I thoroughly enjoy admitting when I’m wrong. Maybe because it happens so often. Everyone ready to time travel? Good. Let’s go way back to October of last year, when I had this to say about the swanky, closet-size, SoHo lounge Goldbar:

In broad terms, Goldbar pisses me off. The door’s extremely tight and the place is never packed. They’re super snoody and won’t let patrons take pictures inside, and no, I don’t think this is to protect the artwork (I really doubt they’re hanging paintings that valuable in place where people come to get shitfaced and often climb/fall into the walls).

Hmm. Several months later, I opted for a softer tone:

After not loving Gold Bar my first few encounters, I actually had a positive experience there this weekend. This might have had something to do with the fact it was our last stop of the evening (we arrived at 3:30 AM) and everyone had easily drunk a bottle of vodka a head since we left the house.

Not really a ringing endorsement but okay.

The ‘gold skull closet’ as I fondly call it was actually FULL (I guess that’s what happens when you go out on Saturday instead of Monday night), the music was FUN (Billy Joel? Yes, please!) and the bathrooms, which I used for the first time, were clean and spacious enough for me to stretch out and change my clothes (don’t ask why I was changing clothes).

As if we weren’t retard enough, my girlfriend ordered me a specialty alcoholic concoction called the Gold Rush. It tasted like a Long Island Iced Tea on crack. When I inquired about its ingredients, I received a slurred response that it was whisky, bourbon, and honey, all made ‘bearable’ by a giant ice cube in the middle. I took two sips and wisely professed to my friend,

“This is throw up. This is throw up.”

I think what I was trying to express is that the drink was both vomit inducing while also tasting like liquid sour patch kids gone bad. It’s a miracle no one projectile puked that night.

Months later again, I’m here to come full circle and give Goldbar two tequila happy thumbs up. I found myself hanging out there both this past weekend and the one before. I’m here to say, on the record, that this place is a good time.

I partied there on a Sunday night and found what I judged to be the sexiest crowd out that night in the city. The flocks of female supermodels seemed relaxed instead of rigid. Men weren’t busy boasting bottle service to impress, they were actually pulling out cute dance moves and managing to look like homo-sapiens genuinely enjoying themselves instead of bankers desperate to prove that they know how to party.

Since Goldbar shimmers with a lounge-y feel, that hard-core club vibe that often makes intimacy, listening or thinking impossible, isn’t there. You are therefore more prone to talk to some one instead of just making vulgar “I’m checking you out” insinuations with your eyes across a crowded dance floor.

I’ve been getting excited since someone in the rumor mill has been churning out news that the owners of Goldbar and Cain would be opening “Cain Downtown” here in the SoHo area. Naturally, I was thrilled about the birth of another downtown club I could attend, get wrecked in, and walk home from. It only took me an entire year to warm up to Goldbar! Now that the skull closet and I are friends, I had high hopes for my relationship with Jamie and Jayma’s next downtown venture.

Sadly, it doesn’t seem like this is going to materialize. Apparently, the locals are hell-bent against Cain becoming their new neighbor. And frankly who can blame them? I wouldn’t want an establishment that was known for go-go dancers in zebra bikinis and for pushing people too drunk to see straight onto the street at four AM as my neighbor either.

Tragic story for all of us who were hoping to save cab fare to Chelsea by hanging out downtown.

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

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.

Just when you think you’ve seen all the weirdness NYC has to offer, you stumble across a party like this.

Dressed like a normal person and expecting another uneventful clubbing night out, I unsuspectingly found myself at the Kostume Kult and Disorient’s annual Black and Light ball at Comix, an experience which can only be described as “jaw dropping.” Different artistic projects took place throughout the party which ranged from a mock Vogue-style photo shoot to performance art involving laptops and wall projections, and body painting with spay cans. Then you had your rave areas in the large back room and downstairs.

The Kostume Kult goes to Burning Man every year, so the party doubled as a fundraiser for their camp. I have an endlessly fascination with Burning Man and suggest that anyone unaware of the tradition read about it here. Amongst the black lit carnival, I felt like the freak as I sipped an amaretto in a plain black dress among

-People with neon afro wigs larger than the circumference of my closet

-Naked couples wearing only body paint, sheathes, and nipple covers (my favorite were the orange leopards with gold tassels on their boobs)

-Dresses that left one breast exposed

-Transparent skirts that left vaginas exposed

-Colorful fake eyelashes long enough to be a fire hazard on the dance floor

-Enough glitter to fill an Olympic size pool

-More colors of pleather than I knew existed

I’d need to drop some acid in order to even come up with a costume as unique and creative as these folks did. I didn’t end up doing much partying as the visual fun of this circus kept me continually aghast. My friend and I spent so much time admiring the kult’s ensembles and postulating which couples had the craziest sex that we even forgot to drink! Imagine!

