A sign (and party) for all seasons.

New York City, like no other, shines through its constant state of flux, through the destruction of historical monuments and the erection of new edifices. This modernist tendency subsides only infrequently under the pitiless pressures of development. Thus the massive neon red-light signs gleaming proudly upon the roof-deck lounge of the Empire Hotel gift the urban dweller with history from the sidewalk and recreation from the bar. (See our gallery of the altitudinous scene.) An express lobby elevator sweeps revelers up to a cascade of interlocking support frames permitting a cultured view of Lincoln Center across the way.

An image of staggered grass blades fissuring the cement inspired one of Kingswood's decorators, Jay Bearden (hired by owners/designers Nick Mathers and Lincoln Pilcher). Unruly nature skulks into the eclectic Aussie restaurant and bar upon each stumble-step; see our gallery for a closer perspective. During the day, the ceiling-high front windows reflect a soft green light from the lush garden across 10th Street. But the plants inside possess less the dripping sensuality of a ripened rose, and more the simple beauty of a twig or spray. Juxtaposed against the geometrically framed sky and reflected in antiqued mirrors, Bearden manages to highlight the beauty of a dry shrub.

Bringing the “pub”-lic back into the club.

The original pub (short for “public”) leveled society’s strata of intelligentsia, wealthy, witty, and common ... hence its popularity. One thousand years of common drinking history supported conversation from the substantive to the flippant. Oft kept quiet from meddling community outsiders, however, have been the “secondary pubs”: spaces -- containing the local riffraff and rarified -- positioned down the rabbit hole. Brooklyn’s beauty, the Clover Club, offers just such a “back parlor,” a lap of intimacy, velvet, and fire for educated drinking and communication. (See our gallery of the space.) This secondary space draws the daring and self-selected trouble-making crew crying out to communicate salacious stories. Behind the curtains and down the steps, a husky cast-iron fireplace covered in marble stimulates curious conversation.

Andre Lazarev’s Moomia Lounge, on Lafayette Street in SoHo, buries a pharaonic crypt under an eastern kasbah. (See our gallery of the scene.) While the venue’s offerings of food, drink, and hookah are not unique, the architectural periods represented are: a hybrid of 20th-century styles. That is, 20th centuries A.D. and B.C., with both contemporary Moroccan and ancient Egyptian décor in the house.

Everyone loves red when it comes to a nightspot. It’s even more appealing when you roll over the visual imagery while pronouncing the perfect-sounding French word to describe it: “rouge.” The Moulin Rouge, of course, inspired the great underground graphic art by Toulouse Lautrec, where in the seedy dark underbelly of the cabaret smoke and dinge, the artist captured a whole universe of culture, or rather, sub-culture. Now the Moulin Rouge is just a tourist trap in the “red”-light district of Paris, while Le Poisson Rouge, a new music cabaret on Bleecker Street (see gallery), starts from the beginning and swims back to those late 19th-century Parisian nights.

No room for VIPs at this very important place.

When the doors opened at the Double Seven, the club’s owner, David Rabin, christened it the “VVVIP room for Lotus.” The venue signaled a new nightclub interactivity supported by clear circulatory spaces. It said: “You are in, now you are important; so go where you please.” Tenjune’s owners, Mark Birnbaum and Eugene Remm, have also moved in a creative direction that emphasizes “flow” and minimizes the stasis of private areas (see gallery). Indeed, the basement bar for STK restaurant embodies the punctuated death of the VIP room.