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New York Nightlife
State of The City
Every time I’m away from
Manhattan—for a day, a week or a month—the city changes. This
restaurant closes, that block has a new bar, buildings come down and go
up and get repurposed. The place is in a constant state of flux. The
changes most recently—the past few years, the past few months—have
really gotten me down. There seem to be Starbucks sprouting up on every
corner and in between the corners it’s nothing but Chipotle Burritos
and Burger Kings, Baby Gaps and Banana Republics, what I call
mall-ification (the arrival of chains that makes Manhattan feel not
much different than Des Moines). Probably the most disturbing trend,
augmenting the gentrification and the mall-ification, is the upscaling
of everything. Who’s buying the $200 doggie dresses? How many boutiques
with $800 sneakers does NoLita need? How many precious boutiques can
the city sustain? And oy! Those omnipresent architectural
monstrosities! Who the hell is paying $9 million to live in an amoeba
on Astor Place and look down at K-Mart, Starbucks and hundreds of
bustling commuters? It’s all pretty mind-blowing.
Accompanying the upscaling is the ridiculous rise in real estate prices
for bars, restaurants and shops you might actually shop in. So many
business owners are barely holding on, some refusing to sell out to the
chains on general principle and doing everything they can to meet the
rising rents. I mean, do we want the East Village to look exactly like
a mall in Orange County, California? Will you walk down St. Marks one
of these days and discover that Trash & Vaudeville has been
replaced by Hot Topic? I certainly hope not.
Hand in hand with all this is, of course, a depressing dearth of
interesting nightlife. Gary, the gorgeous gay night, was
unceremoniously ejected from its venue due to real estate legal issues,
not unusual in this day and age, we hear from Chi Chi Valenti, long
time club owner and event producer. And the owners of Mo Pitkin’s caved
in to eager buyers in search of an already established liquor license,
increasingly difficult to come by now that neighborhoods have finally
had it with a dozen bars on every block. But I suppose it’s not nearly
as bad as it was about a decade ago when Giuliani was sending out his
task forces to close down the gay bars and ticket people for dancing.
Sigh. So we’re either persecuted by politics or economics. The bottom
line is we’re losing a crucial piece of what makes living in Manhattan
appealing…and Manhattan!
So many clubs have closed down. I’ve seen the demise of The Limelight,
Coney Island High, CBGB’s, The Cock. Even the not-so-great clubs
have been shuttered: Spirit, Sound Factory, Sure, new ones may
take their places, with different tile jobs in the bathrooms or
banquettes instead of benches. But with each incarnation they become
more and more homogenized.
There are a few left standing, in various states of new ownership or
new locations, overpriced bottle or celebrity paparazzi door policies.
Some have actually been improved, such as Downtime, now Rebel, with its
reconfigured upstairs for better traffic flow (and alcohol
acquisition), the amazing new room downstairs with its live stage and
long bar. All that without a demographic-shifting increase in drink
prices is pretty impressive. And what was once The Bank has made a
remarkable recovery from its short-lived nights as a strip club, with a
fabulous redecoration, including a cozy mezzanine overlooking the dance
floor, a dungeon-like cellar with spectacular vaulted brick ceilings
and warm lighting; it’s now Element. But as a whole, nightlife in New
York is bleak.
I’m not sure if my downer perspective is due to my being permanently
jaded (a normal state for a New Yorker, don’tcha think?) or just having
seen so much of what’s still considered nightlife’s heydays come and
go. Yeah, I know that every generation since they started dumping off
boats of immigrants in the harbor has said the same thing: “Manhattan’s
not as much fun as it was when I was younger!” But that’s certainly how
I feel. I see 20-somethings stumbling around the East Village as though
they’ve just discovered Oz, so I’m assuming someone’s still having a
starry eyed good time. But whoa, what they would’ve thought of the old
Gas Station, Save the Robots, The Mudd Club. Or the old Brownie’s.
Anyway, I’m starting to sound like an old coot. Cootch? Heh….
There are a few people doing their best to keep the party going. Xris
SMack and The Baroness are still holding successful monthlies, BYTE and
The Fetish Retinue, respectively, and Xris throws his SMack! parties
around the big holidays: New Year’s Eve, Halloween, The Fetish
Marathon. You can almost always count on the kinksters to throw themed
events around the same big holidays, though TES’s events aren’t exactly
my idea of a wild time. The foot fetish evenings sound tacky at best
and as for sex parties, the only interesting one that occurs with any
regularity is Chemistry, a wonderful time but a bit out of the way in
deep Brooklyn. Motherfuckers are always a blast, but they’ve been
somewhat sporadic. Of course, you can attend a lap dance event and get
a handjob, but is that the sort of thing you’d take a date to? Um, no…
It used to be that you could leave your house in latex and find a
selection of places to party. No longer.
It’s getting so I’m afraid to even write about a club night, for fear
the party will be over by the time you read my piece. But I’ll continue
to do my best in the year to come and seek out the less spit-shined and
gentrified soirees, the stuff that might appeal to someone who’d rather
dig a little deeper than Citysearch or even the
once-fairly-transgressive Time Out. (Interestingly, a huge percentage
of their listed excitement seems to be taking place in Brooklyn. Not
necessarily a disaster, especially if you’re young and can only afford
to live in Bushwick. But it’s Manhattan I’m talking about here!) I may
even venture out into the wilderness, to see if there’s naughty
nightlife in, say, Austin, Texas or Albuquerque. It’s a big country, ya
know, and though we New Yorkers tend to think that our city is THE
city, I have a feeling that with the complete mall-ification of
America, it really doesn’t matter so much where you find your fun. The
most thriving underground scenes are often in places that truly need
them, where the freaks are most in need of refuge. And where people
aren’t all rolling their eyes and saying, “That guy hanging from hooks
is SO last decade!” as I often find myself doing.
Either way, you can count on me to report the scariest and sexiest
stuff out there, from coast to coast, with an emphasis on the
not-so-trendsetting Manhattan. Here’s a toast to 2008!
Readers: Full listings of New Year’s Eve fun for the erotically minded
wasn’t available as of the writing of this article. Check out last
year’s listings (and other 2007 events) here or visit these web sites
and chat boards:
www.motherfuckernyc.com
www.tes.org
www.smack-fetish.com
www.baroness.com
www.dsfriends.com
www.chemistry-nyc.com
www.winklelittlestar.com
www.maxfisch.com
www.mothernyc.com
www.slimehag.com
www.flavorpill.com
[Written Dec. 2007]
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