A video of what it’s all about here,

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

Ah, Cain.

This is one of those nightlife establishments my heart goes out to. It’s like that really popular kid in high school who had the world at his finger tips, but ultimately ended up staying in his home town, teaching local soccer, and living in his mother’s basement.

This isn’t exactly a negative: Who doesn’t like the comforts of their childhood home’s basement?

The point is that years ago, Cain opened as the hottest thing on the block. I remember it being notoriously hard to get into. I used to quake in my heels at the door thinking about how threatening long-haired euros wielding clipboards looked. And everyone was wowed by their animal head and safari theme.

This was long before Goldbar’s impressive skulls and 1Oak’s ridiculously expensive engraved walls entered the picture, upping club’s decorating requirements significantly. Cain was hot. They had girls in zebra bikinis convulsing on white sides of the club that resembled caravan sheaths, they had drummers in abundance, they had struck an exquisite balance in music that managed to be tribal yet commercial. And who didn’t like their sexy, high ceilinged individual bathrooms? The club reminded me of Pangaea in London, and for that reason alone, I doted on it.

Around the same time, spots like Guest House and Home sprouted up. Twenty seventh street experienced a glorious run, then that dude fell down the elevator shaft of Bed, and the underage girl at Guest House was found chopped up in a dumpster. Consequently, establishments started carding and the street lost some of its shine. Soon it was clear Cain’s owners favored their sparkly, lounge-like younger child Goldbar, and Cain began to feel like an after-thought. The neglected older sibling.

That doesn’t mean there still isn’t fun to be had at Cain. I did a swing through last weekend, and while much has changed (the drummer’s now stationary, the music’s more hip hop, the door’s less daunting) I found the vibe enjoyable and fun.

Why?

Because the club’s lost its pretentiousness. It’s been dethroned. And the benefit of no longer being the coolest kid on the block is that your staff can lose some of the attitude and everyone can stop taking themselves so seriously. The atmosphere becomes laid back, dare I say – relaxing. Yes many of us are masochists who want to go out to be treated like shit only to savor the victory of knowing you achieved entrance into the hottest new place. But I don’t think anyone could categorize Cain’s transformation into kinder, more approachable creature as a ‘bad’ thing. And another animal is entering the Goldbar-Cain family. Cain Downtown in the SoHo area is officially in development. So those of you that enjoy lines, celebrity sightings and doorman abuse should be prepared to shimmy over there.

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

Just when you’re trying to enjoy yourself at a space saucer like Mansion where the music’s intense, the disco lights are trauma-inducing and it takes twenty minutes to scale the six staircases to the bathroom, the club fades to black and a girl with butterflies in her cascading hair starts busting out some opera. Because isn’t this why we all go to clubs? To hear whacky versions of Verdi?

I’m confused.

I’ve known Mansion is into doing shows: Last time, I witnessed some electronic string quartet jam along with the DJ. Naturally, everyone remained bewildered about whether to continue dancing or to give the string instruments their full attention while sitting attentively feigning an interest in art. This is what I don’t get. Mansion is as clubby as a club gets. No amount of luxury renovation can kill the Crobar spirit that permanently haunts this space. Why the bouts of Lincoln Center?

Are they trying to pull a theater thing like The Box?

Are they trying to culture the club experience?

Do they consider such spectacles a selling point?

How much is this costing them on top of their frightening rent?

I’m thirsty for theater as much as the next overworked New Yorker, but is when I’m chilling with my fifth cocktail really the time I want it chucked in my face?

Next time at Mansion, I’ll consider packing both earplugs and opera glasses.

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

The downside of dating someone you go out and have fun with is that you’ll eventually have to see them drunk, at night clubs, post break-up. You’d think that because New York is ginormous, the chances of running into your ex would be slim. This could not be father from the truth. Most circles of friends frequent a rotating handful of places, the grown-up equivalent of the three neighborhood bars in college. Running into you’re ex isn’t a probability, it’s a certainty. And thanks to alcohol, all your emotions will be heightened and on edge. So ‘sadness’ becomes ‘SADNESS!’ and ‘I wasn’t that into him,’ becomes ‘We were building a LIFE together.’

