Collective Hardware guru Stuart Braunstein drops the dime on his undercover lair, rants against the bloodsuckers, and doles out the proper serving of pig sex.

You have an entire building on the Bowery. What goes down there? Collective Hardware is many things. In the basement we are building rehearsal and music studios. We are going to start a recording label. We’re partners with every business we bring into the building. The show room is on the main floor. The second floor will have a hair salon and on the other side, a tattoo parlor. There will also be a functional gallery. Ronnie Cutrone is going to paint deer heads.

The 3rd, 4th and 5th floors we’re doing artists-in-residency. We are hand-picking people who can work together and do everything in-house, like film editing. The 3rd floor is me and Ronnie Cutrone, the 4th floor is Norman Reedus and Mary Jordan, an incredible director who just had a piece at the MoMA. There will be two editing suites and a sound booth. The 5th floor is our special effects and art department with Tate Steintiek, who’s also a sculptor. We are doing an underground talk show called the Paulie Sampson Show. We are creating a brand. Without Harlan Berger I couldn’t be living in New York right now, he is a patron. I’m creating what I feel is the new punk rock. Instead of just complaining about the gentrification of the city and saying fuck the real estate guys, I am going to bed with the real estate guys. You can do a lot of great stuff if you have real estate.

You’ve been working with cool venues since way back when, doing murals, installations, DJ’ing… I’ve always been into Vaudeville, post WWI stuff, glamour and sleaze. [At Shine] I wanted to have a club and an emcee with different variety acts. We did this act there called Pig Sex which was this girl Otto in a swimming pool with a pig mask on. Spaghetti goes in the pool, she peed in the pool with the spaghetti, and then bathes in it. That night we had about 70 or 80 people in the room and about 40 walked out in disgust. The next night we had every celebrity in the fucking city there. It was insane. One of the only problems I have with the Box is that you go to that level every once in a while. It becomes unshocking if you are doing shit and piss and pussy farts 4 times a night. I get it. I love the art form but it desensitizes people. Here’s the thing: you are in a club trying to get laid with your girl at a beautiful table in a beautiful place and here’s this person on stage who has some issues sticking things in their ass for your pleasure. It kind of ruins the fucking thing. I didn’t do that that often, it was once or twice a week out of 20 or 30 shows.

What happened to that place? We had an incredible 8 month run at Shine. The egos and insanity made it fall apart. One of the things I have always done is build sand castles. You build them, they look great and then a wave from the ocean knocks them down. Anything that powerful and that amazing is going to crash. You can’t keep the energy that high. That’s one of the things I am doing with this project. But I am different and older now. I don’t go out much. There is nowhere to go. I still DJ a couple of nights a week at Socialista

Is opening Collective Hardware a reaction to the dullness of the scene? You need decadence at a perfect level. It’s hard to achieve that. It’s nearly impossible. I think the Box only had it for a little while. They lost it a little because they had to go for money like everyone else. When I started DJing [there], there was a time when it opened that you had sexy, exquisite models next to homeboys. It’s about the mix of crowds, that’s what I always went for. People with jobs are boring. That’s it. They don’t get into the music or vibe. They just want to go out, get laid and go to work the next day. Cell phones ruined it because in the past you would meet your friends at a bar or club. So you would speak at 7 pm and say you are going to meet at this time at this place. People get there late, some early. Either way you have these people in there waiting for the rest of their friends. Even if it sucks you are waiting for your friends. You’re hanging out and other people come and you create a party. No one was on their phone or Blackberry. One night [recently] I walked into a lounge and there were all these hipster kids in their cool jeans and getups, their fucking cool hats and fucking cool t-shirts, and every one of them was on their Blackberry. The whole place was lit by Blackberry. I stood on the bar and said, “Put your fucking phones away. Jesus Christ.” No one was even talking to anyone. They were all text messaging. Everyone is so engulfed into their phone they are not even meeting new people. Not that you would want to meet them cause they are fucking boring anyway. Before cell phones, a deejay could create a vibe cause people had to wait for their friends, people weren’t leaving. By the time their friends got there they were drunk and would stay there. People are moving out of places so fast that every half hour it changes over and the deejay can’t create a vibe

Yeah the phones are out of control. What else? This kissing ass of celebrities has ruined things too. The nightlife business has become about kissing asses. I am done. Giving free alcohol to promoters and models who will probably be back in Oklahoma in a week--I'd rather be waterboarded in Guantanamo. What made my parties at Joe’s Pub on Mondays or Shine good was the mix of people. [My partner] Dominic would jump on the mic and tell people to get out for posing. We would kick people out for posing. Leonardo DiCaprio came to the door, he had to pay. If I have to pay to see his movie he can pay to come to my party. I was working at this place the other night and Sting was coming. The doorman shut down the door. There was no one inside, except for Sting. Once you sell out like that nothing is cool anymore. Back in the day there was a place called Carmelita’s, it was a Latin drag queen joint. It was a restaurant with shit hanging off the ceiling. Really cheesy, but it had the best crowd ever cause all the eccentrics started going there. So you would have these women with cigarette holders and punk rockers next to each other. That’s where Ronnie Cutrone met Kelly Cutrone. I talked to Serge Becker about it. All the old school guys know Carmelita’s. When Serge opened The Box he said, “This is a set, Carmelita’s was the real deal.” Perfect example of glamour and sleaze.