I attended the Hamptons 2009 launch party thrown by Guest of a Guest and pal o' mine Rachelle Hruska this Sunday. It was held on her cool (and on that afternoon chilly) rooftop overlooking the Bowery. The promise of BBQ and an audience that I could pitch my Nightlife Preservation Community rap to and the wrath of Rachelle if I didn’t show up, motivated me out of my nearby home. Guest of a Guest is the premiere blog doing this nightlife thing. My blog generally deals with an insiders’ perspective of the life. It’s a niche that I carved out a little over a year ago with the enthusiastic support of Rachelle. GOAG deals with a nightlife that is not defined by clubs and their limitations. Her cultural reporting brings us the skinny and scoop on art openings, benefits, launches and such. Clubs are only a small part of her gig and in my opinion she has, in the last few months, risen above the pack and is the must-read blog on our diverse nightlife culture. I need another word it seems because nightlife is morphing into something else.

Matt Assante, a nocturnal promoter type, is pitching me about his weekend brunch rooftop soirees at the Gansevoort. I'm getting invites for those pier parties, the breakthrough brunches at Merkato 55 and now a host of other places indicating that the club culture is no longer limited to night or indeed clubs. This creative push, a pleasant byproduct of these recessionary times, is redefining how we party and mingle.

I attended that Friday night Izzy Gold affair down on Morton Street, my Blackberry was blowing up telling me that "everybody was there." It was apparently a gala for Neil Young's son [actually Chris Young, no relation to Neil. -- ed.] or a launch of the new studio thing and I wandered around saying hey to people I hadn't seen in ages -- or should I say, hadn't seen since they aged? In reality very few that I care about were in attendance, with the exception of course of Patrick and Liam McMullan. Liam indeed has aged well. These alternative loft space type parties are becoming increasingly important to a scene looking for new ideas. We are desperate to find a place that feeds our club habit but isn’t really a club. I did meet up with my dear friend Stephanie Podasca and her super hot crew of next generation clubbers at the Izzy Gold affair. They were bailing and on their way to James Coppola’s Friday at Le Royale, which is one of the best joints in town. Le Royale is a hit because it brings back the old-school fundamentals of clubbing, good music, sound, decor and a diverse crowd as well as a competent and cool staff. In the end, clubs do have the lights, sound, comfy seating and DJs that will attract us -- except of course, the newly opened The Gates, which had none of those things right last time I went. My dear friend Michael James was quite upset over my remarks on his new joint and a little birdy said his partners Redd Styles and Danny Kane got in his face, because I am after all his friend and he needs to control what I say. Well, that won’t happen. Here's a better solution: fix the sound, lights, seating and hire a DJ people can listen to and I'll rave about the joint. I want The Gates to succeed, but if a friend of mine is walking around with toilet paper on their shoe I tell them. Last time I was there you guys had toilet paper on your shoes.

Rachelle's rooftop extravaganza had no toilet paper on the shoe. I meant to stay a minute but was there for hours. They were serving this Tanteo Tequilla stuff that was stooopid hot -- hot because it was cool tasting and because it had a jalapeño infusion. The idea is that the hot pepper hides the kick from the tequila. They have a mango-y and chocolatey one as well and needless to say I had approximately one more than I should have. I chatted up my dear friend Jen Gatien and we talked of doing stuff. I listened to a great set from DJ Suhel who also had his 1947 beer on hand for the ultra fun crowd. I congratulated blog goddess Brittany Mendenhall as she is weeks away from law school and a future that seemed impossible for her just a short time ago. Photog Chance Yeh who told me he takes about 4,000 photographs a week to make his living and I talked about Avenue, where he had almost attended a small private event there on Saturday night but was steered clear by the door who told him it wasn’t for him quite yet. I had tequila-brushed corn with a publicist from a major Hamptons nightspot who told me they were worried about Fridays. I get the feeling that Fridays out east may be the sacrificial lamb for a party crowd trying to save a few bucks.

I think Saturdays will be the usual mayhem but Fridays, always a tough nut anyway, will suffer. I spent my time chatting up people about the Nightlife Preservation Community Gala on June 22nd and gathering support from the club types to help us fight anti-legislation through mobilization of our vast resources. The millions of names on our email blast lists will now be a potent political tool. I was tired. I had stayed up late on Saturday night having stumbled into Collective Hardware to see what the artistic hipsters had up their sleeves. There was this photo booth thingy going on upstairs but what I saw downstairs in the gallery space made my draw drop. No, it wasn’t the lovely Kathleen Dragoon or even Aerosyn-Lex the graffiti artist/artist/artist that I am so pleased to be using for Ajaxx, the Times Square roof we are developing for June. I was blown away by the act Joey Rubin had put on the stage.

KeysNKrates played a set of familiar club anthems live; they'll take a hip hop track, remix it and play it with instruments and such. It’s the sickest DJ set ever, although I don't think it’s a DJ set. The energy in the room was beyond description even though the crowd was less than a hundred. Collective Hardware continues to show me the new and the now and it always makes my head tilt. It’s not a club but an anti-club. This art gallery, studio collection of thinkers and triers and failures and successes and non-club club types are pushing limits, taking no prisoners and continually collecting bright and bold movers and shakers. In its’ undefinability it speaks of the possibilities of a new culture. The world I speak about here could have been described as "nightlife" a year ago. I need a new word now.