Welcome to: Where I Spent My Day Off —by a NYC Restaurant "Insider"
So, what do you do in the industry?
I’m an architect, but I worked in the F&B/Nightlife industries for about 8 years as both a waitress and a doorperson at several [very popular] places in NYC.
And you have how many days off a week, generally?
Right now, ostensibly, I have weekends off, but often I end up working one way or another either one or both of those days. When I worked in nightlife, usually I had 2 to 3 days off a week.
What did you do for breakfast yesterday?
I was up pretty early so I ordered room service and had coffee and pastries while I did some work on my laptop. My boyfriend ended up sleeping in ’til later in the morning, which turned out well, since I was able to get a lot more work done. When he finally got up, he said he wasn’t hungry, so we skipped breakfast and headed straight for the beach.
Lunch?
The Setai is very close to the W where we’re staying, so we decided to leave our things and walk over and have lunch at the pool bar there. It’s actually one of my favorite places on the beach; I think the food is great there. We had the caprese salad and the caesar salad, which were both very good, but the ceviche was the best dish of all. It was a twist on a classic ceviche, with sour mango and jicama— so fresh and delicious. I also had a lychee martini, because the Setai makes the best one I’ve ever had— it’s not too sweet, because they use fresh lychee instead of the canned syrupy stuff. I don’t normally go for sweet tropical drinks, but it’s Miami!
And afterward?
Went back to our beach chairs and stayed a few more hours just lounging around. We ordered a bottle of white wine and enjoyed the sun and ocean. What a gorgeous day it was.
Afterward we decided to go for a walk on the promenade, and since we ended up walking farther than we thought, I sent a message to a friend of mine from NYC that we happened to run into the day before at the W bar. I haven’t seen her in years, and she and her husband just happened to be in Miami the same weekend!
She answered my text message pretty quickly, so we decided to stroll over to the Mondrian where they were staying. I had planned at some point to go and see it anyway, so that worked out really well.
When we got to the Mondrian, they were sitting by the pool in a cabana, so we just joined them for a drink. It turns out there’s a great view of the sunset from the bay side of Miami Beach, so it was beautiful to hang out there.
When I’d been booking our hotel for this visit, I actually couldn’t decide between the Mondrian and W, but because my boyfriend likes the beach, I chose the W. Well, evidently, Mondrian guests have access to the Delano beach, which I didn’t realize. If I had known that, I probably would have booked us at the Mondrian instead. It’s a very cute hotel, and even though I think the W is also very nice, somehow the crowd at the Mondrian seems cooler and more urbane to me. I think next time I’ll very likely try staying at the Mondrian.
Dinner?
We left our friends so that they could get showered and ready for dinner and took a walk back down the promenade toward the beach. I guess we were getting tired, because the walk seemed longer, and my boyfriend started feeling hungry. It was still early though (about 6:30PM) so we decided to just pop into Nobu for a light nibble, because he loves it. We weren’t dressed, so we just sat at the bar, which worked out fine, because apparently the dining room doesn’t open until 7PM anyway.
We ordered a medium-sized bottle of sake and had the shishito peppers, the rock shrimp and the yellowtail sashimi with jalapeño. I felt like we didn’t order that much at all, but that still ended up being $144 (including auto-gratuity).
And afterward?
Went back to the hotel to shower. It just so happens our friends that were staying at the Mondrian had reservations at Mr. Chow, so we planned to meet them there later. We weren’t hungry anymore after our meal at Nobu, so we just decided to sit by the pool and have another drink.
We stopped into Mr. Chow to see our friends, and even though we had only planned to join them for drinks and not dinner, it turned out they had two extra seats at their table anyway, so we sat down with them. Since we weren’t that hungry, we just had the chicken satay, the quail lettuce wraps and the shrimp spring rolls (which, obviously, are Mr. Chow classics). There seemed to be a lot of familiar faces there that night, and Michael Chow even stopped by the table to say hello.
Then after dinner, we all decided to check out Wall. Seeing the doorman initially was a turnoff, but he ended up being very nice. Inside was very dark (despite the neon laser light show patterns) and loud, so we ended up just taking a quick look around and leaving, because none of us were feeling into that kind of scene. So we just went to the main lobby bar instead, which was a lot more comfortable and easy-going.
How much did you blow today?
Oh god, I don’t even know. But I guess if I had to estimate? For everything all day? Maybe about $425? (Our friends got the check at Mr. Chow, and my boyfriend paid the tab at the W lobby bar).
Remember Bad Influence?
No?!