So not only are you entering an inevitably awkward, emotionally uncomfortable situation, you’re doing it on dramatic steroids. How to handle such encounters? Let’s explore a few.

1. DBS (Devil Bitch Stare): Most women perfected this glare that resonates pure hate and loathing in middle school. Men might have to practice a half-hour in the mirror since cattiness doesn’t come as naturally. Stare with a seething that implies ‘if you contracted leprosy and your limbs fell off, I’d laugh,’ and you’ll know you’ve got the tone right. If you don’t want to have to interact with your former significant other while you’re out, DBS will do the trick. Give ‘em this gaze and they won’t come within a twenty foot radius.

2. Amnesia Effect: When your eyes meet awkwardly across the room, greet the ex with the blank stare of a head trauma victim. People get amnesia everyday! It could’ve happened to you! This immature solution also takes the ball out of your court. It’s now your ex’s job to figure out whether to approach you and ask what’s wrong or play along like you don’t know each other. Genius!

3. Jealousy Card: Grab the nearest homosapien (man, woman, waitress, security guard) and flirt with them like it’s the Special Olympics of speed dating. Gaze into their eyes, shimmy with them, dance with them, engage them in a sensual salsa. Your nerves about seeing your ex will be temporarily channeled into faux desire. He’ll roll his eyes so much he’ll risk cornea damage.

4. Payback: Greet him with an ‘accidental’ stiletto thrust into the foot or crotch. Give him a friendly shove from behind so his drink ends up on the girl he’s chatting up’s lap. Tell the security guard you saw him dealing drugs near the bathroom. All are equally effective on separate scales.

5. Spread Rumors: Engage in eye contact with the ex while chatting and whispering to someone else. The ex will sense you’re talking about him, and subsequently be curious, then enraged. When they confront you about why you’re acting ‘like a bitch’ you can deny you were ever talking about him OR fess up that you were just telling so-and-so about his Winnie the Pooh fetish. Revenge always makes your vodka tonic taste a little sweeter.

That about sums up the emotional immaturity I have to offer today. Of course there are kind and courteous ways to deal with bumping into an ex at a nightclub as well, but who wants to hear about those? This is New York. Relationship torture is our forte.

P.S. Just to keep up our theme of petty competition, anyone care to guess at which New York nightlife establishment the title photo was taken? The answer on Monday.

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

Once you’ve lived in New York five years, you think you’ve seen the maximum douchiness this city has to offer. Alas, no. This past weekend at Upstairs a promoter who’ll I leave nameless thought it would be fun to toss stacks of single dollar bills into the air like confetti to swirl down around his table every time they purchased a bottle of champagne. This occurred not once, but twice.

Patrons were unsure whether to cheer, drop to their knees to pick up the stray cash like peasants, or shield their drinks from the down-pouring greenery. While I did appreciate feeling like I was momentarily in a Cameron Crowe movie, this kind of uncalled for ostentatious behavior is hard to justify. Now if they were throwing hundreds and which I could actually keep, that would be a different story.

*Note: As a dedicated journalist, I tried to capture this horrific nightlife moment on my camera. Come to find out, taking action photos of swirling cash in a dark club without warning is extremely challenging. Needless to say I failed, but the image remains forever imprinted on my brain.

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

Since it’s spring and we’re all hitting on each other, I wanted to take a quick moment to analyze some of the most common going-out pick up lines and why they’re effective, or not. Here we go:

“Hi, I’m _____.” This is straight forward, simple, and clear. So you think women might appreciate it. Wrong! This simple introduction tactic has never really worked for me. Not only is it unoriginal, it’s boring. It makes you a name instead of a person. Have you ever noticed that if you instantaneously get along with someone you practically forget to exchange names since you’re so into the endorphin-fueled chemistry that’s taking over your bodies?

“Can I buy you a drink?” Generosity is good. Offering to pay is chivalrous. But unless you’re approaching a lady who’s determined to get hammered, this line has the ability to scare women away. The offer to buy can make women subconsciously feel indebted to you. Maybe I’m a spaz, but I feel like a drink offer is just too commitment heavy for the first words out of your mouth. Realize that most women feel it’s necessary to make small talk with you until said drink has been consumed. Unless you’re doing shots, that could take fifteen minutes. If it’s become clear she wants to talk for an extended period of time regardless, then pull out the drink line.

