Five Wheezy Places: New York City’s Most Overrated Nightclubs

Last week we had so much fun discussing the five best joints in my experience that my friendly editor tasked me a new question. He thinks it would be grand to list the five most overrated clubs I've ever had the pleasure of being treated well at. But that's the thing -- most of the time people treat me like I'm important or something. I get tables and comp drinks and even hotties planted near me so I won't be too lonely. This is all wonderful but rarely clouds my judgement. Oh, don't get me wrong --- keep it coming. It's easy to name the most overrated clubs of this era: all of them. Except for the Jane and a couple of others, most of today's joints fall short in comparison to their predecessors. But that's like comparing Muhammad Ali to Joe Louis or Derek Jeter to Joe DiMaggio; the times often define what can be done, and what it is that defines greatness.

The building of a zillion hamster habitats—er, condos—in Manhattan has moved basically all the club-aged bridge and tunnel partiers onto the magnificent island itself. Today’s clubs cater to them in order to survive much higher rents, taxes, insurance, and expenses than the clubs of yore had to endure. With a few exceptions, the boroughs—you know, Queens and Brooklyn—are a wondrous jigsaw puzzle of world culture and non-English speaking residents. The bridge and tunnelers have often moved into Manhattan to avoid this. The Williamsburg hipster ghetto is a modern phenomena. Those peeps used to habituate clubs like Danceteria and the World but now Brooklyn has answers for their prayers. There is no need to take the L train or car service to find a good time. The times have changed—they always do—but the fundamentals are the same. There is no club that offers the cultural, economic, and social diversity of my good old days, although there are, on every night of the week, joints that are really popping

In order to be on the most overrated list, you have to be a great club. This isn’t the worst club of all time list. It is also merely my list, and I’m sure it can be tweaked with your help. Sometimes a person will consider a club great because it existed in a time of their life when an awakening of some sort was occurring. For many it was their first exposure to minds that thought like they do, as opposed to the bumpkins they left behind in mainstream America. For others it could be a time of sexual awakening or self-awareness. A club can be all things to some people, but their perspective is often limited. They confuse a good time at an OK club with a truly brilliant club. I have been around for a bit and can remember too many clubs to make my parents comfortable. I have seen brilliant dreams and concepts flame out before legendary status could be achieved. Take Beatrice for example. Its greatness cannot be determined, as it flamed out way too soon. Some clubs are great because they survive forever, somehow. They change and adjust and reincarnate themselves. The Nell’s space, which I am redoing with my partner Marc for Richie Akiva, Scott Sartiano, and crew is poised for another run where Nell Campbell held court over Manhattan’s finest in what seems to me a mere blink of an eye ago. Yesterday, as I surveyed the room and imagined the placement of new banquettes, I could almost hear the sounds and see the crowds of Nell’s in its heyday.

Anyway here is the list of great clubs that in my mind have achieved greater status in death than they held in life:

Moomba (133 7th Avenue South) is the most overrated clubs of all time. Jeff Gossett’s testament to the boring rich and the moths that flail around them was born in the winter of 1997 and passed into glorious eternity quite unexpectedly in April 2001. Despite a herd of celebrity investors and clientele, I was bored to tears every single time I went—except for Mondays, when Samantha Ronson hosted her karaoke night, and it was a scream. But one night doesn’t make a great club. Moomba was Pangea without the fun.

Mars (10th Avenue & 13th Street). My dearest friend Rudolf opened the legendary precursor of everything Meatpacking to rave reviews and gigantic crowds. Mars did have its moments, like all the others on this list, but it wasn’t that great. The decor was hideous, and its kitsch decor soon became tired. Navigation up unbelievably crowded stairs to get to uncomfortable smoke-filled rooms made it a must-avoid for me and mine fairly quickly. There was a moment when the roof showed promise, but that was squashed by the local authorities. I hated the name as well. Rudolf was and still is a genius. His Danceteria remains one of the top-tier places of all time. The last I heard of him, he was down in Sao Paolo opening Mokai for those Miami fellows. He did a bunch of Lotuses down there as well.

