If you haven’t been to the Box lately, things are the same as ever there. In a LiveJournal post, a one Miss Bunnyhead Darling, after gloating that she got a $1,000 table for free, assures that MC Raven is still up to his old tricks: “Everyone in the crowd was totally fried & the MC… would periodically yell, ‘Do more coke, you fuckers!’” Simon Hammerstein, too, is still striving for crassness. In a BlackBook.com piece about Coney Island sword swallower Heather Holliday, author Jessica Pilot (she of the bagel-scooping jeremiad) writes: “Recently she performed at the Box, the exclusive Lower East Side burlesque nightclub. Asked by one of the owners if she could replace her sword with a dildo before hitting the stage, she politely declined. Heather knew better.” Incidentally we hear Hammerstein and Serge Becker are still scouring Manhattan for a building with a 10,000-square-foot basement and rooftop that they can turn into a booze-serving bathhouse. No word on whether the saunas will be outfitted with S&M gear like the bathrooms at the Box.

World’s Youngest Sword Swallower Reveals All [BlackBook]
Miss Bunnyhead Darling [LiveJournal]

Jada Yuan cornered the normally press-shy Simon Hammerstein at City Opera’s spring gala, and among other things he revealed that during his birthday party at his club the Box, he was dragged onstage to have his clothes ripped off (and you thought a shirtless Anthony Bourdain was bad…). What we really love, though, are his musings about what a reporter from the Times of London once called his “Jesus beard.”

When Esquire picked Bar Veloce’s Thomas Crowley one of the “Best Dressed Real Men in America” this month (and posed Simon Hammerstein and David Chang in pricey duds for its “Angry Young Men” spread), we realized that restaurateur style doesn’t stop at Batali’s clogs and Bobby Flay’s mom jeans. Now Us Weekly has posted its list of the “25 Most Stylish New Yorkers,” and we know a couple of the names.

When we last heard about the Box, owner Simon Hammerstein was telling a whistle-blowing auditioner that his patrons are “narcissistic and highly intoxicated. They don’t listen to words.” We can only assume, then, that the cops used sign language when they raided the place on Sunday morning and shut it down after searching random narcissists for drugs (Jay-Z and Cameron Diaz got away safe, perhaps by using the controversial Freeman Alley exit). What kind of substances would be consumed at a place that Hammerstein has insisted is not a nightclub? (A Box rep told "Page Six" the raid was due to a clerical error.) Well, the last time we were there, MC Raven O was doing a rendition of “Cocaine” and dumping white powder all over everyone. So, yeah, there’s that.

Update: Gawker reports it was a noise complaint that drew the cops.

Cops Raid Downtown Hot Spot [NYP]

Related: Narcissistic and Highly Intoxicated Box Patrons Want Totally Gross Anthems, Says Owner

The September issue of Esquire is the gift that keeps on giving: Last week it introduced us to the foppish Thomas Crowley of Bar Veloce and his hilarious MySpace page; today it brings us “Angry Young Men,” a “new generation of mavericks” selected to wear $1,500 suits and glower for the camera. Two of our favorite mavericks made the cut: nightlife impresario Simon Hammerstein, looking tough with a burned-down cig and a stripy fall suit, and culinary “It” boy David Chang, mad as hell in classic houndstooth. We can see how running the Box would wear a guy out, but what got in D.C.’s craw? He looks like somebody just told him he had to use Boar’s Head bacon at Ssäm Bar. That said, he does look sharp.

Related: Bar Veloce GM Moonlights as Raffish Fop
What’s in the Box? [NYM]

Starting July 14, the Box will host early dinner shows at 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Besides a three-course meal of Jewish comfort food and the chance to spot Scar-Jo, what exactly can one expect for the $125 price of admission? Server Mike Harr, whom we recently interviewed for Ask a Waiter, would say only that the show was “mysterious, very mysterious,” but we have another inside source: Belgian pop sensation Von Von Von, best known for wowing the Apollo, who recently auditioned before owner Simon Hammerstein. We'll let Von tell this in his own words:

Last night 205 and neighbor the Box, which opens in a couple of weeks, had a veritable door-off: A 205 list keeper unsympathetically turned away skater types who came to celebrate Vice's “Girls” issue while a doorman at the Box iced down uptowners trying to huff and puff their way into the Me magazine party (sample bluster: “My sister was a model in this week’s magazine. She must be on the list”). Passing both scenes on our way to admire the taxidermy collection at Home Sweet Home, we snapped a pic of the Boxcar (“The Box, 189 Chrystie St.” a decal on the door reads). Is this the personal pimpmobile of Simon Hammerstein, enfant terrible of the theater-owning Hammerstein family and proprietor of the Box? And is that tear in the side fallout from the Freemans–Box showdown? We’ll say this much: If you pull up in front of the place in this hooptie, at least you’re getting in.
—Daniel Maurer