Nightlife ‘99: Wired Things

At precisely 4 a.m. on a recent Saturday, a crowd waits outside a black door with a peephole on a brownstone-lined street in Alphabet City. The mostly young group is strapped into Prada Velcro bags and wears expensive orange Nikes; there are a few cowboy hats, and one woman wears a baby-T that reads BOYS SUCK. “Let’s wait till these losers get turned away,” says my friend Joe, a 30-year-old musician who is considered a “member” of this particular club. “Seriously, I’m warning you that this place is a disgusting pit,” he says, puffing on an unfiltered Chesterfield. “You were there till noon twice last week,” says his friend, a 28-year-old novelist. “That’s why you think it’s nasty.”

“Yeah,” Joe admits. “But the coke there is like Ajax, man. You’re better off using it to freshen your fridge. I don’t know why I even come here.”

Twenty minutes later, all the hipsters have given up and dispersed. When the street is empty, a hulking white guy in sneakers and sweats motions us over. “Remember, no swearing!” he warns, opening the door. It’s a quaint but strictly enforced rule imposed by the owner, a religious man who often sits at the end of the bar drinking vodka out of what regulars call his ”crystal chalice.” While he doesn’t seem to mind drug use, those prone to profanity are quickly shown the door.

Inside, about four dozen people are crowded around a dimly lit, red-walled room the size of your standard New World Coffee – with a pool table in the center. No one is talking. A hand-lettered poster for a party last spring is taped up near the bar, and Halloween decorations like plastic skeletons and hanging cobwebs are all over – seasonal decorations are put up here year-round, so that if there’s a bust the management can claim that everyone’s just there for a “party.” Billy Joel’s “Christie Lee” plays, pianissimo. “This is like your personal Martin Scorsese movie!” says Joe excitedly.

Behind the bar, a plump bartender dispenses $5 Heinekens and $25 half-grams of cocaine to a sullen crowd of men three-deep. “Yo, bro, catch you later,” says a white guy in a do-rag to a black man selecting a song by Morrissey. “I couldn’t pay the bill for my pager, so I’ll see you when I see you.”

In most after-hours clubs, as in most high schools, the bathrooms are the social nexus, but here, right on the corner of the bar there’s a little ceramic cup with straws cut into thirds – the bottom of the straw is cut on an angle, so lines can easily be snorted off the tallish bar. “I love this bartender,” says a self-described “model-actress-scenester” with close-cropped hair. “One time I had a couple of rails laid out right here, and she warned me to pick up my drink so the condensation from the bottle wouldn’t dilute my drugs. Cool, right?”

It’s not for nothing that New York got the reputation as the city that never sleeps, though invariably everyone you see in places like this has a lot of help staying up. While Mayor Giuliani’s war on nightlife has turned large nightclubs like the Tunnel into armed camps, the drug scene has moved underground, spread across dozens of of illegal underground clubs that open at 4 a.m., don’t close until noon, and cater to every imaginable vice.

There is a lot of lore about after-hours New York, most of it improbable: People say if you stand outside Scores at 4 a.m., a limo will transport you to a gambling den nestled inside a midtown office building; in the West Twenties alone, there are rumored to be several after-hours gambling clubs where you can bet up to $10,000 per hand of blackjack; in Greenpoint, a Polish after-hours place allegedly serves up a gram of coke along with blintzes.

Always hard to find, often unmarked little holes that are just a few steps ahead of the cops, after-hours clubs are the nineties version of speakeasies, where the few people who find their way in immediately feel like they’re part of an elite club – indeed, at some you must be accompanied by a “member” (someone who’s met the bouncer before). Models talk to mafiosi, bankers sidle up to banji boys: In New York, only AA meetings draw a more diverse crowd. “Getting wired at after-hours focuses the night,” says a 27-year-old actor. “Suddenly you have not only a goal but a band of people who are bound to spend the night with you. It’s an adventure.”

“I’m told that after 2 a.m., I look much prettier if I’m wasted,” drawls Katia. “So I get wasted.” We’re at a bar in the meatpacking district that keeps normal hours but draws its shades after four. A 33-year-old who looks like Sarah Jessica Parker, Katia just moved in with her new boyfriend, Bob, a copywriter at an ad agency. They’re intertwined on a couch in the back of the red-walled place.

“We like this bar because the coke isn’t as stepped-on as it is in other bars,” says Bob, leaning over Katia for a passionate kiss. “But the crowd sucks.”

“First thing you should know is, every girl who is out at after-hours is a coke whore,” chimes in Katia, resting a hand on her white leather pants. “They’re all wrecked.”

