I recently found myself at One, the restaurant aside Gansevoort in Meatpacking which is the promoter pre-party dinner hub of the city. To explain what that means, you’ve gotta know that promoters often cut deals with New York City restaurants, bringing their hot entourage to eat for free before attending whatever club they’re herding people to that evening.

Why This Works: A Flow Chart (keep in mind I haven’t made a flow chart since eighth grade):

Generally speaking, it’s a promoter’s job to have hot chicks and guys who’ll buy tables at their beck and call –> For the most part, guys who buy bottle service work all the time (allowing them to afford bottle service) and being hard workers, don’t have a time to socially micromanage a glamorous entourage. –> Since partying at a table alone without a glamorous entourage is considered faux-pas and a major waste of alcohol, the hard workers decide to team up with a promoter who is, for all practical purposes, a species of middleman. –> On the opposite end of the spectrum, those who make up the glamorous entourage most likely can’t afford a table of their own, hence their decision to work with a promoter. –> To further entice the glamorous entourage to come out with them, promoters will offer perks like limo rides or free dinner at a trendy NYC restaurant pre-clubbing. –> Trendy NYC restaurants need good-looking patrons into order to retain their aforementioned status as trendy. –> Since a promoter already has a glamorous entourage that can’t afford trendy dinners at their disposal, the promoter offers their encourage to eat and drink for free beforehand at [insert trendy restaurant here] –> The restaurant gives away free food to the promoter and their group in exchange for what is essentially, product placement PR with humans. –> Theoretically, everybody wins.

I’m sure many variations of this formula exist, but this is its core function as I understand it. Many restaurants (more than I can list) work with promoters in this capacity, but I don’t think any participate as much as Gansevoort’s next door neighbor, One.

One has really uncomfortable seats and tables, insanely loud music, and mediocre food. At some promotional restaurant gigs, you actually see a menu and order whatever you choose. At most however, menus are a never presented and the server just brings out select appetizers and main courses for everyone to share family-style while boozing people up on a lot of champagne. A sample promotional dinner at One consists of:

-Unlimited wine and champagne (dangerous)

-A shared Caeser-like salad (pretty good)

-A shared quesadilla (pretty gross)

-A shared appetizer pizza (pretty satisfying)

-An odd chicken tapas thing (which I think I don’t like) and

-Shared steak with French fries and ravioli for the main course.

Not too shabby.

My qualm with One has nothing to do with the food, but rather the music level, which is so absurdly high you’d think you were eating in the middle of a concert or club, which essentially, you are. Promoter dinners take place at 10 or 10:30 since everyone has to be in the club around midnight. One, which doubles as a bar (hence the importance they be perceived as ‘trendy’) starts cranking up the volume to make the place feel like a discotheque at around the same time the promoter tables are sitting down to eat. You therefore often find yourself in the completely surreal experience of eating in silence with thirteen other people, listening to deafeningly loud party music. Carrying on a conversation is an impossibility and on my last visit, the unthinkable happened.

At 11:30 One went black. Black as in they turned all the lighting off, even in the dining area. The restaurant was darker than the inside of your average club, because at least your average club has fancy strobe machines and an expensive lighting system. Literally, none of us could see. Not each other. Not our food. It was like some creepy horror movie in which you suddenly find yourself at a vampires banquet in a dungeon.

I thought the whole thing was a joke and waited for them to play ‘Thriller’ and then turn the ambiance lighting back up – but no. It was a big finger in the face to anyone who was still eating, and even the non-promoter diners seemed pretty weirded out. I mean, this is New York. A lot of people sit down to dinner at 11:30pm. And I understand that One likes to think of itself as a lounge and therefore wants to create a party atmosphere to sell drinks to wasted people in ASAP, but why then bother having a restaurant?

More nightlife mysteries, unsolved.

The folks at SoHo hotspot Upstairs on Spring Street just refused to be discouraged by cop raids and the fact that their bar has been shut down for weeks. They continue to merrily sell bottles (raking in cash) and force patrons to walk downstairs to Café Bari should they want to purchase a drink. The latest development is that they’ve moved the DJ booth (previously on a folding table off to the side) into their empty bar space for kicks. Dynamic restructuring!

To me, these absurdities are further testament to how much New York partiers love this establishment. What other locale could get away with a seemingly-permanently closed main bar and upstairs-downstairs trips should you want to open a tab?

At this point, if they finally get their liquor license, the place might lose half its charm.