Well, do you remember the ostentation and decadence of the 90′s? Do you remember when nightclubs used to be cool? Do you remember when parties were glamorous and fun? Do you remember how you once had a huge crush on Rob Lowe? Do you remember James Spader?
Watch Bad Influence again to reminisce about all those things. (Oh yeah, and the story is pretty enthralling, too, remember?)
OK, we’ll bite.
With a Grand Opening slated for New Year’s Eve 2010, the 16,000 square foot Vanity, located at [7th borough of NYC] Las Vegas’s Hardrock Hotel, is an “eclectic jewel box… adorned with pearls and hand cut crystals fused with bronze and gold metallic surrounded by antique mirrors, rubbed brass and black chrome. The organized chaos of velvets, deep satins and rich tapestries add to the gleaming textures throughout the club creating the perfect backdrop of reflective brilliance. The heartbeat of the club is a cyclone chandelier of over 20 thousand lit crystals bringing the dance floor to life.”
Hmm, sounds… nice?
One question, though: Who the hell is “the Nightlife Group”?
Just curious— enquiring (competitive) minds want to know!
yah so. everybody‘s been buzzing bout theBoomBoom! and evidently, pxthis was no exception (it also seems we were the ones who got the information correctly the quickest, but hey what else is new).
then apparently yesterday, our ole buddy steve-lewis (and then grubstreet) broke the news "Kamil Parchomienko will handle the room…" !!
wow! and yay!
those of us who know and love and/or remember former original subMercer GM/Maitre d’ kamil-parchomienko (also of MercerKitchen, SunsetBeach, StandardMiami, and StandardLA) are of course totally delighted that kamil, the prodigal son, has returned to NYC after a loooong time away. hooray!
oh but i kinda feel a little bad for him though, cuz i don’t know whether or not kamil will appreciate his name being alls out there right before he is about to open the hottest spot in town. i mean like for example,
we alls know the WaverlyInn’s emil-varda has a fake name (and business cards). i also know two of my pals who run LaEsquina refrain as best they can from giving out their names too. and for sure, back in the day, i rarely ever gave peoples my real name either.
not that "the press" ever gave a shit who the GM or Maiterdees were before, so that’s a new one, but whatever.
but i digress.
anyhoo. steve-lewis goes on to describe "They want to do two seatings, 4–9 for small plates and 10–2/3 for late night. Super high-end Rainbow Room/Rose Bar/Windows on the World style $18–25 drinks and DP by the glass…"
wow again! and uhhh… kinda… THANK GAWD (?!)
i don’t know about you, but i’m a little sick of places that only cater to young unkempt insomniac kids whose trust funds haven’t quite kicked in yet. not that i ever went to any of those places (mostly cuz ha ahaa i couldn’t get in), but i just think it’s really really great somebody is finally thinking of us "olds" (ya know— the ones with TASTE) and giving us a place we can go and have fun before one o’clock in the fucking morning.
oh! yah— and since you were wondering
the answer is YES! that’s the kamil you’re thinking of. of course it is! who else would it be.
he’s also one half the character "michael" in the series (the other half is current BlueHill@StoneBarns GM, philippe-gouze) and if all goes well, he’ll be played by actor (and former clubUSA bartender) darren-kendrick.
hmmm how many is that now? ha ha ha ahaa haaah i’ll give a crisp new benjamin to the first person who can correctly identify every person in the book who now works at theStandard.
*
… came into existence and utterly devastated nightlife, special guests of the clubs were given “drink tickets” as a token of appreciation for their patronage, decorum and all around magnificence. Indeed, the true mark of a PX was measured in the enormity of one’s “stack.” The drink ticket (stamped nightly on the back with varying images) was the one bestowable voucher that could conceivably make an individual more popular than the coke dealer.
Cheers to the good ol’ days.
*Thanks to Joyce Bagner Hetherington
150 VARICK ST @ VANDAM, EVERY SUNDAY
photographs by Kenny Kenny
"… Rest peacefully, my Brother, I just came back from a 3 yr long assignment in Iraq, and I dare to say that Justice has been served. Farewell, my Friend, Farewell…" – Damir [Palladium, Tunnel, Club USA]
The following is an excerpt from PX This:
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2001. 12:15PM
We got terrible news. A friend that B used to work with, “Big Keith,” is missing.
Such a nice guy, big and friendly and cute and good natured and happy. He’s a firefighter and I think nearly his entire squad is gone.
The last time I saw Big Keith was at Sugar in December, and I remember I asked him if he was still thinking about joining the fire department and he replied “I’m IN the fire department!”— so we chatted like wow how fast time flies, the last time I had seen him he was just talking about thinking about joining.