It’s true – the crowd is middle-aged and, except for a famous writer or two, distinctly unfabulous. “Usually, we go to this place called Chaos – not the real club, the after-hours place,” says Katia. “Last time I was there, the lines out the bathroom were so long! The bouncer came over and yelled, ‘The left line is for men and women and the right line is for men and women, too, but if you have any drugs, do them out here ‘cause everything’s illegal anyway and people got to take a piss.’ ” They both laugh uproariously and kiss again.

Fifty-odd people are crashed out on couches, chatting animatedly with friends. A dozen more line up for the bathroom as a ponytailed dealer takes Katia to the basement to freebase. “He stuck his tongue down my throat,” she complains to a blonde friend, plopping back down on the couch.

“Well, how else do you expect to get it for free?” the blonde harrumphs.

Katia and Bob say they go out four nights a week until dawn – “as long as you get home in the blue light, you’re okay.” The only dinner they ever eat is a goat-cheese salad at 5:30 p.m.

“Food slows you down,” says Bob. “At least cheese is protein.”

Dawn is nearing as a cab stops in a warehouse-heavy section of Williamsburg where gleaming Mack trucks nearly block the narrow streets. On one corner, there’s a shingled bar with the iron gates pulled down, but you can hear salsa music blaring and the neon yellow of the Heineken sign lit up from within. Town Cars are disgorging hipsters – white, black, Japanese, green-haired – heading back to Williamsburg from a night out in the city but unable to resist stopping for just one more drink.

It’s amazing that you can hear the music over the chatter of the vintage-clad twentysomethings scarcely able to raise their pony bottles of Bud to their lips before another thought makes them trip over their words. “I biked here all the way from my friend’s loft in Chinatown,” says a tall photographer’s assistant with a heavy bike chain slung across his chest. “It’s such a cool way to see the city – you feel like Pee-wee in the playhouse.”

He buys a gram from a barrel-chested Dominican dealer and gets on a long line to use the “closet” – what looks like a voting booth, with the same type of heavy curtain. A Dominican guy in a suit comes over and starts yelling: “None of you dancing! You should all be dancing!” He does a little cha-cha. “A couple months ago, I came here and danced until 3 p.m. Now, all these kids here, I don’t know what to do.”

Two nights later, I go to Chaos, another black door with a peephole, this time in the West Twenties, pointed there by an art director who was first introduced to the place by a black transvestite prostitute. He says he was there one night when the cops shut the place down and everyone ran out the back stairs. The place reopened a week later, though their close call seems to have made them paranoid. When I walk up to the door, no one answers for about five minutes. Suddenly, a voice rings out: “Get the fuck away!” I stand there for a few more minutes until a good-looking white guy with a goatee sticks his head out. Shaking his head, he writes down an address on the back of a Loot matchbook. “Go here, man,” he says. “It’s not happening here tonight. Just go.”

The West Village club he directs me to has the familiar red walls, but it’s very clean and well lit, with plush banquettes and white tablecloths. Though it is after dawn, the bar is packed with everyone from drunk Jersey guys to bouncers just off their nightclub shifts to potbellied men in turtlenecks and black blazers. “What do I do?” snorts a short man in a pin-striped suit and pinkie ring. “Why don’t you ask me if I water-ski or horseback-ride? That’s a better question.”

“Cocaine retards the aging process,” says a drug dealer with a white comb-back whom we’ll call the Rabbi. He’s sitting at a round table at the back of the bar – seated around him are, he claims, a city judge, a cabaret singer who headlines at an upscale hotel, a bouncer at S.O.B.’s, and a top employee of Versace. Surrounded by acolytes, he’s in a good mood. “There’s a woman in Bulgaria who’s been doing these studies, all about how if you do coke you live till 100 and you never get any diseases.” He takes a sip of vodka. “My coke
is good – I can afford not to mess with it. I got a beautiful apartment with a running track and swimming pool. I got no problems.”

“I’m told that after 2 a.m., I look much prettier if I’m wasted,” drawls Katia. “So I get wasted.” We’re at a bar in the meatpacking district that keeps normal hours but draws its shades after four. A 33-year-old who looks like Sarah Jessica Parker, Katia just moved in with her new boyfriend, Bob, a copywriter at an ad agency. They’re intertwined on a couch in the back of the red-walled place.

“We like this bar because the coke isn’t as stepped-on as it is in other bars,” says Bob, leaning over Katia for a passionate kiss. “But the crowd sucks.”

“First thing you should know is, every girl who is out at after-hours is a coke whore,” chimes in Katia, resting a hand on her white leather pants. “They’re all wrecked.”

It’s true – the crowd is middle-aged and, except for a famous writer or two, distinctly unfabulous. “Usually, we go to this place called Chaos – not the real club, the after-hours place,” says Katia. “Last time I was there, the lines out the bathroom were so long! The bouncer came over and yelled, ‘The left line is for men and women and the right line is for men and women, too, but if you have any drugs, do them out here ‘cause everything’s illegal anyway and people got to take a piss.’ ” They both laugh uproariously and kiss again.

