It’s a New York nightlife staple: when things get rough, rename. I’ll spare our local club friends the embarrassment and not list the thirteen trillion examples that come to mind.

Yesterday, I found myself intrigued after receiving emails from both the folks at Marquee and promoter friends I knew announcing the debut of a ‘house music Wednesday’ inside the club’s private room called Room3.

“Huh?” I thought. “I don’t remember Marquee having a private room.”

Naturally, I let my imagination run haywire and was soon fantasizing about this hidden chamber I’d heard of but never been to. An unfulfilled mission. How had I missed it? Would there be a secret password? Morse code-like knock? Entrance through a liquor cabinet?

Wrong.

Room3 is just Marquee’s Red Room (the unexciting space below the stairs where people never want tables), which isn’t even really a room. I’d define it as an area. The decoration committee attempted to make it a room by adding curtains and a dude wilding a velvet rope, but in reality this was just the ‘red under the stairs area’ stripped of its red wallpaper.

Lame.

This Wednesday House night idea will fail for a couple reasons:

1. Unless you grab some barbed wire and actually trap patrons inside, there’s no way of keeping people in Room3. House music parties thrive on energy and oomph. It’s gotta be packed and over-the-top lively, otherwise guests are going to feel stupid singing along to David Guetta. The rest of Marquee is too distracting (and fun) for people to want to stay inside the most notoriously uninteresting room. Exhibit A, I spent most of the night bouncing around like those magic fun balls from amusement parks.

2. The DJ on the main floor plays all the hot house hits anyway.

3. House music generally tends to attract an older, slightly wordlier crowd, and Marquee is essentially Manhattan’s playpen for youngsters. One hour into the evening, my girlfriend stopped me, sniffed around, extended her hand and proclaimed, “It’s so young in here.”

I hadn’t been to this New York staple in forever and had forgotten. No one who’s lived in Manhattan for more than two years frequents Marquee. It’s the club of the fresh crop: upbeat promoters ready to take on the world, uncorrupted baby models, naïve bankers. The optimistic enthusiasm’s palpable (and almost eerie). Not to be a downer but give these kids a year and they’ll most likely be hardened, smoking cigarettes, wearily hunched over a bottle of gin at Socialista focusing more on drinking than dancing. But that’s okay. There was something lovely about watching girls happily jump around like apes, grinning, free-spirited and wildly tossing their hair and recognizing that “Wow, that once was me.”

It’s somehow beautiful to witness that raw, inexperienced version of yourself and even for a brief moment, reconnect with it. So while Room3 and House Music Wednesdays may fail, Marquee itself will never die or lose its charming ability to make you celebrate the fact that you’ve come a long way.

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