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.

Wednesday night Upstairs, the exclusive SoHo club and location of much debauchery like dollar bill tossing, was raided by the cops.

Old news.

The charges had something to do with liquor license violations and a legal problem with the sound system. All I focused on was trying to hide my inherent panic: Where would I go to hear Hip Hop and Bruce Springsteen in the same night? Where would men go to meet models age sixteen and under? Where would Leonardo Di Caprio go to schmooze low key with his entourage?

Luckily, this terrifying series of questions didn’t continue for long. A mere thirty-six hours after the raid, I received a text from one of the owners at Upstairs assuring me it was re-opened and ready for Friday night. That was fast! It wasn’t until I was in the club this weekend that I realized why: The bar was closed.

But don’t think Upstairs was going to let a pesky little thing like a liquor license get in the way of their bash or business plan. They’re just serving bottle service only until further notice – and the creepy part is that is took me twenty minutes to even notice that the bar looked like an abandoned warehouse: a blank wall, utterly void of life, liquor or bar tenders.

Talk about a loophole in the system!

“No, you cannot purchase a vodka on the rocks; I can only sell you the entire bottle.”

Interesting.

I found this similar to how Milan recently enacted laws that prohibit liquor from being sold after 2 AM instead of after 4 AM in order to help prevent drunk driving. Now bartenders scream, “Two AM last call! Everyone get your bottles!” and people stock up on Magnums or just purchase bottles of champagne which they walk around downing as if it were JuicyJuice.

Yes, this is really going to encourage people to drink less.