Fifty-odd people are crashed out on couches, chatting animatedly with friends. A dozen more line up for the bathroom as a ponytailed dealer takes Katia to the basement to freebase. “He stuck his tongue down my throat,” she complains to a blonde friend, plopping back down on the couch.

“Well, how else do you expect to get it for free?” the blonde harrumphs.

Katia and Bob say they go out four nights a week until dawn – “as long as you get home in the blue light, you’re okay.” The only dinner they ever eat is a goat-cheese salad at 5:30 p.m.

“Food slows you down,” says Bob. “At least cheese is protein.”

Dawn is nearing as a cab stops in a warehouse-heavy section of Williamsburg where gleaming Mack trucks nearly block the narrow streets. On one corner, there’s a shingled bar with the iron gates pulled down, but you can hear salsa music blaring and the neon yellow of the Heineken sign lit up from within. Town Cars are disgorging hipsters – white, black, Japanese, green-haired – heading back to Williamsburg from a night out in the city but unable to resist stopping for just one more drink.

It’s amazing that you can hear the music over the chatter of the vintage-clad twentysomethings scarcely able to raise their pony bottles of Bud to their lips before another thought makes them trip over their words. “I biked here all the way from my friend’s loft in Chinatown,” says a tall photographer’s assistant with a heavy bike chain slung across his chest. “It’s such a cool way to see the city – you feel like Pee-wee in the playhouse.”

He buys a gram from a barrel-chested Dominican dealer and gets on a long line to use the “closet” – what looks like a voting booth, with the same type of heavy curtain. A Dominican guy in a suit comes over and starts yelling: “None of you dancing! You should all be dancing!” He does a little cha-cha. “A couple months ago, I came here and danced until 3 p.m. Now, all these kids here, I don’t know what to do.”

Two nights later, I go to Chaos, another black door with a peephole, this time in the West Twenties, pointed there by an art director who was first introduced to the place by a black transvestite prostitute. He says he was there one night when the cops shut the place down and everyone ran out the back stairs. The place reopened a week later, though their close call seems to have made them paranoid. When I walk up to the door, no one answers for about five minutes. Suddenly, a voice rings out: “Get the fuck away!” I stand there for a few more minutes until a good-looking white guy with a goatee sticks his head out. Shaking his head, he writes down an address on the back of a Loot matchbook. “Go here, man,” he says. “It’s not happening here tonight. Just go.”

The West Village club he directs me to has the familiar red walls, but it’s very clean and well lit, with plush banquettes and white tablecloths. Though it is after dawn, the bar is packed with everyone from drunk Jersey guys to bouncers just off their nightclub shifts to potbellied men in turtlenecks and black blazers. “What do I do?” snorts a short man in a pin-striped suit and pinkie ring. “Why don’t you ask me if I water-ski or horseback-ride? That’s a better question.”

“Cocaine retards the aging process,” says a drug dealer with a white comb-back whom we’ll call the Rabbi. He’s sitting at a round table at the back of the bar – seated around him are, he claims, a city judge, a cabaret singer who headlines at an upscale hotel, a bouncer at S.O.B.’s, and a top employee of Versace. Surrounded by acolytes, he’s in a good mood. “There’s a woman in Bulgaria who’s been doing these studies, all about how if you do coke you live till 100 and you never get any diseases.” He takes a sip of vodka. “My coke is good – I can afford not to mess with it. I got a beautiful apartment with a running track and swimming pool. I got no problems.”

“I’m told that after 2 a.m., I look much prettier if I’m wasted,” drawls Katia. “So I get wasted.” We’re at a bar in the meatpacking district that keeps normal hours but draws its shades after four. A 33-year-old who looks like Sarah Jessica Parker, Katia just moved in with her new boyfriend, Bob, a copywriter at an ad agency. They’re intertwined on a couch in the back of the red-walled place.

“We like this bar because the coke isn’t as stepped-on as it is in other bars,” says Bob, leaning over Katia for a passionate kiss. “But the crowd sucks.”

“First thing you should know is, every girl who is out at after-hours is a coke whore,” chimes in Katia, resting a hand on her white leather pants. “They’re all wrecked.”

It’s true – the crowd is middle-aged and, except for a famous writer or two, distinctly unfabulous. “Usually, we go to this place called Chaos – not the real club, the after-hours place,” says Katia. “Last time I was there, the lines out the bathroom were so long! The bouncer came over and yelled, ‘The left line is for men and women and the right line is for men and women, too, but if you have any drugs, do them out here ‘cause everything’s illegal anyway and people got to take a piss.’ ” They both laugh uproariously and kiss again.

Fifty-odd people are crashed out on couches, chatting animatedly with friends. A dozen more line up for the bathroom as a ponytailed dealer takes Katia to the basement to freebase. “He stuck his tongue down my throat,” she complains to a blonde friend, plopping back down on the couch.

