Those of you who want to read about my enlightening New Year’s Eve dinner in which I saw both God and TI on the same night, can do so here.

Next, we went to the Gansevoort, where a $300 ticket will get you a premium shelf open bar, a theoretical view of fireworks, and witness to TI’s last concert before he’s carted off to prison. Thanks to a friend of a friend, we weren’t paying. Otherwise, our New Year’s Eve would probably be spent in the fun house at Chucky Cheese.

Miami is relatively easy for New Yorker to adjust to, mainly because all the hot hotels and bars are exactly the same as they are in New York. Anything you hadn’t heard of, you’d for sure seen in LA.

Examples: The Mondrian, The Standard, Mansion etc.

So spending New Year’s at the Miami Gansevoort was oddly comforting, familiar, and annoying.

Since it was New Year’s Eve and my friends and I were being comped, I decided to give my hippie look of flats and no makeup a break for a night. I begrudgingly donned a designer cocktail dress and stilettos. Big mistake.

The outdoor venue was freezing.

Okay, maybe freezing that overstatement, but it was 70° and nighttime on an open air roof right on the water. The chilling ocean breeze was forceful and relentless. It wasn’t even at the point that I wanted to make nice with some guy at the bar for the sole purpose of forcing him to give me his blazer. It was at the point that I wanted to jump around the party incased in a sleeping bag.

Like all New Year’s parties, the open bar was swamped, making the best solution to double fist all night. If any of us ever had access to the bar and were fortunate enough to get a bartender’s attention, we’d order up the wazoo, or as my drunk girlfriend instructed a bartender as she opened her palms and flashed ten fingers at him:

“Give me eight drinks! I need eight drinks!”

Unfortunately, the executive corporate types behind this party were no dummies. They must have had some sort of pep talk with the bar staff in advance, instructing them to make all mixed drinks as weak as possible. In an attempt to be a good time, I drank an amount of gin and tonic that would usually have me doing Steve Martin impressions, but instead left me stone cold sober. By the time we all switched to only drinking champagne (because how could they dilute that?) I’d already given up on being inebriated.

The bathroom situation was brutal and if there were fireworks, I only saw what looked like two falsely lit sparklers in the sky set off by disoriented teenagers. Getting into the auditorium to witness TI’s last performance was like taking part in a stampede straight out of one of those nature videos about animal migration. But that’s okay. These are the kind of things I’ve come to expect from New Year’s Eve. That’s why I navigated myself into bed by one thirty.

The real point here is to pump you up since I’m sure your New Year’s Eve was better than mine. I have a Holiday ‘attitude problem’ which leaves me jealous and fascinated by people who don’t suffer this disease. Nevertheless, I’m convinced 2009 is going to the best year ever, regardless of how we partied into it. Leave your stories below.

Those of you who want to do a quick catch up on my Miami trip can do so in installments one (the plane ride) and two (rowdy dinner).

The first nightlife venue we frequented is a place called Rok Bar. As we mingled with the crowd of Rok Bar sidewalk hopefuls waiting to get in, I start chit-chatting with these Brazilian guys we know from New York, one of whom quotably stated: “I came to Miami to relax my problems.”

Me too, man. Me too.

It remains a huge mystery to me why warm places like Florida and the Hamptons don’t have open air clubs. I won’t digress into that rant, let’s just say if I’d wanted to choke on second hand smoke in an overly air conditioned cave I could’ve done so without dropping four hundred dollars for a plane ticket. Rok Bar was disappointingly indoors, yet its décor put New York clubs to shame.

To me, Rok Bar seemed like one giant art instillation. In fact, had you taken me to Rok Bar empty, under different circumstances, and then told me it was actually an experimental floor in the MoMa I probably would’ve believed you.

The ceiling flashes psychedelic waves of purple and black. Deep triangular pockets plunge into the wall with 3D Goth faces digitally flashing in alternating shapes. The best way to describe it is a flat kaleidoscope wall - on crack. Titanic rock posters adorned the wall behind the bar, stretching all the way up to the very high ceilings. The suspiciously good-looking DJ spun perched at the top of a spiral staircase, grooving with the crowd like something straight out of a music video.

Seeing the DJ several floors above made me realize that this place felt uniquely Miami because of the high ceilings. New York’s more into underground caverns, bat-like places where people above six foot have to duck. Miami seemed to party upwards on the vertical as opposed to being suppressed into the horizontal. All energy shot UP. The people jumping up and down probably had something to do with this.

Jumping turned to leaping when a song I’d never heard before, but everyone else clearly had, shot through the speakers. Apparently, this is some sort of Miami tribal theme song.

“Drink all day. Play all night. Let’s get it poppin’. I’m in Miami, bitch”

People went nuts!

