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.

When I go to a nightclub, especially a Hamptons nightclub, I’m not expecting refinement. I’m not anticipating costumer service or comfort or access to the bathroom. I’m pretty much prepared to be trapped in a body lock between those two crazy Swedish girls prostituting themselves, inhaling the stench of cigarettes, fresh vomit and weed. Often, consequently, I’m not even expecting to have a good time.

Even with these impressively low expectations, I found myself shocked by this.

This is the ripped and holey banquet couch at Dune which patrons pay upwards of 2K to sit at, stand on, or apparently, violate. This photo captures what I find paradoxical and intriguing about the Hamptons.

How can a theoretically elite and successful club, complete with celebrity sightings, promotional events and outrageous prices, get away with decorum like this?

If this couch, subpar to a McDonald’s booth, was presented to a bottle service group in the city, they’d immediately go elsewhere. In the Hamptons, the bottle service group literally and figuratively jumps on it, accepting the grimy booth as just another part of the preposterous Hamptons financial defilement package we submit ourselves to weekend after weekend, without really knowing why.

I’ve written before about how Hamptons wackiness often inspires a Zen-like attitude, an acceptance of ‘loss of control.’ And I think this passive acceptance crosses over into every element of summering on Long Island.

A thirteen dollar bagel? Well, the next bagel shop is ten miles away and perhaps more expensive, especially if we include the gas money to get there.

A thirty dollar cab ride home (per head!)? Well, I’m drunk, unable to drive, and in the wilderness.

A germ-laden couch with holes in it for 2K? Well, we just valet-ed the car and escorting a rowdy drunken group to an alternate location would require the patience of a kindergarten teacher or a Taser.

The entire Hamptons setup traps tourists seeking prestige and relief from city humidity into accepting prices and quality they’d otherwise scoff at. It traps them into paying off a doorman, when in New York they’d cab it over to the club around the corner. Into partying on a banquet they normally wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. Into accepting customer service they’d normally be phoning the better business bureau about. And consequently partying like orangutans with all city manners, conventions, and standards tossed out the window. Hence what keeps the Hamptons simultaneously dirty and fun.

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.

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…

Unreal!

Remember Dirt Nasty’s comedic video, posted last week, which pokes fun at everything eighties? The vid took Youtube junkies by storm, but now seems to be influencing real life fashion decisions.

I, for one, didn’t know whether to scream in delight or horror when I saw this young gentleman at Hampton’s Dune Saturday night wearing the gold chain a.k.a. Donkey Rope that Dirt Nasty wears and continuously references in his rap lyrics. Who wants to holler, “’I’m radical, T-shirt say party animal,” first? [Note chain similarity!]

Did our Dune dude wear the chain to the club as a joke? As a Simon Rex homage? As a reference to the video? Or is that really just what he considers a classy look to pick up broads on Long Island?

Who knows!

Also under the category of crazy, I felt it appropriate to exhibit this delightful photo. I’m deeming it the ultimate share house lifestyle photo of the month, complete with ‘guy passed out on couch.’

It’s never pretty the day after.

Update! Update!

The Kiss & Fly cone has multiplied. [Old photo above] There are now TWO. Note the new side view photo I took to properly showcase this point.

I guess I thought that by drawing attention to it via the Internet, the cone would somehow magically disappear and get removed by a Kiss & Fly janitor who’s also a devout reader of my blog.

Not the case!

In fact, the opposite has occurred. The club seems to be promoting the mysterious bathroom stall (rumored as a coke room, but this can’t be true because the stall doesn’t even have a proper door and Kiss is not a place like Upstairs, geez) as a traffic cone hosting facility.

Fix this toilet already or just riddle me a reason for this bizarre set up!

I almost brought up Issue Cone with one of the owners last night over casual conversation, but then realized he might not find it so amusing that I write about the intimate quirks of his club online for sport. I was also way too drunk to conduct a proper interview and figured he’d might think I was dropping acid when all my questions revolved around an orange construction object I’ve fondly named Earl. Plus, it’s in the women’s room. Is he even aware?

I’ll work on getting an eventual statement from him. More disconcerting at the moment, is the fact that my favorite part about journeying to Kiss & Fly is not the music, free drinks, good-looking revelers or really pretty disco ball, but rather my nightly check-up on the cone.