Remember that episode of Sex and the City when Carrie goes to some hip, joint-smoking couple’s baby shower and gets her insanely expensive shoes stolen? That’s the first thing I thought of when I entered a party this weekend and the front foyer looked like this:

The de-shoeing excuse the lame couple on Sex and the City gave had something to do with protecting their pristine offspring from New York’s street germs. Funny, because I’m sure when these children ventured into Central Park with their nanny they touched, licked and molested the urban landscape as if it were a candy cane.

At the party I was attending, our bachelor host didn’t have this concerned parent excuse. He also didn’t have hardwood floors, making everyone even more confused as to why our shoes had to be checked at the door as if they were a violent weapon.

What I found most interesting about the party that ensued (a lovely and successful party btw) was the subtle yet intense murmur of complaints steadily voiced by the females in attendance. Perhaps not surprisingly, New York women really don’t like to part with their shoes. Some put on a happy face while bitching below the radar about how without their suede heels, their outfit no longer “worked.” Others complained they felt inferior or “like midgets” without their stilettos. Many commiserated over how the entire situation was just kindergarten-style “unfair.” As one guest pointed out, “If our host can afford this apartment, can’t he afford to have someone come clean the floor?”

“Wow!” I thought. “This could get ugly!” But I resisted chanting “Fight! Fight!” like the people on WWE Wrestling.

I, for one, feel like I’ve suffered enough discomfort via footwear for one lifetime and therefore remain grateful for any opportunity to take my high heels off. The best comedy occurred at the end of the night when all the guests, now drunk on gin and bubbly, had to locate their shoes in this tangled, overflowing pile and somehow retain their balance long enough to put them back on. Many toppled over. Lot’s of shoulders were lent for support.

I experienced a mini panic attack when I couldn’t locate my gold strappy sandals in the shoe orgy. The impossibly frightening was happening: My life was a Sex and the City episode! Someone stole them!

I became especially enraged since I already had one pair of shoes mysteriously stolen at a house party in Brazil. Fortunately, after a little digging, I found my sandals suffocating under a pair of sneakers.

Crisis averted.

Miss Model Behavior’s the new nightlife writer for theBlaqlist.com. Feel free to post any nightlife comments or questions on our forum or contact her at MissModelBehavior@theBlaqlist.com

Accepting an invitation to stay in the Hamptons is like journeying into a black hole. No matter how well you know your host or how great they ensure you their set up is, until you’re physically on the premises you should be prepared to accept both a caddy shack and a castle. You can never fully know what you’re getting into. If someone guarantees you a bed, pack an air mattress. If they say there’s a fulltime chef, pack ramen. If they say you have a ride, reserve worst-case-scenario jitney seats.

Do I sound paranoid? Well, New Yorkers are liars, folks. And especially in the Hamptons, it’s every camper for themselves. Plus I had some bad experiences last year which left a particularly bitter taste in my mouth.

Bartok, my friend whose visits I use as an excuse to act like a sixteen-year-old, had arrived Thursday night. Our plan was to train it out to the Hamptons Friday as soon as I finished work around 6 PM, the logic being that anyone driving would’ve already left and that the highway would be bumper to bumper with people having just departed from their office. Immediately, our Hamptons karma seemed to be recovering from last year since we

a) were offered a last minute ride

b) by a driver who wasn’t insane

c) by a driver who also had the good sense to take us out for post-work Grey Goose shots, Coronas, and appetizers at a gemstone of a restaurant called the Water Club, a scenic, peaceful place literally in the river with a pianist and waiters in bow-tie uniforms. This was smart because we

d) missed the hoards of ‘people leaving the city early’ traffic and got to our destination in Watermill in a shocking hour and forty-five minutes.

Getting to the Hamptons that fast on a holiday Friday felt like cheating on a test. By waiting till 8 PM to leave the city, when you think traffic would be detrimental, we actually coasted at a safe speed through clear roads. The satellite navigation system, which I named Sandra, got us to our destination without a single wrong turn. As our kind driver said, “I’ll take shots over traffic any day.” And I hope to use this logic again in some sort of future scenario.

No previous Hamptons house could compare to the kingdom we drove up to. It was large, Great Gatsby-like and impeccably furnished with a pool, rolling grass, hammock, cottage, enormous deck and dock since it was literally on the water. Rumors of the chef were true as well, as he was already dicing onions in the kitchen and looking peeved. Come to find out, the chef was unendingly peeved, but we’ll get into that later.

