My birthday bash at Avenue last night proved to be more fun than a barrel of monkeys. I am limp and drained and wonderful. I feel like a million yen.  Avenue asked me to throw my party there and I couldn't say no. The good people at Avenue/ Tao Strategic Group have been work associates, friends, and family from the good old days when I was that maniacal Steve Lewis guy. They put up with me then and celebrated me yesterday... in style.

Last night I became a consumer, customer, and bottle buyer for possibly the first time. Recently, I grabbed a gig working for the marketing company promoting Beau Joie champagne; it’s pretty good stuff and I'm proud to be of service. I felt it only fair to disclose the relationship here. Last night I sashayed around town with some clients of mine and ended up at Avenue for the SKAM Artist event. I told Andrew Goldberg, who puts people at the proper tables, that I was going to purchase a bunch of bottles and when he stopped laughing at me, he made a big show and put me by Avenue honchos Noah Tepperberg and Danny A.

I was told to dress in white for Noah Tepperberg's birthday bash at Lavo last night. I normally don't do costumes but there's something about Noah that is undeniable. I complied, wearing white pants, a white shirt and matching sports jacket. Even my hush puppies had white shoelaces. Someone said if I had worn a black tie and was traveling with a little person I could easily be mistaken for Ricardo Montalban from the last season of Fantasy Island.

This weekend was spent walking dogs, DJing, and watching war movies -- 3 of my 5 favorite things. As the city emptied out, those who are not inclined to wallow in traffic and party like it's 1999 enjoyed the relative quiet. Clubs in NYC were quiet as well, with many joints closing, and others pared down to skeletal staffs. With almost every real DJ cashing in out of town, guys like me had a chance. On Thursday, I opened for my friend Paul Sevigny at the roof garden of the glorious Hudson Hotel.

There were a few times this winter when the summer seemed as impossibly distant as an Oscar for Tom Cruise. I still look for patches of tough snow when I walk the puppies through McCarren Park, and yet here we are, less than 2 weeks away from the summer season. The big news on the Hamptons party circuit is the redux of the Tavern space in Southampton as South Pointe. Leading the charge at South Pointe is Jonathan Schwartz, a one time promoter who has often been associated with Noah Tepperberg, Jason Strauss, and The Strategic Group.

The party for the ages happened last night for partner Jason Strauss at Lavo. It was a can’t-miss birthday party that, unfortunately, I had to miss. Jason will forgive me. He is an emperor now, but I knew him when he was just beginning his journey. I can’t imagine what heights he will attain. To the envious club promoter-types who wish they could be king: know that a lot of hard, smart work and sacrifice come with the crown. Happy Birthday Jason.

Lavo is coming soon. It looms as a game changer. Located on 58th Street right off Park Avenue, it is, as far as I can tell, the first joint to be conceived in Las Vegas and then land in New York. The big world of nightlife keeps getting smaller and the diversity narrower. These club/restaurant combos that are all the rage cater to increasingly identifiable crowds with service and style to please anyone. Lavo figures to be a place where uptown money, Europeans, and Upper East Siders can enjoy downtown and Vegas levels of service right in their back door. Tao, right across the street and owned and operated by much of this same crew, has been one of the top-grossing joints in this country since its inception. There is money in those hills, heights, high-rises, and townhouses north of the traditional club/restaurant world, and this crew will be cashing in.

Each morning, as I coffee my way to awareness, a blank Word doc stares at me. There are mornings, as I’m sure regular readers and editors understand, when I have little to say, or no time to say much. Sometimes it’s a matter of, “If I don’t have nothing nice to say then don’t say it,” while other mornings, the great story I went to sleep with wasn’t so great in the light of day. Yes, that does describe my dating before Amanda. Sometimes I have nothing to say because I promised not to say anything, even though the other blogs are all over it. As a designer involved in some projects of interest, I can often only read about what I'm doing, as non-disclosure agreements gag me from telling you the truth. Because of my schedule getting a half dozen joints open in September and another six ready for construction, I have internal debates that go like this: “Eat or write,” or “Sleep or design,” or "Breath or…" Well you get the idea. My desk is a heap of unopened envelopes, piles of notepads and gadgets with voices on them, half-empty cereal boxes, wood, wallpaper, stone and glass samples, and a very large cat.

I attended the one-year anniversary of Avenue last night and it was indeed all things to those people. I popped in to pay respects, and was overwhelmed by a beautiful, relevant, and successful crowd. Although I always feel more comfortable in dive bars and hipster hangouts, there is no denying that Avenue, in it’s brief existence, has captured the hearts—and cash—of the bottle/model crowd. All things table service were honed and perfected at Noah, Jason, and Mark Packer’s joints, Marquee and Tao Vegas. While others have added their personal touch to the art of plying the goose from the ganders, as Carly Simon once put it, “nobody does it better” than this crew. On the way in I stopped to chat with my old friend Wass Stevens. As we talked about the ‘this and thats’ and ‘what have you been up tos,’ we were interrupted from time to time by a steady flow of the beautiful, the rich, and the connected as they passed through the velvet ropes. I asked him who was inside and he said, “everybody,” and proceeded to name names. Indeed, it was a cast of bold-face names that had your humble author shocked and awed. We don’t repeat the named names here. The old adage is, “those who can’t, teach,” and I stand by, "those who can’t write, gossip."

In an article appearing on his Clubplanet blog, Justin Ross Lee named the “Top Ten Most Hated People in New York Nightlife," a list in which he includes himself. I like the idea of this list, specifically the idea of identifying who the biggest assholes and bullies are. I just think Justin’s list is a little too narrow. With the exception of Strategic Group honcho Noah Tepperberg, he names the puppets and not the puppeteers. I became aware of the list when promoter Sally Shan, who made the list, asked me what she should do about it. I had just written about Sally, and she told me it had reinvigorated her haters, which is odd since she is certainly not a bad person. In fact, she is hard working, moral and somewhat pleasant. Promoters like her are motivated by many things -- money, glamour, excitement -- but the need to feel loved is at the core of it. This is especially true for Sally, since her big heart doesn't take criticism well.