Observe…and what’s smash? Some drug I evidently haven’t heard about yet? Watch and enjoy:

Rain always makes the New York cab market extra competitive. Last night, I fell prey to two bizarre cab experiences. The first involved fighting over, then sharing, a cab with a man named Bjorn who turned out to be my New York neighbor. The second, more awkward, was my chat with a balding Brazilian-Israeli taxi driver. It went something like this:

Him: “”I’ve picked you up before. You Russian.”

Me: “Um…maybe…I don’t think so.”

I pretend to be fascinated by my iPhone.

“What do you do for a living?”

I tell him. Now I’m involved. I ask him where he’s from. I do this a lot with cab drivers for some reason. Somehow this results in him telling me about how as a New York cab driver, he has ‘crazy’ with a capital ‘C’ stories. Naturally, I prompt him with:

“So what’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened to you in this cab?”

Thus begins a diatribe in which he tells me some of the wildest stories I’ve ever heard, stuff I thought was limited to the fictional spheres of soft-porn channels. His headline:

“Women are crazy.”

That’s old news, but this guy claims that nightly, if not several times a night, women will get in the front seat of his cab and throw themselves on him. He then shows me this huge stack of condoms he keeps next to him at all times while driving to ‘protect’ himself from drunk, female predators.

I’m in the backseat thinking:

“TOO MUCH INFORMATION!!!”

Apparently, it’s not limited to nighttime though.

He tells me a girl he picked up in broad daylight just hopped into his cab, shed clothes and started touching herself. Another he claims just took off her shirt and spent the entire cab ride trying to kiss her own nipples. Another sat with him in the front seat and well, I’ll let you imagine, while he drove her across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Sure this guy was better looking than your average cab driver, but a far, far cry from a Ricky Martin look-alike. Are New York women so out-of-control that we’re raping cabbies? Do we party that ridiculously hard? Does our desperation run this deep?

As we pulled up at my apartment building, he points out:

“There are four times the amount of womans than mens in this city.”

I gulp.

“And a lot of these mens are gay.”

True.

“Lots of womans, they are lonely. And I am lonely too.”

I give him a really big tip and tell him I’m glad it’s working out for him.

I have a question for inhabitants of the universe: It’s not even Halloween, therefore why is everyone freaking out about New Years?

Yes, the New Years madness has begun. The question’s being tossed around left and right, leaving me dizzy and about to fall over. Those of us who don’t work in finance can finagle a nice chunk of time off for the Holidays. So the pressure’s on to do something FUN. And unless you’re what I call a ‘ski-Nazi’ (someone who enjoys the feeling of their extremities morphing into icicles as they hurdle down a mountain at life-threatening speed), chances are you want to go someplace warm, preferably with a great party scene.

Here are my New Years vacation destination requirements:

1. Warmth, by ‘warmth’ I mean tropical level heat

2. A beach with a ‘swimable’ water, by swimable I mean no scary waves, no fish, actually minimal marine life of any kind, and a transparent ocean so I can be certain there are no sharks

3. A great party scene that isn’t too immature, by ‘too immature’ I mean I don’t want there to be frat boys and rowdy college kids puking in the pristine ocean I just described

4. That it be in the realm of affordability, by ‘affordability’ I mean as cheap as possible without resorting to pitching camp on the beach.

So what options does that leave us with?

Last year, I ventured all the way to Uruguay to understand what the deal was with global hotspot Punta del Este. It was too great an experience to ever be properly repeated, so I’m determined to find something new. The brainstorm sheet:

1. Mexico
The pros: It’s close, cheap and will have a lot of young people wanting to socialize.
The cons: I’ve heard the waves can be scary and it will have a lot of young people wanting to socialize.

2. Costa Rica
The pros: It’s more exotic than Mexico and has a rainforest with monkeys and Toucans hanging out around you. It’s supposed to be mega-cool nature-wise.
The cons: It’s more of a family outdoor adventure vacation destination. I’m assuming the rainforest also has crazy bugs.

3. Fortaleza, Brazil
The pros: Similar vibe to Punta, but in the Northern part of Brazil. International with a mix of Europeans. Safe with immaculate beaches and a party scene.
The cons: The flight alone will bankrupt you.

4. Miami
The pros: Theoretically cheap and no passport required.
The cons: It’s everyone from New York, just with less clothing.

5. The Caribbean:
The pros: Weather-wise and water-wise it fits the bill perfectly.
The cons: I think it’s honeymooners only.

Feel free to add on or correct me. Suggestions welcome. Oh, and before you even think about stressing, enjoy Halloween.

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!

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.