Club USA (218 West 47th Street) part of the Peter Gatien mega-quartet including Palladium, Limelight, and the Tunnel as well. USA opened in the middle of Times Square with an idea conceived in the mind of Michael Alig and executed by the genius of Eric Goode. It embraced the neighborhood with peep shows and neon lights and risqué images everywhere. Tourists came from miles around just to see the place. Maybe that was the problem, as greed accepted maybe a few too many of them and diluted the place. Back in that day, a trip to Times Square for the trendy downtown crowd was as inconceivable as a romp to Brooklyn. Maybe that’s a testament to its greatness—many did come, and it almost was grand. I helped run the joint, and I even contributed a little to the design by finding a brilliant engineer named Steve Dunnington who got that 40 ph two-story slide built. A burlap bag and a little guts, and you traveled from the upper lounge to the dancefloor in a few seconds and got to grope your date to boot. The funny thing these days is the people who stop me and tell me how great Club USA was; in general they are the types that barely got in. USA had a moment, but that was all.

The Underground (860 Broadway, where the Petco is now). The Underground was legendary owner Maurice Brahms’ attempt to grab some of the swagger left on the table when Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager went to the big house. It had a run. It had its celebrities and an adult crowd trying to relive Studio 54, but it never reached those heights. The Underground had a late redux as the Palace de Beaute with myself , Larry Tee, and Michael Alig leading the way. It was home to the legendary Jellybean Benitez, who was inches away from his wife’s brilliant restaurant the Coffee Shop, which opened right before us. RuPaul, fresh up from Atlanta, entertained the hipsters along with Larry and Lady Bunny and LaHoma Van Zandt. Moby and Madonna pal DJ Gigi had a fabulous Wednesday party. I entertained Madonna and Warren Beatty, Christopher Walken and Abel Ferrara, Rod Stewart and Naomi Campbell. Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista and dozens more. Still, the Underground was an also-ran—a great club thought of as better than it really ever was. Part of it’ greatness was that it lasted over 10 years. My old friend Baird Jones convinced hundreds of thousands of people to come take a chance.

CBGB (315 Bowery). Now this is a strange choice because I think it is easy to think of CBGB’s as a top-tier place. Yeah, I saw the Ramones there, and Television and Patti Smith and Blondie, Richard Hell and the Voidoids. I saw the Talking Heads and the Misfits and later the Cro-Mags and Agnostic Front and the amazing Bad Brains. I sprained a few ankles in mosh pits (don’t try to imagine that). I hung out with rock stars and even got thrown out by owner Hilly Kristal. I bowled with yuppies versus Marky Ramone with beer mugs ... he won, as he was really good at it. Those were great nights, but I hung out there every night. It was just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Ramones loft on East 2nd Street, where my mentor Arturo still lives; my office is down a few doors. In 20 years I haven’t strayed too far from my roots. CBGB’s was home base for me, except for those rare nights when a Sting or an Iggy would blow me away, it was awful Jersey bands with bad hair and broken vans. We ignored them for the most part as we discussed so many really important things and cruised girls who still wore spandex. Those cheap-ass rocker chicks and down-on-their-luck wannabes were what was there when superstars weren’t. For me and mine, the scene was at Max’s Kansas City. That was glam and groupies and rockstars who had already arrived. Still, as I read this, it makes me wonder whether CBGB’s—in its ten thousand bad bands that never made it any farther than its stage—wasn’t really the purist form of what I love. Maybe if you throw out all the big names, its greatness lies in giving the Jersey boys with their ripped jeans, bad songs, and bad hair a shot at the big time. I see more CBGB shirts on the streets than any other club, so maybe the jury is still out on this one

So if CBGB leaves the overrated list, my first alternate would be Twilo. Even though Junior Vasquez rocked it hard, I think clubs like Paradise Garage and Soundfactory and the Loft were better choices. Shoot, the club Choice on east third street wasn’t too shabby either. I had great times at Twilo. I remember waiting for that Sacha and Digweed time of the month to come up. I walked out of Twilo on way too many Sunday afternoons to even whisper that it was not amazing, but it’s just a bit less important than its reputation. Drugs were way too important to the mix for my taste, despite what some will say. Also Life, the club I ran on Bleecker Street, is often considered the last great club. For me it was not my best moment. Don’t get me wrong, it was an amazing time; but Limelight, the World, the Tunnel, Palladium and even Redzone—the places I helped define—were better clubs.