In less interesting news, Kiss also got their Amazon-braided dancers completely halter free bikini tops. Take a look. No back strap. No front strap. No strap in between. How do these things stay on their shaking lady parts? If it’s adhesive and they have to glue feathers to their breasts, I really hope they’re getting paid extra for that.

More mysteries, unsolved.

This week’s nightlife crazy award goes to the lovely narcoleptic boy I saw in Chelsea. The young lad managed to sleep through the night undisturbed, despite his bed being the rowdy, center floor table of Cain. The music wailed at deafening megawatts while drunken revelers celebrated Friday’s long anticipated arrival with stomps and cheers. Neither this, nor the bountiful leaps of the young man in red and white sneakers beside his head, woke our Rip Van Winkle.

Napping boy was evicted onto the 27^th street sidewalk around the same time my roommate and I voluntarily left. He was still half-asleep and seemed ready to spoon with the nearby dumpster. Having drank, danced, and hovered over his snoozing body for the past two hours at the adjacent table, I felt a kinship toward the fellow and tried to halt the trash can spooning process and help him into a cab.

Every time my roommate and I prompted the boy with questions like, “Where do you live?” and “Can you say your address?” he would only slur back crudities and bark that he wanted to be left alone. He consistently mumbled something about “calling Jim” and in clumsy slumber, immediately dropped his cell phone the moment he located it. Even after we retrieved and returned his phone, Rip Van Winkle continued to rudely shun our assistance. At this point, we gave up and scurried into a taxi ourselves, hoping this “Jim” character wasn’t an utter deadbeat and might eventually come to his friend’s rescue.

If you saw a sweet blonde boy sleeping with a trashcan on 27^th street this weekend, you now know the whole story.

[Goa, LA]

Anyone living in a major metropolis is the often unwilling recipient of emails, texts, and spam from promoters whose job it is to get us out having a goodtime (and for men consequently, spending money.) Some promoter messages are polite and tasteful, others unrelentingly annoying, some comedic, and many, pure trash. This astonishing example of a promoter email invitation arrives all the way from Los Angeles. While I insisted the level of douchiness meant it had to be a joke, let me assure you it’s certifiably real.

[Redacted],

I’ve been far too busy working on my tan and

researching calf implant surgery to write you a
lengthy email today… so I will simply warn you
that tomorrow night at Goa (Friday) we are hosting
[redacted] Model Management’s 5th Anniversary Party,
and the only non-beautiful people to crack the
velvet ropes will be our busboys and even they
have IMDB rap sheets that when laid end to end
would cover Fabio’s man-breasts 16 times.

Let me know if you’d like to join us. There is no
list, simply ask for [redacted] at the door and tell
him I invited you. If you have been hitting the
gym and doing your teeth whitening sessions like
you are supposed to you will be ushered inside
with the speed of a bullet train as the onlookers
corraled on the wrong side of the rope eye-fuck
you in glorious envy.

P.S. If you are REALLY f**king cool and/or an
aspiring star f**ker you should also come to the
smaller, more intimate party I am now throwing
every Saturday night at a location I would rather
not mention here. Ask me about it if you are
ridiculously good looking…

One hopes this author, at least to a certain degree, is poking fun at himself and his lifestyle in a hyperbolic fashion intended to make his recipients laugh (we do truly hope, because I don’t know how safe I feel living in a world with real-life Ari Gold’s taking on promoter jobs, dictating prose like this without sarcasm.) If this LA promoter’s intention was self-mockery, I applaud him for the entertainment and putting the ridiculousness of Hollywood straightforwardly out there. This might be a more admirable approach than the often subtler East Coast promoters who are afraid to get blatant and say it like it is. East Coast promoter examples:

Promoter language: “Yeah, I guess your friend can come. Is she cute?”
Translation: I need models only, no exceptions.

Promoter language: “Not sure if I can get three guys in.”
Translation: If you’re not buying bottles, stop wasting my time.

I guess it’s up to each individual promoter to navigate disclosing the harsh cruelty of the nightlife world, while still convincing their guests to partake. Is extreme subtlety or tough love the best approach? I don’t know. What I do know is regardless of the fact that I rarely go to LA, I want to get on this promoter’s permanent mailing list.

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…

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.’