys Go When They Die.”

Observe below, the ultimate, New York men’s entertainment loft. If this isn’t boy heaven, I don’t know what is:

Pool, foosball, plasma. (Yes, there’s darts in the corner as well)

Funky, old-style arcade games. Some as primitive as packman, others where you have to blow stuff up wearing a cool mask.

Three more plasma screens (watching all sporting events, in every time zone in the world, all at once, is a must). A pinball machine (The Sopranos, you even get to shoot the ball between Dr. Melfi’s legs) and another arcade game in which you hunt grizzly bears.

Beer on tap.

Beer with its own fridge.

Grub! Grub! Grub! Lot’s of grub! (And a plasma screen.)

Driving in a Hamptons-style overloaded car, we were cruising between Fourth of July parties when the entire backseat shrilly screamed “Breaaak!”

No, a deer or rodent hadn’t scurried under our tires.

No, a tree wasn’t tumbling onto our windshield.

Our GPS had navigated us though a South Hamptons back road that was lined with cars as far as the inebriated eye could see. Music blared at a level so high we could hear it within our own music-blaring car. Girls dressed to the nines hiked from their far parked vehicles to the mansion that was evidently hosting a raging event.

In a usually smooth bout of communication, we alerted our other three cars of friends that we’d be ‘breaking for this party.’ In a miraculous moment that only Fourth of July intoxication could provide, everyone somehow agreed and we all parked, staggering out of automobiles in the pursuit of party.

“Hey, is this Jamie’s party?” our ringleader asked a clearly bedraggled set of exiting participants. This is a name he pulled out of his ass, but it got us the desired response.

“No it’s Rob Cook’s,” they responded wearily (and helpfully.)

DING! DING! DING! DING! DING!

We now possessed the host’s name. Our friends worried as we approached the noisy house: What would we find on the other side? How would we fit in?

“Maybe it’s a wedding. We can’t crash a wedding.”

“Maybe it’s a charity event. We’ll be like the only ones not in tuxes.”

Wrong and Wrong.

We entered with ease – no checkpoints, no hired security wielding lists. The glamorous manor was wisely locked up, yet the path to the backyard remained unguarded. We pushed through the hanging open wooden fence and admired what looked like the movie set for one of those teen comedies like “She’s All That.” Sprawling grass. Kegs. Naked kids in the pool. A loner puking in a bush. The token black guy wearing a baseball hat on the deck in a DJ booth. A self-serve bar stock piled with Mountain Dew.

For some reason, it took chillin on the lawn and a few more drinks for us to fully become aware about where we’d landed. As we further analyzed the music selection, lack of décor, and scattering of late-blooming teenagers, it finally dawned on us that we’d crashed a high school party.

A young man not far enough into puberty for shaving to be mandatory approached me suspiciously and asked, “Who are you here for?”

“James,” I sung quickly, my dyslexic mind easily switching up the names I’d heard out front.

“You mean George?” he corrected.

“Yeah-huh. George,” I nodded, attempting to recover as my heel fell into a sink hole in the grass.

He walked away unconvinced.

After trying to remember how to pump a keg and high-fiving a kid in Speedos that looked like Ron Jeremy, we decided to go before serious suspicious started to arise.

Standing at the opposite fence, good-naturedly waving to the incapacitated revelers staggering out, a wiry lad, presumably George, repeated Miss Manners-style; “Thank you for coming. Thank you for coming!”

We piled back into our cars and headed to our true destination: a more tranquil event hosted by forty-year-olds, but all of our party spirits had been profoundly touched by George. Ah, to be young and utilizing your parents’ empty South Hampton villa. High school immaturity, much like a contagious disease, fevered within us for the remainder of the night.

For me, time spent in the Hamptons remains a Zen-like exercise in coping with unpredictability. Unless you’re traveling with your own set of wheels, you rarely have any say in where you go, what you do, or when you do it. You start to feel like those chubby, clueless toddlers strapped in rear facing car seats, happily oblivious, along for the ride. People with cars have the control, but are burdened with responsibility. Everyone else is enviably carefree, but consequently at their mercy.

There’s two different ways to handle this scenario. One is the aforementioned ‘toddler approach,’ which we’ll discuss today. This involves utter passivity. You go wherever your share house is going because it’s easy, it’s non-confrontational, and there are people to take care of you once you’re obliterated on Patron. The other approach, which we’ll explore later this week, involves trying to take your Hamptons destiny into your own hands. Breaking off from the herds to accomplish some sort of side mission, whether it be meeting up with other friends, attending an alternate party, or frequenting a different club. If you have a car with a GPS system, this is easy. If you don’t, this ‘mission approach’ involves attempting to brainwash your ride to align with your plans, attempting to brainwash anyone with a car to align with your plans, or taking a very expensive taxi to your plans, which you share with six other people you don’t know.

With that intro, I let myself get ‘toddler style’ dragged this weekend to East Hampton’s Grey Goose Manor, where your liver comes to die. On the plus side, they serve a dinner with remarkably tasty steak so guests don’t suffer from alcohol poisoning immediately. On the down side, there’s still enough easy-to-chug vodka to get all of East Hampton hospitalized, jailed with a DUI or both.

Further proving that the Hamptons is essentially adult summer camp, the grub was served buffet style and eating took place in the ‘chic’ version of what for all practical purposes was a dining hall (granted, with complimentary Vitamin Water and martinis as opposed to a soda machine, yet still campy in feel).

Very pink beverages where passed around by circulating cocktail waitresses, which I couldn’t consume since to me, they tasted like cotton candy. This lead me to one of the three bars to ask, “I’d like a non-pink beverage. Preferably, non-sweet. Hell, just give me a vodka-water.” The Grey Goose bar representative was extremely accommodating.

The party filled up until the entire manor was instructed to leave for Lily Pond at the same time, which the valets just loved.

The festivities continued in the parking lot for forty minutes while we created a mega traffic jam on a one-way-only dirt road and men battled one another for the attention of the frenzied parking attendants.

The best part of the night by far was when a promoter loaded ten models into the back on an Enterprise van – no, not a van with seats. I mean like an empty mid-size van used to move furniture. The ladies were helped into the stainless steel cargo hold while I tried to snap pictures. The promoter in charge violently stopped me, going as far as to physically block my camera with his hands and scream obscenities at me. So I guess he doesn’t want people to know that he treats his female entourage like cattle. I’m sad I don’t have the visual, because if that transport scenario doesn’t epitomize the Hamptons, I don’t know what does.

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.