It's all about the money

Last night, I attended a panel discussion on the state of New York nightlife. It was put together by David Hershkovits, the co-founder of Paper Magazine who just put out a book with his partner Kim Hastreiter, 20 Years of Style: The World According to PAPER. The panel members were Chi Chi Valenti (Jackie 60, Mother, Jackie Factory), Steven Lewis (who used to promote clubs like Danceteria, World, Palace De Beaute, Palladium, Tunnel and Limelight and now designs celeb-bottle-service-beasts like Butter, Spa, Marquee and Plaid), David Rabin (owns Lotus and is on the NY Nightlife Association), Richie Rich (club kid, former ice skater), Serge Becker (Joe's Pub, Volume--sniff), Theo Kogan (ex-Lunachick runs the panty parties on Saturdays at Opaline, and who I realize I saw at the Park Slope Beacon's Closet a while ago--she's beautiful).

Whew, anyway, so these people got together to discuss the state of New York nightlife, which arguably says a lot about the state of the city's nightlife without anybody opening their mouths. It all came back to money and how creativity and money don't go hand-in-hand anymore, at least not in New York. Which I found sad and a little inspiring.  I'm all for capitalism, but it would be nice to see someone do something not motivated out of sheer greed. The question doesn't seem to be "Can we make enough money off this to support ourselves?" but "How much money can we make off this?" Most of the people running the clubs today are people who do it solely to make money (although they probably have a teeny bit of hubris involved as well :) and not to do anything for the scene. Steven Lewis said he was outside Marquee the other night and they wouldn't let this one guy in until he had agreed to buy 7 bottles! At $300ish dollars a bottle, he had to put down at least $2,100--do you still tip 20% on bottles?--before they'd even let him into the club. Now, this guy could have been a total dweeb, but if that's what nightlife has come to ...

I suppose one way to look at it is that we've got them all cordoned off--all the people willing to sell their souls for a touch of nightlife that doesn't even sparkle. So the rest of us should have plenty of space to enjoy something truly dramatic, creative, mind-bending, awe-inspiring without all that crap.

So where do we go from here?