BlackBook Magazine

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.

Blasted for its blandness and recently ripped for looking like a Kansas City airport lounge, Sheridan Square gallantly tried to spruce up with a new chef. But it seems nothing could combat the difficulty of running an upscale eatery on what can best be described as a shitty stretch of Seventh Ave. A phone call this morning to Sheridan Square confirmed that the once splashy West Village eatery has closed its doors for good. Guess we'll have to make the trek out to Missouri airports for our dose of Ethan Allen furniture and New American cuisine.

Here's an early glimpse at a very rough, soon-to-be new Chelsea hotspot Citrine, located on 59 W. 21st St.(6th Ave.) in the upstairs lair where rock joint Snitch once dwelt. New owners are the affable David Rodolitz and Adam Elzer (the guys behind Impulse Productions, and the "junior Jason and Noah," as some have called them). This hazy cellcam pic of the 250-person venue under construction was snapped about two weeks ago from the elevated DJ booth, so we expect the club should be looking more like the slick rendering below by this point.

The English are having a fine old time in New York -- we’re sort of like their Mexico right now, a place where you can throw around your powerful loot and loosen your tie, get away from real-world concerns back home ... just unwind a little. Witness last week’s unprecedented bubbly fest at Pink Elephant, financed by the crass, beleaguered billionaire who owns troubled English Premier League squad Newcastle. While he was being shredded back home in the press, heavyset honcho Mike Ashley dropped $220,000 on bottles of Cristal, even finding time to spread the champagne love with various bottle hawks and other moochers who reportedly knew him only as “soccer guy.” UK tabs brilliantly referred to the beneficiaries of the clueless Ashley’s largesse as “Manhattan’s shallow set.”

Fashion Week, as you may already know, is that special time of fall in New York when good friends gather to swap tales of summer fun in faraway places, amuse ourselves with skinny immigrant girls playing dress-up, drink our way through open bars, fight blonde Penn grads with powerful clipboards, and nonchalantly mention how lame the Marc Jacobs after-party was the next day. Great fun, say you? Of course. But lately, there’s been some grumbling from the normally exuberant party peoples who make the fashion magic happen. Stories of jaded fashion scenesters glumly sipping Vodka-of-the-Week & Sodas at drab lounges, whispers of widespread discontent at the tents -- a general sourness has befallen the festivities.

The force behind Buenos Aires' famed Faena Hotel + Universe talks about remaking neighborhoods, working with Philippe Starck and Norman Foster, and how to survive the coming bad times.

Point of Origin: I started in the fashion world, then sold my fashion company Via Vai and took three years off, a sabbatical of sorts, just really spending time at my beach house [in Jose Ignacio, Uruguay], gardening, taking care of the plants, enjoying my free time. Buenos Aires needed a place for people to congregate, a place for local people to meet up with people from the rest of the world. The city was in the midst of a rebirth after a really profound [economic and political] crisis, and I found a part of Buenos Aires that was abandoned completely, that didn’t even exist really. I found it inspiring to be able to invent a neighborhood from scratch. The focal point of the new neighborhood would be this hotel in an old, abandoned grain warehouse. And that was the beginning of the transformation of this entire neighborhood, Puerto Madero.

“I Hate Models” promoter Mory Traore waxes on why his parties have the most runway talent, ditching the police force, turning shit into gold, and how to combat corruption in Africa.

Point of Origin: I’m from Guinea, West Africa. Came to New York as a student and got a criminology degree from John Jay College. Then I was working for New York Department of Investigation for about seven months until I realized it wasn’t something I wanted to do. Basically it was a military organization with hierarchy, orders -- not the kind of place I function well. I didn’t have freedom. I’m really creative and I couldn’t use it, so I took off and went to Eastern Europe and traveled. And I thought, “OK, when I go back to New York what am I gonna do?" I was in Romania on a train at night writing these things down and I said, “From here on any job I do: no stress. What makes me happy? I love to party. I love beautiful girls. I love to travel.”

LA party maestro Jason Scoppa gets down with Prince, protects his guests from Cali’s rabid paparazzi, name-drops his newest venue, then crashes on the couch with a slice.

Point of Origin: My friend and current business partner Alexi Yulish asked me if I wanted to run a door with him to make some extra cash. It was a Rodeo Drive kosher steak house called Prime Grill. At the time we both needed the bread, so I told him to set up a meeting. We took the meeting, and I said, “Why don't you let us throw our own party?” We broke the patio dining furniture down and brought in any lounge furniture we could find. We brought in DJs and photo booths. It ended up being one of the most interesting Saturday nights in town for that summer.

Supper Club's jetsetting Brit Tamsin Lonsdale makes introductions, keeps secrets, and detoxes poolside at Soho House after a rough weekend in Ibiza.

Point of Origin: I went to University in Edinburgh and every birthday party, I’d organize a celebration in our house, a mansion, a house by the water. So that’s where I got my taste for hosting events and getting all my friends together for music and dancing. In 2004 I was a fashion stylist in London doing styling for rock bands, new talent for Creation, the record company, and that was fun. I’d style a lot of the music videos but it wasn’t fulfilling work and it wasn’t like working for myself. I started hosting these dinners and they were really successful.

Sebastian Nicolas’ path to downtown party prince has been meteoric and mostly unplanned. From karaoke at Cipriani Upstairs to his new digs at the Box, the normally press-shy nightlifer holds forth on his past, present, and future endeavors.

Point of Origin: I was born in Sweden to Chilean parents, then moved around Spain, lived in Easter Island, Chile, Argentina and Brazil. My sister ran a catering company in Chile that did the catering for all the big arena shows that came to Chile, as well the country’s first upscale fusion restaurant, Route 66. A lot of the people involved with the restaurant had worked in New York with Douglas Rodriguez, who owned Patria and basically invented the Nuevo Latino cuisine. That experience opened up my eyes to this crossroads of many interests like music, art, food, ambiance and made me fall in love with this industry.