An unassuming tourist type at an unassuming football bar tells me this: "New York restaurants are crazy! There's a club in every basement!" I nod my head. He means RdV, the bass-thumping club below Bagatelle. "No," says the unassuming tourist, "We were in some East Village pizza restaurant or something!" Jesus, it can be tough keeping up with the NYC Jones. There seems to be tons of hidden gems that try to stay away from the people like me who can write about them, Twitter about them, Facebook about them, and ultimately ruin them. Some things are worth keeping a secret, but when the party is in the basement of Coffee Shop or some media lunch spot that regularly gets off on decent press, it's easy to broadcast. Some other things will remain a mystery, until I can fully understand if it's an actual basement party or simply a couple of bus boys getting high between shifts.

As the holidays near, it's fun to roll the dice on what former hotspot will have a revival, or what invitees may finally get a glimpse of the most exclusive space by way of special event invitation. This week alone the The Bowery Hotel had a major resurgence, proving it's a party player by hosting the annual Humane Society’s Cool vs. Cruel benefit, back-to-back with tonight's Art Rocks! event. Same with the six-thousand-foot "local hang'" -- The Ainsworth -- which was ground zero for Stylecaster's Short Films Premiere Party. Sienna and Savannah Miller hosted a dinner to celebrate their spring 2010 collection at the Royalton (not exactly the downtown scene we'd imagined for them). Party palaces also revive with extreme makeovers' the closed 105 Rivington space -- a splinter off of the Rivington Hotel -- is getting a redux. It will be called CV, and it had a little show-and-tell this past Tuesday. All in all, the holiday times bring a little nightlife cheer in the form of new beginnings at old places, reminding people how awesome some of our nighttime landmarks can be.

Every field of endeavor has its icons, and nightlife is no different. To be an icon in this world, one has to be successful and stay relevant. After all, you’re only as good as your last party. For every genuine icon, there are swarms of scenesters who occupy the pantheon in their own minds -- putting the “I” and “con” in the word. But it takes a certain amount of swagger to succeed in this business, so they should be forgiven. Besides, they are always the easiest people to shop for around Christmas: any mirror will do. Listed below are my six New York City club icons -- solo artists and teams -- and the up-and-comers with the potential to replace them, if only their predecessors would move to India (or somewhere even more remote, like Brooklyn).

Guys may come from Mars, and women from Venus, but Friday night dance parties are universal lingo. From glittering warehouses to stealth doors at intimate lounges, these slick floors ache for some unbridled dancing debauchery.

● Butter (NYC) - Friday night party Whipped is so fresh, most can't believe it's Butter. Resident hipster DJs Matt&Maia draw out big name fashion folks like Alexander Wang and the Ronsons and buddy up with special guest DJs like Interpol's Paul Banks. Mixed clientele harbor a serious need to put on their dancing Miu Mius.
● Cielo (NYC) - New York's dance addiction reigns supreme. Deep Space house heads maintain the sunken dance floor, which still attracts the pretty people looking to move something.

Once again, the landscape of nightlife is a'changing. Sometimes, you have to stir up the water to catch a few fish, which is exactly what happened to us. East Village Monday-night favorite Le Souk lost its liquor license, forcing patrons to take their business to Le Souk Harem, but it's the neighborhood that's the real loser. Wandering aimlessly in search of something new and good on Sunday night, we found a new party at White Slab Palace. Places we'd long since wrote off somehow hit the spot if not filled the void. An object lesson on wandering outside your comfort zone.

Being a partier used to be as simple as throwing on a clean tee and getting out the door. Now, it's work. The Jane was once our last great hope; it's now all but shuttered. Just when we feel we've found our new home, a place where -- if not everyone knows our name, at least they know our label -- it loses its license, lease, or cool. If we were lazy, we'd advise you to try the Boom Boom Room every single night of the week, but if on top of the world isn't really your scene, here's what's been moving and shaking amongst the movers and shakers this week. We'll be trying them out one by one, consumed with the determination to find our Beatrice Inn incarnate.

It's usually nightlife that inspires a guy or gal to get made up, but this is makeup inspired by nightlife. Illamasqua, a cult favorite amongst beauty junkies, club kids, makeup artists, and celebs, was conceived amidst the dark drama of 1920s Berlin -- embraced by alternative cultures, made by a British brand, and now readily available to help you develop your nightlife alter ego. I decided to try the pigment-rich rockstar colors for Friday night's festivities, which included Mark Ronson's Gucci party at the Bowery Hotel, followed by "Whipped," Butter's hipster dance party, to find out first hand why Sienna Miller, Lily Allen, Beth Ditto, and Karen O. are rumored to be obsessed with it.

These days, I write for BlackBook the magazine as well as online. The magazine has limited space, and I have long stories to tell. Here's the expanded version of my September print column.

As I wander around Manhattan on deserted summer Sundays with my entourage of furry mates, I sometimes pass an old warehouse or deli that once was the hottest place around. Sometimes I sneak a glance and try to remember where the bars or DJ booth were. The Petco on Union Square, for example, was the Underground, and after that The Palace de Beaute. I smile at reptile food where lounge lizards chatted up debutantes to Jellybean Benitez beats. The "five best clubs in my memory" is an exercise I try every couple years. The list can change, as my memory serves me in some strange relationship with the amount of distractions cocktail waitrons serve me. It's my memory, and as I'm sure there were amazing clubs before my time, I'll leave that list to some other dude. You wont find El Morocco on the list, or even the Copacabana or Latin Quarter. I'm sure these were swell places, but before my time. The Peppermint Lounge -- a club where the young Beatles played -- must be noted, but again I was playing with tin soldiers at the time.

We girls sometimes have this strange, perennial urge to get dressed to the nines, smell like cupcakes and flowers, strap on our sky-high Manolo's and use them to transport us to buzzing, overstimulated bars, where we can teeter around, sipping colorful cocktails, ignoring the opposite sex, and secretly fantasizing we're characters in our own girly HBO series. Sometimes we want Disney-sized mansions of excess; other times we'll take chic cosmopolitan standbys, perhaps with some college watering holes thrown in for good measure. We're women, we're allowed to change our minds. As if to further stereotype ourselves, these things are for certain, we want a backdrop that looks as good as we do, in a place that makes us feel forever 21, with enough stamina to handle our girl's night out.

It's been roughly over 200 days since Barack Obama took office, and since then, he's faced criticism from piggish buffoons and corpse-like wenches who just don't get it. Every day we watch unattractive talking heads yappity yappiting about health care and beer summits, and it's as painful to listen to them as it is to look at them. If someone's going to talk smack about our president, they'd better be attractive. In order to help Obama get better looking critics, we combed the city in search of the best looks money can buy, and we found it at the newly revamped Scores. After the jump, find out what nine strippers-turned-pundits think about our Commander-in-chief.