And he bought me a cup of coffee another night too and I felt weird, I wasn’t sure which was more insulting— to offer him money for it or not. I didn’t know the protocol, back at the Gatien’s nobody offered money, they just went and got it the next time.
Big Keith was in the movie The Professional and he was great in it really, even though it was a small role. He played Benny (one of the corrupt cops) and he has one awesome scene where he is standing in the hallway with his gun drawn, nervous and shaking and sweating.
Actually he is so remarkable I mentioned him in “The Ministry of Speed” too, and I guess it’s silly but I liked to imagine my film would actually get made one day and Keith could play one of the doormen and it would actually be the real him they were referring to in the dialogue. Something like that.
I remember one time Keith and I were chatting outside Naked Lunch and I was recounting to him how I’d taped The Professional on the VCR and then I realized “oh whoops you probably don’t want to hear that do you?” thinking it was bad I had videotaped it instead of paying to see it in a theatre. And eeheee he was cute he insisted “No! HBO is good, I’ll take HBO!”
And B says his wife is in denial like she just expects him to come walking in the door any second and my God who can blame her? Because he was just so big and able and strong it seemed like nothing could ever take him down.
Oh my God knock on wood but if something like that were to happen to B, I would be the exact same way, I would have to see it with my own two eyes.
It’s just not the way things are supposed to be.
B was really upset when he told me.
I remember all the funny stories he used to tell about working the door at Naked Lunch, how Keith would just make him laugh and laugh all night long.
Even though B hated doorkeeping so much I know he looks back fondly and proudly because of all the good guys he knows because of it.
And even though I don’t really want to share this with those people, I feel like I want to say something to the Project Greenlighters, all those movie lovers, like they should go out and buy The Professional and tell all their friends, I just want everyone to know when they watch that movie they should look out for him and they can see how great he was and be proud for him he is such a hero.
But I am afraid it will just come out stupid or corny or something.
A Financier, an Operator, and a Blogger walk into a bar…
… order some drinks, get a little tipsy, and start — what else?—- gossiping like a bunch of sewing bee bitches. Here’s the transcript of the part of their discussion about Abe&Arthur/Simyone.
Blogger: Oh! ….And Abe&Arthur will be opening soon I guess.
Operator: Is that that new little place on Waverly?
B: No, that’s Joseph Leonard. Abe&Arthur is the place that used to be Lotus… the restaurant part is Abe&Arthur apparently, and then downstairs will be a club slash lounge type thing called Simyone… ya know, like Bijoux with the party brunch and whatever the upstairs was called.
O: Yah exactly, we don’t even remember the name… Who the hell wants to eat in a nightclub? That didn’t even work for Lotus and the food wasn’t even that bad.
B: People used to eat at Spy.
O: Get outta here, Spy had food? I don’t remember any food.
B: Sure… lobster club, fruit and cheese plate, caviar…
O: Ugh christ.
Financier: People might eat in the restaurant just to go to the nightclub afterward… that’s convenient.
O: Pssh, not if it’s like Lotus. Lotus didn’t guarantee entry to the club afterward just because you had a dinner reservation. That would be a good way for them to go though, because otherwise why would anyone eat there? Too many other good restaurants in that area, so why settle for one place for hours on end? That’s what people like about the meatpacking district… all the bar-hopping…
B: But doesn’t that kill the "exclusivity" thing? Otherwise it’s what— BuddhaBar with dancing?
O: Oh c’mon, in a place that size, how are they ever going to make any money trying to be "exclusive"? They can get the Tenjune crowd, but then what, kill Tenjune? There’s no way they can keep a "hot" crowd in both. But maybe that’s the plan anyway. Now that they milked Tenjune for what it was worth…
B: They can offer it up to the B&T gods? That makes sense.
O: The moneymaker. Does Tenjune charge a cover? They can probably start…. and from what I heard that’s what they probably should do if they going to try to keep the new one exclusive. I heard those guys are in deep with their own personal cash. And they might be cash poor. I know someone who was interviewing for a position… they just lowballed him all day long… it’s like The Inn [at Little West 12th] all over again… We all know how that turned out….
B: I did hear something like that. The way it was told to me is that supposedly they invested a lot of their own money right before the market crash… like "putting a deposit on a pre-construction condo… now that the banks aren’t lending, people either have to come up with the rest of the money some other way, or walk away and take the loss of the deposit… supposedly, this is the boat that those guys are in— they just can’t walk away from the cash already in, so they have no choice but to forge ahead."
