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.

David Graziano and Corey Lane are becoming moguls. David is a fantastic hospitality/interior designer with home runs like Pink Elephant and the Kiss & Fly/Bagatelle/RdV complex to his credit. Corey comes from an operations background but is well grounded in promotion, especially when it comes to South American house fests. I don't know one person that doesn't like or respect them. In an industry which sometimes creates tensions, that's a mouthful. I caught up to them (and their new publicist Steve Kasuba) at their new restaurant, Ganesvoort 69, where the old Florent restaurant used to be. Florent was in the Meatpacking District when men were still packing meat while other men dressed as women were also packing meat. Late night, a scene of running mascara and sex workers of every persuasion had a bite after a long night. For club operators and staff, it was one of the few places always open where you could get an intelligent late-night meal. It was an after-hours club affair or someplace to fuel up before taking the party to the late afternoon at one of the great house meccas. They kept a lot of the charm and some of the fixtures as Ganesvoort 69 pays its respect to its vaunted past.

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.

● Lily Pond (East Hampton) - The 1Oak family will be hosting this Saturday and will have special events here all summer. The Grand Opening on Saturday has DJ Lee Kalt on the decks, and Sunday kicks off "1OAK at Lily Pond Blue & Cream" with DJ Jus Ske.
● Dune (Southampton) - AXE Lounge features DJ Phresh Friday night, DJ Mel DeBarge on Saturday, and Kiss & Fly hosts on Sunday night with DJ Berrie.

Terry Casey’s Le Royale is a serious attempt to have a club that's both musically and socially relevant. If you start with the premise that a 1Oak or a Kiss & Fly or Tenjune cater to a mostly musically ignorant crowd, while the Santos' Party House, Pacha, and Cielo seek musical nirvana, then Le Royale leans towards the latter. The DJs at the former clubs and their ilk offer up sets of music cloned from basically the same Serato. I just don’t think a really cool crowd wants to hear Kanye West, Beyonce, or crooker crap anymore.

Joey Morrissey seems firmly in charge of M2 as of this writing. Yesterday’s interview and today’s were done before the media tsunami over the name change; many are saying that Mansion is out of business, and this semantically may be true, but the new M2, under the control of Joey, Artie Arboleda, and nightlife hero Mark Baker goes on. I spoke to Joey Morrissey last night and asked him to clarify some things.

With hits like STK, One, Kiss & Fly, Coco de Ville, and Tenjune in his portfolio, the CEO of The One Group dishes on the bar/restaurant prototype, banking big in difficult times, and a newfound affection for live music.

Favorite restaurants? There was a restaurant called Baoli in Cannes that was probably one of my favorite restaurants, and was also a major inspirational restaurant for me in what we started to do here in America. In terms of Italian, I like Da Silvano in New York. I love my own restaurants— does that count?

Of course. Which is your favorite? My favorite for vibe and energy is probably One. And for a very cool scene is STK.

There's a funny thing in clubland -- it’s this divide that has developed between the joints that play mostly house music and those who play mashup. Each often discount the other and doesn't consider its opposite number a true club. The mashup meccas like 1Oak and Marquee are lumped in with clubs like Pink Elephant and Kiss & Fly, which play house and are considered by the Pacha crowd to be almost irrelevant. These clubs have strong social scenes, are based on the table/bottle mentality, and for the most part have small dance floors, opting to let their crowds dance at the booth. To these crowds, the scenes at Pacha and the big clubs were -- until very recently -- discounted as reserved for the house-heads, and the lack of strict door policies turned them off. Mansion has tried to balance both and has had mixed success, yet it has survived and is adjusting constantly. I think year two will be better than year one; more on that later.

Randy Scott tells BlackBook about RDV— his newest nightlife muse, being considered the Kevin Bacon of the Industry and the social importance of the lounge.

What is your current project?
I am involved in the whole complex on 13th Street between 9th and Washington which is now, Kiss and Fly the nightclub, Bagatelle the restaurant and the third space, which is the lounge, is the new project called RDV. Abbreviation for Rendez-vous. Bagatelle is one of the most successful restaurants in New York. Remi Laba and Aymeric Clemente are the partners and great to work with. I was brought on to head the lounge. RDV is a plush lounge—it is the gem. We are just doing friends and family now, but we will be opening shortly. We did a party for Josh Lucas and another for Quincy Jones. We hired a mixologist, Thierry Hernandez from Bar du Plaza Athénée in Paris, and we are following his formal steps of service.