Survivor-style, Bartok and I took over the first bathroom we could find to shower and make ourselves Hamptons worthy. My friend who’d invited us, who we’ll call Fahotti, is from a Middle Eastern country I’ll leave nameless. For some reason, I’d assumed everyone in his house would share his accent, skin color, and place of origin. Hence my surprise when we joined the group at dinner and found that his male friends in the house were so classically American that unaltered, they could’ve been posing for a J.Crew catalogue. Ladies were present too, and we all enjoyed a delicious home cooked meal of fresh baked bread, mushroom stuffed chicken and summer soup made from scratch.

My largest Hamptons concern has always been the car issue: crazy drivers, drunk drivers, space in the car, getting left behind. All these worries were blissfully eliminated as the home’s organizer had hired two drivers in huge black SUV vans to transport the house’s entourage (which would increase throughout the weekend to number around 60 people on Sunday night) to and from the club.

Gossip floated around for weeks that Pink Elephant would not be able to stay at the Capri Hotel where it enjoys an outdoor space. Some claimed Pink would move into Tavern (too big), others said it would be at Capri but be limited to indoors (too small). Anyway, this hullaballoo was all lies and more lies. Pink is exactly as it was last year with perhaps quieter music outside, which let’s face it, is a blessing when you want to give your eardrums a break or God forbid, have a conversation with someone.

Being May, it remained too chilly for people other than chain smokers to spend a lot of time outside, which means the inside of the club looked like this:

This body mash would’ve been a downer, but our prepared host had ensured we receive a spacious table in front of the DJ booth and near the door (breeze, yes!). Pink in the Hamptons is unabashedly more commercial than Pink New York and primarily played Top Forty while mixing in some old school favorites. Because let’s face it, when you’re drunk and on vacation with your friends, you’d much rather have everyone jumping up and down to Usher than doing that whole sophisticated euro house thing. At night in clubs in the Hamptons, no one’s even going to try and pretend to be sophisticated.

Yes, there was some fun drama and unexpected scuffles. My gold watch that looks like a Bulgari, which I actually bought for $5 from a war veteran by Ground Zero, got entangled in a nearby girl’s fro. I apologized and thought that kind of accident could be categorized as the standard party endangerment one accepts when entering a club packed to the ceiling with Patron-filled people, but she took personal offense and seemed ready to stab me with her shoe horn necklace (being the courageous person I am, I ran away). A Belvedere bottle some how landed / launched / fell onto Bartok’s bare foot, creating a bruise which she complained about for days. And security had to control some intense table feuds and drunk-ready-to-fight frenemy situations. But I learned last year that Hamptons clubs aren’t a classy place. So instead of being appalled, I took in the rowdiness with a smile and sip of champagne.

Clubs are a bout of extra intensity in the all-day fiesta that is the Hamptons. Clubbing seems to serve as an opportunity to get everyone out of the house, a human dog-walking of sorts. Back at the castle post-club, the music continued. Someone who really wanted to see girls get naked had the smarts to turn the pool up to 90 degrees. Everyone can imagine what happened from there.

On this night (night number one), I claimed an actual bed and had the feeling several people would join me. One girl did midway through the morning. Keep in mind that Friday however, we were an assortment of only twenty people. This number would increase exponentially as the weekend progressed.

To Be Continued…

Miss Model Behavior’s the new nightlife writer for theBlaqlist.com. Feel free to post any nightlife comments or questions on our forum or contact her at MissModelBehavior@theBlaqlist.com

Exactly one year ago, I voyaged to the Hamptons for the very first time. The experience was not…how to put it kindly…a positive.

After drinking and changing clothes, it was time to hit our first destination. Memorial Day weekend means the grand opening of most Hampton clubs. We arrived outside of an establishment called Dune after paying twenty dollars to self park our car in a weedy patch of sand. If that cost twenty I was afraid to know the cost of valet? Fifty? It was just midnight and the heard of people already outside Dune resembled this fall’s massive immigration march in New York City. After many uncomfortable moments in line, Scruff finally picked us out of the crowd. We then past a large Maxim ad where certain douchey individuals chose to pose and have their picture taken by some kind of fake paparazzi.

I bee-lined for the outdoor area. If I had wanted to be in a muggy indoor club I could’ve stayed in the city and gone to the bar below my apartment. While Pink’s music and ambiance was a definite improvement, the condition of the people mirrored Dune. I saw older women jumping erratically around the outdoor beds like chimpanzees and an attractive blonde hump a tree only to break into a full out striptease. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge supporter of drunken fun, but there’s a difference between a party and a shit-show.

The story ends with me taking a jitney back to NYC before my scheduled departure in an effort to save my soul. I’ve clearly learned nothing however, because now, one year later, I’m going to do it all over again.

Why?