F: Banks were never lending to nightclubs, anyway. I’ve never seen a good business plan from one, and that’s all I do all day is look at these things. All that money was coming from guys that may have been in banking but were fronting their own money… I even thought of doing it once…
B: I remember. But you wanted to own the property… I could be wrong, but most of these places are leased, aren’t they?
O: They’re all leased.
F: I know guys that have put their money in clubs. No one ever saw a dime back, but that wasn’t the point anyway.
B: Haa, oh god, I always thought that was a myth.
F: If these guys are dropping a couple grand a weekend anyway, what do you think 50 G’s means to them? It’s all the hype of "ownership" and drinks and the girls…
O: Yeah, you get 10 or 20 of those suckers… no offense…
B: Yeah, but then what about all the celebrities? It’s not like they have problems with drinks and girls…
F: Those are just names. Like, their name is worth money…
B: The place looks nice though… there were renderings all over the internet…
O: Ugh, why do people release their renderings? The actual place never matches the renderings. The renderings are sales pitches by the architects, and the budgets never meet the demands… Then they just look like they’re fronting…
B: Maybe they’re fronting then. Isn’t that the point? If they want to build hype and anticipation…?
B: Oh, what’s the deal with Remm and Tepperberg anyway? I heard they straight up kicked him out of Tao in Vegas halfway through his meal….
O: Remm was never one for making friends…
B: If he didn’t think you’re worth it to him…?
O: … But he shouldn’t be trying to make enemies either…
B: No, he’s got the right idea. I thought I heard he was going around saying he needed a starlet girlfriend, to make himself "next level." Oh! Wait, he did date Shannen Doherty, right?
O: He wants to be Richie Akiva more than anyone else in the world… but the food even sucked at Butter.
B: They do kind of look alike, don’t you think?
O: Shannen Doherty is no Carmen Kass…
B: You know I saw Eugene Remm dive under a banquette to rescue his [former] boss’s lipstick once. There were all these other bartenders and managers around, but Eugene Remm was the only chivalrous one….
O: He was the only one who could fit under the banquette without stooping over?
B: Aww… that’s mean…
F: No good deed goes unpunished…
But you probably aready knew that from experience, right? Well, here’s even more confirmation.
Recently, former nightlife impresario Steve Lewis blogged about one of his many friends and acquaintances (as is his wont). Normally, his work is of the ‘take with a grain of salt’ nature – most preposterous and controvertible to those in and around the nightlife industry (comprehensibly), and most credible and tenable to – well, everyone else, I suppose (perceivably).
GoldBar’s Jon Lennon was the subject of the day on July 15, 2009. Steve Lewis’s article starts, "Nightclub 101: the door is everything." LOL! Yea, as you can well imagine, it only goes downhill from there.
The column proceeds with Lewis’s typical flotsam and bullshit jetsam, most notably in the precise words "consummate pro" to describe Doorman Lennon. It culminates with these sentiments, expressed by Lennon himself in a Q&A interview:
SL: Tell me how you educate a person.
JL: I just have a brief conversation with them. I even have taken people to the side to do it, where I say, I know you’re a nice guy, your girlfriend is very beautiful, your two friends I can’t do….
SL: You wake up in the morning and you’re doing the door, and you’re thinking…
JL: Always. That’s my personality anyway, thinking about it. I try to remember, “you’re a doorman, as much as you’re in a powerful position, you’re still just a doorman, you’re everyone’s equal.” It never gets to my head because I’d rather be a rock star…
From what I gather, this is where a certain reader (we happen to know) lost her shit. She addresses Steve Lewis via Facebook, stating:
[Abbe Diaz at 5:42pm July 15]
um, excuse me? "consummate pro"– OH RILLY.
sorry, i would never ever ever ever in a million years define telling a prospective patron [at 10PM]: "well, if he owns seven restaurants in manhattan then he can afford to take care of ME. is he asking ME for a favor? then he needs to take care of ME."
(and yes that’s a DIRECT QUOTE)
as the act of a "consummate pro."
The rest of the exchange, including Lennon’s (pedestrian and idiotic) response is here.
Yeah yeah, OK. A doorman is a stupid idiot. It’s because you couldn’t get in, right? Loser! What’s your point, Vanilla Ice? I’ve got the Media holding on Line 1, and they want to know where’s the newsflash already.
Hey, did you read the title? My point is Jon Lennon is a Tool Box. I just wanted to brag again about how brilliant I am (I’m also the "Trollai Llama" in case you didn’t know) and point out how absurdly, hilariously (and contemptibly) it all played out [scroll down the comments, starting with abbe diaz's on July 29, 2009 4:54PM].
L O fucking L. God bless teh internets.
= "personne extraordinaire"