Having friends in town often means you’re required to take them out, baller-style. As I escorted a good friend of mine around Manhattan in a merry-go-round whirl of old and new hot spots, I found myself increasingly bored with the ‘scene’ and decided to Live Twitter my night as a result. Those of you who don’t already follow me on Twitter and want to can do so here.

Here’s a rough sketch of what I was going through.

10:31pm Back in da CITY

In the trunk of a car service driving through Manhattan. Time to rage

Now at Southside. The great news about my going out outfit is that I’m elasto waist pants

Talking in Circles, band, must look up

I want to start wearing hats / I’m finally starting to get why girls dig guys in bands

The promoter I’m with seems really open to fat girls being a part of his entourage. Maybe NYC is changing for the better

1:42am Why is it that the 40y olds at clubs are always the crazies jumping up and down?

Spinning imaginary DJ tables in the air while dancing – not cool

Let’s pause here for a moment to elaborate that if you’re sober enough in a club to send somewhat coherent texts into Twitter, everyone else’s dance moves begin looking pretty ridiculous. Guys, don’t spin imaginary DJ tables as a dance move. It really only works if you’re an actual DJ.

Anyway, at this point in my Twitter-fest I was at a locale I’ve been meaning to write about for sometime, a new club called Southside. It’s in Goldbar zone (Nolita), has hosted bands like MGMT, is apparently uber exclusive and had an amazing Halloween party. They also have a kick-ass website.

Well, my disappointment was immense. I believe I’ve written before about how nothing in New York is really ‘new.’ Southside falls into this category with a rude clunk. Ever heard of underground Bar Martignetti? The swanky spot bellow Bella’s on Broome Street? Someone inserted a disco ball, hired an expert re-brander, and now formerly chill Bar Martignetti is red rope-level club Southside. It’s New York magic.

This fern wallpaper might be new, but I wouldn’t put any money on it.

It’s hard to take such a highly reputed club seriously after you realize it’s just a disco ball-ified space you’d been to one hundred times before to enjoy a casual beer. No one else seemed bothered, as people were raging.

I was always a fan of the Bar Martignetti feel: the checkered floors, the paintings, nooks and crannies. This brasserie style didn’t translate into an ambiance where jumping up and down to Jay-Z seemed like a good idea to me. But what do I know? It seemed to work for everybody else.

The remainder of my Twittered night:

“Is English your native language? Tell the truth.” I’m live twittering my night if that’s yet to become obvious.

I think this is in reference to someone who was talking to us who we couldn’t understand.

2:07am In the trunk of an SUV again. Ppl take down ur Christmas trees!!! It’s over

My best friend and the guy with us are talking about law school.. Laaaaaame

New York from the perspective of a backwards SUV trunk is somewhat different

I feel like cabs are tailgating us

I think from a backwards perspective, this would always seem like the case…

FYI Sam Adams Light is disgusting

It’s amazing to me that a rapper became famous off the word ‘lollipop’ alone

Three guesses at what song was playing here.

3:24am Lesbians in animal print. Recipe for disaster.

Fade out. The coherency ends.

Moral: if you want to see something new, or are just looking for some kind of innovative deisgn or surprise, Southside is the wrong place to be.

In Part 1, I wrote about my first experience at eco-friendly New York nightclub Greenhouse. What I didn’t go into is how this was my first nightclub experience since my decision to quit drinking.

Yes. I wrote: Quit. Drinking.

Quit drinking and you’ll find this is not an activity your friends support you in.

Strange, right?

Your friends stand by you in situations far more complex than beverage preference and encourage you to improve your life in myriad ways. If you think this translates to them being supportive about your decision to stop axe-murdering your liver with vodka, you don’t speak the secret New York language of alcoholism. They won’t just hate you for putting down the bottle, they’ll guilt trip you about it too.

Anyhoo…It’s a Monday night, I set the scene, and I’m not ‘exploring’ Greenhouse per se because it’s too packed to adjust your shoulder blades let alone move. I didn’t get the memo that Monday night was ‘rock night’ so there’s an anonymous band playing music that involves electric guitars on a what appears to be a stage at the far end of the room. From the amount of people who showed up to see them, I assume this band, if you like this type of music, is considered very good. Or Monday night’s just the new Friday. Anything’s possible.

What was cool about my evening at Greenhouse is that I actually saw different kinds of going-out people. What do I mean by that? I mean along with seeing your club staples:

1. Men in jackets who are trying to hard
2. Eurotrash
3. Baby models
4. Wanna-be models

I also saw people dressed in grunge and Goth. A party just feels so much more like a real party once a Goth person shows up! If I were a New York promoter, I’d hire a Goth person to flank me at all times just to differentiate myself.

An eclectic mix of people is not something you encounter often in exclusive nightclub locations. Especially being sober, I found Greenhouse’s variety fascinating. This may be painfully obvious, but it’s amazing how much more you’re able to observe your surroundings and the people around you when not drinking. Perhaps because everything’s not blurry.