“You’re beautiful / Do you know how beautiful you are? / You’re the most beautiful girl here.” Newsflash! If you’re using the word ‘beautiful’ in your pick up line you’ve already failed. Just go home and masturbate now. Insincere flattery will get you nowhere and if the girl truly is beautiful she knows it. You pointing it out will probably just make her uncomfortable.

“Do you come here often?” While boring and unoriginal, I think this is a safe and functional conversation opener. There’s no mention of money, buying things, sexual attraction or other ‘uncomfortable’ topics. This is a neutral question that promotes a conversation flow (ex: “Yes, I come here often, I live around the corner.” “No, first time. It’s my friend’s birthday.”)

“What are you drinking?” This may be my favorite. If you like the guy you can come up with a sassy answer and progress naturally to the buying a drink stage. If you don’t like him, you just tell him the facts (you’re drinking gin and tonic), smile, and easily get away.

“I like your MoJo / Growling / Other such absurdities.” If you can pull it off, go for it. The one good thing about weirdo pick up lines is that if they’re bizarre enough, you’ll get the woman’s attention from shock factor alone. Will she judge you for it for the rest of your conversation/relationship? Probably.

“Is that the sun coming up…or is that just you lighting up my world? / Let’s make like a fabric softener and snuggle / If kisses were snowflakes, I’d send you a blizzard / etc.” Everything in this pre-formulated pick up line category is bad. I’m not even going to comment.

What should women use on men? Well, I’m guilty of the point-blank awkward, “hey,” and the “what are you drinking?” line. If I’m really desperate I’ll talk to the guy pretending he’s someone I might know and then feign embarrassment / surprise when we actually don’t know each other. Cheap and lame, I realize. Suggestions? Comments? Feel free to add on your own.

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

This weekend at the urge of many friends I decided to check out Sway, a long-established lounge on Spring street between Greenwich and Hudson in an effort to extend my nightlife knowledge beyond hardcore clubs. My consensus: Sway is definitely a breath of fresh air if you’re usually frequenting places like Pacha and Pink Elephant.

My experience at clubs has been that it’s primarily about who you know. You get in through pre-established contacts, congregate at a table with pre-established contacts, and assume any stranger who talks to you is a freak without their own crowd. Bars however seem to work in the reverse, it’s all about who you don’t know. Since there’s no bottle service, people are less likely to split off into table groups, creating a social free-for-all. So if you’re interested in meeting someone outside your extended friends’ network, Sway might be the kind of place you’d want to hit up on a weekend.

CitySearch wrote, “This is a huge meat market: the volume of numbers exchanged exceeds the hefty bank accounts of most of the male patrons.” This is utterly true. While no one’s wearing the slut tops you see at nightclubs, they might as well be. Everyone’s mentally undressing each other. This didn’t bother me since the first time in ages I found myself actually meeting people I might want to talk to at bars. The entire establishment was remarkably sleaze free with zero B&T. It looked like a frat house of young, healthy, athletic people…and interestingly enough, a lot of Southerners.

Why the name Sway? The place has been around for over a decade, and my girlfriend divulged that when it opened it couldn’t get a cabaret license.

Cabaret license? I did some research and New York Channel Thirteen’s website explained that believe it or not, it is against the law to have dancing in most New York City clubs and bars. Establishments that do not hold one of the city’s few cabaret licenses are breaking the law if they allow their patrons to dance; if caught, they can be subject to fines and shutdowns. Naturally, this has more to do with the side effects of dancing (brawls, drinking, noise, rowdiness in residential neighborhoods) than the actual act itself. Sway had trouble securing this license years ago, so for many months patrons could sway but not dance.

All the fun takes place at a long bar which opens into a small, sweaty dance floor and extends back into what looks like a mini mosque. There are intricate tiles, Moroccan designs and extremely slippery floors (so make sure you don’t hydroplane when sliding up to whoever you want to talk to.) There’s no cover charge to get in and the music stuck to upbeat 80ies, throwing in the occasional 50 Cent for couples who wanted an excuse to grind with each other. If you’re looking to meet someone of the opposite sex for a spring fling, I’d definitely recommend this place.

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