Because this year I’m not a naïve outsider expecting backless evening gowns and elegant ocean side clubs. This year, I’ve mastered the game of the share house, the back up share house, and the back up-back up share house, and the sleeping bag. This year, I won’t be discovering. I’ll be aware and ready to pounce. This year, I won’t be expecting people to take care of me. I’ll be a resourceful superwomen with a premeditated plan. I’ve already negotiated 12 entrance and exit routes.

So with my fantasy Hamptons bubble already burst and the shock factor eliminated, will my feelings be as hostile as last year’s?

More about my exact plan of attack and its results coming soon…

I’ve been putting it off forever, but I guess I can’t really stake claim as a nightlife writer if I refuse to discuss the Hamptons.

Memorial Day weekend is the beginning of the H-Madness that will continue in an obnoxious frenzy until Labor Day. Why it’s fun to lug yourself to Long Island, share an air mattress with three other people in someone else’s share house basement and go to a windy beach with freezing water while massively hung-over is unclear. It just is. Right? Or Wrong?

Let’s examine some of the pros and cons.

Hamptons Pros

Swimming Pools (yes!)

Sun (yes!)

Hot tubs (yes! yes! yes!)

Feeling like you’re at adult summer camp (camper activities: drinking, sunning, hooking up)

Bonfires (warm)

Cheesy events (countless!)

Leisurely walks and bike rides (if you can see straight, if all you can see is champagne don’t leave the sauna)

Group bonding (how can you not bond when it’s ten to a bathroom?)

Hot parties (depending on your definition of hot, but the NYC clubs definitely lose some of their weekend vigor)

Celebrity sightings (if you care)

The beach (if you’re cool with un-Mediterranean water temperatures)

Hamptons Cons

Transport / traffic (a logistics nightmare)

Lodging (bring your sleeping bag and prepare to be molested in your sleep)

Driving (yeah, someone’s gotta be sober)

Distance (stuff is far apart!)

Outrageously expensive cabs (*%$#@?)

Outrageously expensive everything ($8 croissants!?)

Nutty, rich people (somehow they’re on worse behavior in rural areas)

Very drunk people (the vacation atmosphere encourages people to ‘let loose’)

Dependency on others to go places / get around (this is usually my deal breaker)

Ridiculous ostentatiousness

Weird cell phone coverage

The inability to escape the people you’re with

Stuff that I don’t know if it’s a Pro or Con

Seeing everyone you know from Manhattan in beach attire

Going to every club you’d go to in New York ‘the Hamptons’ version

Living with people you’d usually just party with

More after my voyage there this weekend…

Miss Model Behavior’s the new nightlife writer for theBlaqlist.com. Feel free to post any nightlife comments or questions on our forum or contact her at MissModelBehavior@theBlaqlist.com

Everyone has their own going out style. Some like to make a theatrical production of the night with designer clothes, extras, cameras and mass texts. Others like to sneak out of their apartments at 1 A.M. without telling a soul. Some of us like to pregame profusely. Others nurse one drink the whole night.

This range of styles came sharply into focus for me after an increasing number of party arguments I’d experienced with one of my newer friends. The dilemma every night was essentially this: I wanted to go wherever my friends were going so that we’d have a table, home base, and people to keep an eye on us (safety in numbers). And she wanted to go someplace just her and I.

Apparently, I’m a pack mentality going out person.

She is not.

And I never even realized this about myself!

Maybe I’m an insecure partier, but I like to enjoy a club with all my friends around me (preferably multiple groups of friends around me) and usually with someone who’s acting as leader / entrance aficionado / alcohol provider. I find that this leaves me with less to worry about. Now if I’m going to a locale where I know the doorman and know how to procure free booze, I’m happy to break off into a smaller group. Otherwise, I’m a power in numbers person. Not to mention that I enjoy catching up and creating memories with my gaggle of friends.

My party style nemesis on the other hand continually points out that the large group slows us down, sometimes makes it longer to get in, is inconvenient for cab travel, requires us to keep track of everyone, and makes it our problem when Jenny pukes in the street. Most importantly she notes, it prevents you from meeting new people.

Me: It prevents you from meeting complete strangers. Strangers who are creeps.

Her: It prevents you from meeting new potential men, because we’re always with the guy friends and ex-flames of our group.

Me: I meet new people. I like to use my friends as a base and then branch off to look around.

Her: So you can’t even be in Pink Elephant with out a life raft?

Me: It’s better to meet new friends through friends. People you’re already connected to.

Her: That’s incest. Incest with baggage.

So who’s right?