So what’s it like to be in a club stone cold sober? As in ‘stone cold for the whole night,’ not because you just arrived there?

Well, it’s a mix of

1. Heightened awareness as described
2. Jealousy for those around who are drunk…and happy
3. A giddiness that you will not be hung-over tomorrow, which is quickly replaced by
4. The realization that by not drinking, you now have nothing in common with 98% of the room and should probably just go home

In short, it’s a fish out of water sensation made more manageable by Greenhouse and their leafy, nature décor, which made me feel sort of like an amphibian anyway. I guess if you’re going to give sobriety a go, a club that trying to look like it’s part of the wilderness or at minimum, the back garden of a rehabilitation center, is a good place to start.

Last weekend, I ventured skeptically back to Lit. A previous post about my first night at Lit was a rather glowing review, but don’t assume that I’ve been spending most my life living in a hipster’s paradise (yes, that was a Coolio reference). My second encounter with the bar left me burned.

It was a Friday night around 2:00 a.m. I’d just come from a delightfully dull bar–perfect for a few drinks and conversation with a couple of friends. But now we were looking for something less low key. We met up with two other friends and our party of five approached the bar’s dark exterior, IDs in our hands, alcohol in our veins, and a fire in our hearts.

“Private party,” the bouncer told me.

“What?”

“Private party. You can’t come in.” Even from his seated position, the burley guy managed to remain taller than I. New to the notion of an exclusive bar scene, it didn’t occur to me to argue. Nor did I realize that the 2:3 ratio of guys to girls might be a problem. Apparently, having guys in your entourage is a ballsy move (literally) that could impede bar-hopping ability.

I was pissed. In August, Lit welcomed us with open arms.

What had changed?

With NYU back in session, maybe Lit could afford to be a lot more exclusive.

Also, in August, Ed Westwick–aka Chuck Bass of Gossip Girl–had been spotted mackin’ it with some anonymous girl. Such a celebrity sighting may have also upped the exclusivity of the bar.

These notions make me gag. First of all, the idea that all of these little underage NYU ragamuffins can go to Lit whenever they want, but that as an old, haggard 22-year-old, I get turned away…well, that’s just humiliating.

Secondly, just because Ed Westwick went to Lit one steamy Wednesday night in August doesn’t qualify it as exclusive. Granted, if I saw Ed Westwick in Lit, I would probably pee my pants and try to pass it off like I’d spilled my drink. Maybe that’s what they’re trying to avoid. But that doesn’t mean passage should only be granted to the most hipster-elite who refuse to get excited about anything that swims in the polluted mainstream of pop culture.

So I decided I’d swear off Lit. Until my friends and I got really drunk last Saturday night and, come 2:00 a.m., decided we wanted to go dance and profusely sweat out all our alcohol in Lit’s dark, dank basement-cave.

The odds were against us: a party of six with a 3:3 ratio of guys to girls. But I had a plan. I happened to be mildly acquainted with a friend of two guys that occasionally deejayed at Lit. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was all we had.

We arrived and, sure enough, Papa Bear was stoically seated on his Baby Bear stool.

Papa Bear: “It’s a private party.”

Ha! Not falling for it this time.

Stunned/Intoxicated in the City: “Our friend is in here. He knows the DJs. They told us we’d be able to get in.”

PB: “Can I get a name?”

S/I: “Yeah. Tim Wolf. He told us we wouldn’t have a problem at the door.”

PB: “I need a name of one of the DJs.”

S/I: “Look, you let us in here two weeks ago without any problem. My friend’s inside already. He knows the DJs. He told us we’d be fine to get in.”

PB: “How many guys are with you?”

S/I: “Three, but two are European so…”

PB: “Okay, okay, whatever.”

And that was it. We were IN. The place wasn’t even close to capacity. The basement was practically empty, which made Lit’s exclusivity even more lame. But that didn’t matter now that we were on the other side of the door.

Oh, how I reveled in my success, dancing into a sweaty oblivion. With the exception of 30 seconds of “Hypnotize” by Notorious B.I.G., the basement music was Doo Wop-themed and though my friend’s two European pals faded fast (“What is this? No techno?”), the rest of us did the twist, the shake, and the mashed potato long into the evening. When I finally came up for air on the first floor of the bar, an attractive young Brit struck up a friendly conversation with me because he was so intrigued by how sweaty I was.

It was as though I could do no wrong!

My friends and I left Lit in the wee hours of the morning. The bar was back in my good graces. For now. But if I ever get turned away again, Lit will become nothing more than an old flame.

Case files closed on the Kiss & Fly cone saga (sort of.) I finally decided to have a serious chat with the bathroom attendant and almost tripped into the sink when she revealed that she ASKED someone to put a cone / cone(s) on the toilet.

“The toilet is not broken,” she emphasized in our chaotic interview. “The door is broken. You can’t close that door.” She pointed to the wooden panel that would seal off that bathroom, currently open and held in place by a trash can.

