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.

OMG, OMG, OMG. OK, OK, OK, enough with the Xtravaganza Ball, some shall say. Well, maybe so -- but I was just sent these photos from the amazing photographer Kevin Tachman (check out his blog Backstage AT), and I just had to share them with you. This is more in the way of a rebuke rather than my usual attempt at enlightenment. If you didn't go, you missed something special, and the next ball must be on your to-do list or your ta-dah list. Look at these images and look at the faces in the crowd -- people were roaring in delight. I want my audience to roar with delight when they venture out, and I just don't see that very often from the same ol' same ol' nightspot offerings.

Giuseppe Tuosto (from Napoli) and partner Marcello Villani (a Capri native) have brought their Italian upbringing to their New York restaurant/lounge Via dei Mille. Alongside the Philly-raised but New York-braised Barry Mullineaux, the three have been sharing a loud and lively weekend brunch extraordinaire with SoHo for exactly one year now. On the eve of their anniversary, as the models and socialites of NYC prepare to gather at Via for fine Italian fare set to the backdrop of rowdy DJ beats and table dancing, the boys stop to reflect on their triumphant first year.

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.

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.

If bad things truly happen in threes, then expect something awful next week to occur at the eco-friendly green machine called Greenhouse. One of the most successful nightclubs out there right now, Greenhouse was hit last week with a billion-dollar lawsuit. What wasn't widely understood was the suit was about an incident that occurred on August 6. Racism charges flew fast and furious as author Teri Woods claimed her guests were turned away because they were black or fat or both, I guess, depending on the guest. A source close to the action tells me that her party was arranged by a promoter named "Village" and that a verbal agreement allowed her to have 50 guests before 11pm. No one can say whether Mr. Village conveyed the club's terms to Ms. Woods.

Every company has that person who holds it all together. Over at BlackBook, for me, it's Bridgette Bek who somehow has answers to all my pressing problems at her fingertips. If something or someone is lost or if I don't know which square peg to bother with my round hole (no homo, props to Lil' Wayne, yo), I always turn to Bridgette to set me straight. It seems I am the black sheep of BlackBook. Every so often, BlackBook honcho Ari Horowitz, along with his lovely companion Laurel Cummings host a soiree at his beautiful indoor/outdoor apartment. I am never invited until the afternoon, day of. Once in awhile I get a "I didnt see you last night" from one of BlackBook's sharp pencils. Yesterday was no different so I scrambled to get a date and showed up just a little late. The weather was perfect for the shindig, and the huge crowd sipped ridiculously potent Grey Goose concoctions. As my loyal readers know, I only drink two or three times a year -- whenever I have sex -- and with what seemed like a four-to-one ratio of women to men, springlike weather, a hundred bucks in my pocket, and those potent cocktails, I thought my odds were pretty, pretty good.

Columbus Day creates a sort of/almost three-day weekend and a Sunday night where more people are out than usual. I received more calls last night from people ‘looking for a good time’ than my self-soliciting ex-girlfriend did on a weekend night. I didn’t really have answers for these party-seekers. I offered up Cielo and Vandam at Greenhouse, but for some…not their scene. I rattled off the usual places, but few of my suggestions were well-received. Sundays at GoldBar are good (to dot all my i’s) but some members of my crowd are less visually stimulating than some doors allow, so, I didn’t send them to see Jon Lennon. I sent a couple friends to the 5th Anniversary of Pink Elephant the other night, and they brought in a third wheel of misfortune. The door correctly taxed the crew, and I called to apologize. The same thing happened over at Simyone where a gal pal who isn’t hard to look at brought a couple of friends who were 4 or 5 sheets to the wind and, of course, not door-worthy. So…don't call me for guest list help for a couple weeks, children.

I woke up, had my cup, and I dragged a comb across my head, and I read the news today (and yesterday) -- oh boy,about a lucky man who made the grade, and though the news was rather sad, well I just had to laugh ... The Jon B-Mike Satsky URL story had heads shaking and tongues wagging as the blogs took pleasure in what appears to be a lowlife clubland grift. Jon B is by all accounts a very successful club operator with a number of properties and a lot more coming in the near future. He is absolutely dedicated to defining himself as an honest, intelligent, and gifted club/restaurant operator. But the blogosphere is buzzing with negative reports of a below-the-belt hit on Iron Mike Satsky. According to the reads, the Greenhouse gang took the provocateurnyc.com domain and had it direct people to the Greenhouse website. Provocateur is the new spot my designer pal Lionel Ohayon is producing for Mike and partner Brian Gefter. Mike and Brian had a winner over at Stereo before it was shuttered. After my successful mediation last week between Chichi212.com queen Brittany Mendenhall and Unik Ernest, who she called the "MC hammer of nightlife." I was feeling very Bill Clintonesque. I called Jon B and said, "You have your new restaurant, Juliet, named after your mom, with top chef Todd English, and it just seems ridiculous to have this petty game play out online." He agreed and told me to come meet him at Juliet.