“Well, how else do you expect to get it for free?” the blonde harrumphs.

Katia and Bob say they go out four nights a week until dawn – “as long as you get home in the blue light, you’re okay.” The only dinner they ever eat is a goat-cheese salad at 5:30 p.m.

“Food slows you down,” says Bob. “At least cheese is protein.”

Dawn is nearing as a cab stops in a warehouse-heavy section of Williamsburg where gleaming Mack trucks nearly block the narrow streets. On one corner, there’s a shingled bar with the iron gates pulled down, but you can hear salsa music blaring and the neon yellow of the Heineken sign lit up from within. Town Cars are disgorging hipsters – white, black, Japanese, green-haired – heading back to Williamsburg from a night out in the city but unable to resist stopping for just one more drink.

It’s amazing that you can hear the music over the chatter of the vintage-clad twentysomethings scarcely able to raise their pony bottles of Bud to their lips before another thought makes them trip over their words. “I biked here all the way from my friend’s loft in Chinatown,” says a tall photographer’s assistant with a heavy bike chain slung across his chest. “It’s such a cool way to see the city – you feel like Pee-wee in the playhouse.”

He buys a gram from a barrel-chested Dominican dealer and gets on a long line to use the “closet” – what looks like a voting booth, with the same type of heavy curtain. A Dominican guy in a suit comes over and starts yelling: “None of you dancing! You should all be dancing!” He does a little cha-cha. “A couple months ago, I came here and danced until 3 p.m. Now, all these kids here, I don’t know what to do.”

Two nights later, I go to Chaos, another black door with a peephole, this time in the West Twenties, pointed there by an art director who was first introduced to the place by a black transvestite prostitute. He says he was there one night when the cops shut the place down and everyone ran out the back stairs. The place reopened a week later, though their close call seems to have made them paranoid. When I walk up to the door, no one answers for about five minutes. Suddenly, a voice rings out: “Get the fuck away!” I stand there for a few more minutes until a good-looking white guy with a goatee sticks his head out. Shaking his head, he writes down an address on the back of a Loot matchbook. “Go here, man,” he says. “It’s not happening here tonight. Just go.”

The West Village club he directs me to has the familiar red walls, but it’s very clean and well lit, with plush banquettes and white tablecloths. Though it is after dawn, the bar is packed with everyone from drunk Jersey guys to bouncers just off their nightclub shifts to potbellied men in turtlenecks and black blazers. “What do I do?” snorts a short man in a pin-striped suit and pinkie ring. “Why don’t you ask me if I water-ski or horseback-ride? That’s a better question.”

“Cocaine retards the aging process,” says a drug dealer with a white comb-back whom we’ll call the Rabbi. He’s sitting at a round table at the back of the bar – seated around him are, he claims, a city judge, a cabaret singer who headlines at an upscale hotel, a bouncer at S.O.B.’s, and a top employee of Versace. Surrounded by acolytes, he’s in a good mood. “There’s a woman in Bulgaria who’s been doing these studies, all about how if you do coke you live till 100 and you never get any diseases.” He takes a sip of vodka. “My coke is good – I can afford not to mess with it. I got a beautiful apartment with a running track and swimming pool. I got no problems.”

A blonde in pink pashmina comes over to hugs and kisses. “Where you been, gorgeous?” the Rabbi syas. “She’s a writer, too. You know, one of the top machers at Condé Nast is my best friend. He gets $700,000 per year and a car and a penthouse and whatever else he wants. You ever need a job, I’ll hook you up.”

The blonde laughs. “Oh, I’m just on the junior-varsity team right now,” she giggles. “I’m one of those fashion-editor types.”

“What do you need?” he asks.

“Forty,” she coos. She gets it and is out the door.

“See, you never know who’s going to come in here,” says the Rabbi. A Latino guy in black leather comes over to his table.

“Look at that tan,” says the Rabbi. “Now I know you were happy when the KKK got their permit – you’re a black man yourself.”

“South Beach,” shrugs the guy.

“South Beach, ain’t nothing wrong with that,” rasps the Rabbi. “I got this song I’m doing, want to hear?” He starts singing, Vic Damone-style, with his hand as the mike. “If I were a king, I’d be but a slave to you / If I ruled the world, I’d be but a slave to you / And what would life be then” – here’s the crescendo – “And what would life be then? / If I ruled the world.”

The table claps for him.

“Ah, I’m ruining my voice with the coke,” moans the Rabbi. “But this famous songwriter loved it so much. He said, ‘The melody is okay, but I love the lyrics.’ “

“The lyrics are great,” says the Latino guy.

“They are, right?” he agrees, with a rheumy smile. “If I ruled the world.”

*Some names have been changed.

Nightlife ‘99: Wired Things