As per usual, it was too loud and sweaty with too many girls retouching make-up to prolong such an absurd conversation in an attempt to clarify. The gist of her rationale seemed to be that women had been trying to use that bathroom, but couldn’t close or lock the door. My questions:

a) Since when is privacy valued in a club setting? A place where girls share stalls and friends guard friends’ bathroom doors anyway?

b) Why can’t they get the door fixed? Geez. That would be even easier and less gross than repairing a toilet.

A new mystery revolves around this crazy vodka called Snow Queen. Can someone enlighten me about this beverage? In the dark, cradled in a bucket of ice, it looks suspiciously like Grey Goose. I guessed Snow Queen was some generic vodka Kiss & Fly economically chose to pawn off on promoter tables. It tastes frighteningly like nothing (allowing for unconscious mass-consumption) and gave me the worst hangover of my life. So I did some research and found that Snow Queen vodka’s the new quality product from Kazakhstan. According to their website and wiki, it’s also won some awards.

Side question: Who bestows liquor awards? I’m assuming a panel of judges who get to drink all day? That’s a great job.

So now I don’t know if Snow Queen vodka is super classy or super trashy. Is it the new Grey Goose or is it distilled from the tears and old bathwater of Kazakhstani senior citizens? Anyone who’s a liquor expert, fill us all in.

On a separate yet related Kiss & Fly note, this Go-Go girls’ outfit isn’t really working for me. I think the Kiss & Fly dancers had a much better things going for them when the feathers were on their chest instead of their rump.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Kanye West!?!?

I’m one of those people who remain stoic and unenthusiastic about celebrity sightings, but Kayne West!?! He’s perhaps the coolest male artist you could see these days, primarily because he invented terms like “go ahead, go nuts, go apeshit,” which my friends and I have adopted in regular speech. So I admit that my excitement went up a notch and I became even more determined to thoroughly enjoy the evening.

About Kanye: He partied with three male members of his entourage and a breathtakingly beautiful Rihanna-looking girl who had the most enviable legs I’ve ever seen. A girlfriend of mine, who follows celebrity stalker publications said that she’d seen pictures of this sizzlin lady with Kanye on his recent beach vacation. Nice!

Kanye himself wore a plain green T-shirt, jeans, crazy cool sneakers that were a hybrid between Nikes and Uggs, and a plain cloth baseball cap worn elevated and twisted to one side. He’s remarkably short. In fact, I’d described him as child size. (Note: Being the only table next to him, we were all expressly asked by management not to take photographs).

Kanye didn’t smoke or drink the entire evening. He did however, look relaxed and like he was having a good time. He alternated between sitting on the banquette focusing on his cell phone and jiving on top of the banquette dancing in small, jerky movements, occasionally pausing to chat with the gorgeous female hottie.

Immediately, my stress-prone brain began to wonder: Kanye’s tunes are such a club staple – How does a DJ best handle the music situation when the artist himself is in the house? Does that mean you play more Kanye songs? Or does it mean to you play none at all?

I pondered this dilemma until the DJ finally bust out “Stronger” and the crowd went wild. I immediately honed in on Kanye eager for some sort of reaction on his part, but got nothing. Throughout the beginning of the song he tapped away on his cell phone, seemingly oblivious, then stood up and enjoyed his music with everyone else.

“Would he sing along?” I wondered. “Or is he so totally sick of hearing his own music that he wants to barf right now?” Again, I observed him like a veteran stalker and didn’t see him mouth any of the words (although his gorgeous lady friend was singing them at the top of her lungs). Later on, the DJ played “The Good Life.” Kanye got a little more into this tune and even sang a tiny bit by the end.

Kanye and his entourage rolled out of the club unusually early and all that was left by 1:45 AM was their empty bottles. Overall, I enjoyed the Tenjune experience, although I don’t know how much of my review is bias since the most famous rapper of the moment was literally 3 feet away.

I do give Tenjune props for keeping their VIP area roomier than other places. If you do decide to invest in a table you’re truly are gaining some privacy and breathing room since a bouncer guards the prive area (unlike Pink Elephant or Kiss and Fly’s elevated areas for example). This surprised me because on previous visits to Tenjune I felt like the club was unbearably crowded. Maybe the weekend party load has been lightened thanks to New Yorkers jetting off to the Hamptons or maybe Tenjune really does deserve props for keeping their club appropriately below capacity. Either way, whatever my previous issue with this locale, it suddenly seemed unimportant.

Another cool feature of note is that the club provided a ‘make your own shot’ service at the tables. They give you many mixers (watermelon, yes!) as well as shot glasses and a shaker. So the wanna-be bartender of your group can cocktail shots all night long for anyone who’s interested. I thought this was a fun feature to what’s otherwise a boring, cookie-cutter table set up.

Who knows? At this rate, I think I’ll be frequenting Tenjune again.