This weekend I found myself in a club more crowded than Penn Station on a holiday weekend rush hour Friday. Yes, it was really that bad. My group of friends didn’t have a table to call home, making the entire evening even more uncomfortable (uncomfortable factors one and two were 1. That I was wearing a corset (bad fashion decision, don’t ask) and 2. That I was carrying a purse large enough to qualify as a suitcase (long day, don’t ask.))

In the mosh pit that was everywhere, one of my friends thrust herself toward me and said,

“Look at them. They are totally hookers.”

I turned around and saw she was referring to an undulating table of exponentially hot girls and notably gross men. I laughed her off. That wasn’t prostitution. That was just standard sicko New York clubs.

“No. No.” My girlfriend insisted. “This isn’t the typical modelizer - baby model thing. These girls are hookers.”

As if on cue, I noticed on old girlfriend of mine at the questionable table. I hadn’t seen her in years and while she’d changed hair style and color, she still looked great. If she was hanging around, clearly this table was legit. Last time I’d checked in with her she was pursuing her MBA. I squirmed through the club to talk to her and we exchanged hellos, news, and checked to see if we still had each other’s numbers. She then continued to dance on a banquette and I, in a body lock against the table and vicious crowd, stayed put for a moment to survey the dance floor and catch my breath. That’s when a beautiful nymph like creature, the Queen Bee of the table, grabbed my arm and whispered:

“You can’t stand here. This is a private table.”

“Oh OK,” I said quickly. “Sorry, I was just saying hi to [insert my friend’s name here].”

“This is a private table and these are my clients,” was her response.

I took all my strength not to clasp my hands over my mouth in muffled horror / laughter. She certainly wins the straightforward award. And oh no! Did she think I was trying to steal her clientele? This was a total misunderstanding. To her credit, I was wearing something that looked like a corset and carrying a bag that could, for all she knew, contain dominatrix gear.

Bad news.

I sprinted away and gushed to my friend, “You were right! They are hookers.” She gave me a victorious grin.

So this is what theoretically hot Manhattan clubs have been reduced to? Is this the curse of the overcrowded weekend? Or is this happening all the time and I remain naively unaware?

Once the nymph who’d forced me from her table saw how crowded the club truly was realized I wasn’t banging into her table by choice, she grabbed me again and whispered some sort of apology. “They just don’t like anyone here,” she explained.

“Right,” I thought. “Why would guys want women to hang around them for free when they could spend thousands?”

Nothing was really making sense and that was my cue to go home and watch the Lion King in an attempt to purify my mind from the insanity I’d just involuntarily been a part of.

My girlfriend who’d stayed on, reported that security had actually come over to the crazy table and asked everyone to step away. My girlfriend being a ballsy babe said straight to the security guy’s face, “You know they’re hookers, right?”

There was an extremely tense moment before the security guy grinned and burst out laughing.

“Yeah hunnie, I know,” he said. “But they spend six thousand dollars every time they come here, so we let ‘em do what they want.”

Huh. So I guess since Spitzer, being an escort isn’t even something you have to be on the DL about anymore. Label me ‘weirded out.’

If your New York relationship was good (and by good I mean was able to last longer than the customary three months), it can be exceedingly difficult to let go of. City breakups are rough, and if you partied together, splitting up can also lead to a lot of awkward encounters and hardcore game playing.

So here’s my question: If you have clout at a nightlife establishment i.e. you know the doorman, the owner, the investor who mattered or the security dude, is it socially or morally acceptable to have your ex-significant other banned from the place? Setting up an infrastructure with the powers of the locale so that when your ex walks up to the red rope they’re automatically turned away? A nightlife blacklisting of sorts?

I think the answer to this question is more complicated than it seems. On the one hand, this is spiteful, childish, and clearly illustrates that you still like the person and haven’t moved on. On the other hand, aren’t all relationships, at their fundamental level, a power struggle? And what better way to showcase your power than by excommunicating the former object of your affection from a place that you used to both go to together? And with New York being as large as it is, is it really so much to ask that they party somewhere else?

Just like a messy custody battle, it’s not that easy to divvy up your spots versus my spots. What are former couples supposed to do? Create some sort of calendar that clarifies you can go to Goldbar every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday and he can have full reign of 1 Oak on Saturdays? When there is no tacit agreement, and your request for personal space at Cain is disregarded (meaning your ex shows up and flaunts their new diet and girlfriend in your face) is it okay to use your connections to make sure the club’s staff keeps them out?

Anyone who’s ever had a disastrous clubbing event with an ex, cast your vote here.

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.