When Aleksa Palladino landed the role of Angela Darmody—the New Jersey housewife with dreams of moving to Paris and becoming a painter—on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, the 30-year-old actor, along with her husband and music partner, Devon Church, leapt at the chance to relocate from LA to Palladino’s hometown on the East Coast. “I grew up in New York, where my friend and I used to sneak into the Chelsea Hotel looking for the ghost of Sid Vicious,” she says. “One day, we roamed the halls and came across some blood. Screaming, we ran out and went to go see a movie to calm ourselves down. I remember watching Christian Slater in Untamed Heart, all the while sure that Sid was sitting next to me.”

“When I was younger, I used to stay at the Chelsea Hotel,” says Richard Ashcroft, now 39. “You were required to have a wild time or you weren’t allowed to stay there. The corridors felt like you were in Angel Heart and William Burroughs might stumble out of a room at any moment.” Two decades have passed since the former Verve frontman first roamed those hallowed New York halls, and on “Third Eye,” a B-side from his fourth solo album, The United Nations of Sound, Ashcroft sings about a different place entirely.

What started out as a super hush-hush “for those in the know” affair is turning into something much more. Tonight, Jayne County and Kymara Happenings invite you to a “Modernist Party and a Happening.” This event will be the first use of the Ballroom at the Chelsea Hotel, 222 West 23rd street. To understand what I'm talking about, we have to start at the beginning, and since this is my column, it will start where I got on. I used to basically live at Max’s Kansas City. The bartenders knew my drink and the waitresses knew what I ate. I saw the same bands over and over again, and witnessed new ones that blew the socks off the New York scene.

The Poetry Brothel, produced by The Poetry Society of New York, is a conceptual group that presents poets as characters—or "high courtesans," as they say. The Brothel aims to take poetry outside the classroom and lecture hall and "place it in the lush interiors of a bordello." Made up of a cast of "Whores" who put on innovative events staged to feel like the fin-de-siècle brothels in New Orleans and Paris, this band of poets strives to evoke the avant-garde movements and French Symbolists of the 19th century. The poets act as whores, calling their audience their "Johns" and, as you can imagine, the events are not your Mother's poetry readings. Their next event isn't until January 23rd at The Back Room (invite below), but the group has offered up a list of their favorite nightlife places where poets can bide their time until then. Here is the Poetry Brothel's top places to live the poet's life: places where poetry is inspired, where poets hang out, or maybe where one can find the ghosts poets past.

I disagree with that dude who said, “You can’t go home again,” because I did. I went home to the Chelsea Hotel and it was creepy and swell. A couple of social run-ins with Cameron Winklevoss got me out of BBurg to catch a late show of The Social Network in Chelsea. I am an avid Facebook fiend, and my stop-and-chats with Cameron made the movie a must see. It was grand. I still don’t know what really happened, but I'm satisfied that the flick got pretty close to all involved. There I was on 23rd Street, feeling no urge to go back to my home. So I decided to visit the Chelsea Hotel.

Did you miss me? I missed you. I have now realized fully that Brooklyn is not just a state of mind but an actual place, with a river between me and what I have always known as home. I still live in boxes and my computer is awaiting the services of the cable guy. I'm not good at moving, better at shaking. I have deigned to try writing from an internet café, but it's going to be tough. Everything is vegan and soy and I was told by the nice man that the honey lavender corn muffin made with spelt is awesome. Today, as boxes are recycled and the normal chaos of my home life crawls out from under the piles of stuff, I return to write. Napolean leaving Elba is a fair comparison. I even learned a palindrome: “Able was I ere I saw Elba.''

As suspected, the entrance to Chinatown Club Shanghai is an unmarked door on a residential street, the de rigueur clandestine touch of all such speakeasy-themed establishments. I'm ushered into a dark theater adorned with red velvet drapes, candle-lit tables, and a cast of scantily-clad characters amping up the crowd, a mix of ex-pats and locals. As soon as I order a cocktail, the host, "Chinatown Charlie," takes the stage. The lightly-choreographed dance pieces, one-act sketches, and self-aware camp transports me to post-Mao Shanghai, with Chinatown Dolls in corsets performing their hearts out to burlesque numbers.

Oscar Wilde said, "A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." This describes my lifelong attraction to the underworld and all the creatures of the night. An old promoter pal of mine, Adam Sands, invited me to Pole Superstar Dreams and Fantasies party at Imperial. As I am a dreamer, but not the only one, I figured a party featuring the best in competitive pole dancing might be a happening time, and I gathered the troops to see if my fantasies would be addressed. The crowd was that very rare nightlife combination of adult and sexy. I had never been to the Imperial but had been to a bunch of awful clubs that occupied the West 19th space before. Cornelis Crane, whom I had worked with at 4D and some other joints that have slipped my mind, is the owner. There were a lot of club superstars present to eye the pole superstars.

At the premiere of City Island:

Some writer way smarter than me once noted, “You can't go home again.” That's Thomas Wolfe. I wrote a paper about it in my college days. If I had some time, I would go back to college and get formal educations in writing and design so my editors and partners would have more hair as they age, but what Wolfe said is true. Last night I went home to the Bowery in the early 80s. Back then I weighed in at a buck thirty five, wore ripped jeans, manic-panic pointy shoes, and a well thought out T-shirt. I was working on Wall Street during the day, on my way to becoming a commodities trader, but at night I became a punk rocker. When I DJ, I offer lots of stuff from that era which captured my heart. I bought all those punk anthems new, and many remain at my mom's house. After quoting Wolfe I’m unclear if I’m allowed to go home to pick them up. Maybe mom will FedEx them. Last night I went to Vera Ramone King’s book release party at Bowery Electric for Poisoned Heart: I Married Dee Dee Ramone; Vera was a wife of my dearly departed friend Dee Dee Ramone.