Thursday. It came so fast I don’t think anyone was truly ready for it. Even the most professional organizers don’t have much experience dealing with 3-day weekend scenarios in which Friday’s the day off. So after countless emails and what felt like hundreds of debates via MSN, someone in my Hamptons crew made the executive decision that we’d all leave for Long Island post-clubbing at 2:30 AM to avoid traffic. Making this plan possible were two sober drivers and a car service. The most amusing part of our time spent at Kiss & Fly (which wasn’t promoting any 4^th of July party but was just its normal, crowded, cone-filled self) remained that every time the word “Hamptons” came up you’d hear a resounding chorus of, “Yep! We’re leaving right after this!”

So apparently our ingenious idea of partying in the city and driving to Long Island post-club in the middle of the night was something other East-bound fun-seekers had thought of as well. In fact, the more people I spoke to, the more it became apparent that all of Kiss & Fly was heading to the Hamptons as soon as the party winded down. Instead of cruising down a desolate LIE, I realized we could very well be entering some sort of packed, party highway.

So much for avoiding the crowds.

After Kiss & Fly, it took awhile to get everyone regrouped in our ringleader’s SoHo apartment. He tried to sober people up with homemade pressed Paninis, a sandwich that’s easily up for grabs for the title of “best Panini of my life” since it was crisp, meaty and oozing with Dijon. When finally car-bound, we wrestled over who got to utilize the one pillow available in the backseat. Someone upfront with a potent chip craving instructed the driver to stop at a gas station, where they proceeded to buy one of every kind of potato chip known to man. Cape Cod – Doritos Nacho Flavor – Lays BBQ – Doritos Cooler Ranch and Cheetos were consequently passed around until everyone fell asleep sitting up, inhaling crumbs. When I startled from slumber, I realized it was because our car wheels were crunching gravel instead of gliding over pavement i.e. we’d arrived at our house’s driveway in the shortest Long Island travel experience of my life. If only I could be unconscious and high on snack food’s artificial flavorings for all such journeys…

As our group stumbled inside and proceeded to claim couches / beds / lawn chairs / sections of the floor, the head of our house received a message from producer friends interested in pitching a reality TV program / documentary centered around the life of a friend of ours in the house who is launching a noteworthy business venture in coming months. Their idea had been to come to the Hamptons for the long weekend to get some trial footage. The text they sent resembled something like:

“We’ve decided to come. See you all tomorrow. I hope there are enough beds for us and the camera crew.”

To which our first reaction was, “camera crew!?!!?!?” and our second reaction was, “beds!?!!??”

We wrote back that we hoped the camera crew would be okay with sleeping outdoors on lawn chairs, since every Hamptons house on holiday long weekends is PACKED, PACKED still being an understatement.

So we drifted to sleep plotting how to best avoid the oncoming camera and fake an accident in which all the necessary electrical equipment might get destroyed in the pool. The adventures to come…

The good news: It’s a Holiday weekend coming up
The bad news: It’s forecast to rain every single day

The good news: It’s a Holiday weekend coming up
The bad news: Holidays make weird gray relationship even weirder (examples one and two)

The good news: You have extra time off
The bad news: You feel pressured to do something fabulous with it

The good news: You can leave the city for more than 48-hours
The bad news: So can everyone else and their cousin

The good news: Fourth of July fell on a Friday this year
The bad news: That means you need to be organized to leave Thursday, and Thursday’s, like, tomorrow

Panic ensues.

On a separate, slightly more serious note, an issue that’s been troubling my conscious has to do with charity as an excuse to party, and do these events actually raise any money?

This seemed the ultimate party question on everybody’s mind at Steve Nash’s charity event inside SoHo’s Replay store, which I attended exactly one week ago today. On the up side, snaps to Steve Nash for giving a hoot about charity. On the down side, it remained difficult to imagine the shindig would manage to break even since the event included:

2 stocked open bars

6 bartenders

15 attractive cocktail waitresses circling the crowd (my friend noted all the waitresses had legs and shins that looked like a female soccer player’s and asked if I thought they were selected for this exact purpose. I can picture the Craigslist open call ad now: ‘Seeking cocktail waitresses with soccer-esque shins for exclusive event.’)

Unlimited booze

Hamburgers

Mini hot dogs

Chips and guacamole

Vegetables

Quesadillas

Mini steaks

Vitamin water

Gourmet ice cream, and best of all,

Sushi in the shape of mini soccer balls.

Renting out SoHo’s Replay store and hiring a 20+ person wait staff must already have a hefty price tag, not to mention alcohol and food for two hundred people. Less than a dozen jerseys were auctioned off for around a $1,000.


Clearly, I’m missing something because in my mind the numbers don’t seem to add up. Yet I was always a dunce at math, so what do I know? If there is a way humanity can enjoy lux events inside SoHo designer stores while simultaneously helping kids in Africa, I’m all for it.

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.

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.