BlackBook Magazine

Tenjune door sentry Aalex Julian dishes on the K-Mart of nightlife, the old chicks and thugs who don’t make the cut, “animals” who grab asses, and why some nightlife vets are toast.

Point of Origin: I've been working the door at clubs in Manhattan for almost six years. I started doing a lot of special events, for Lizzie Grubman, other PR groups. I did the Jay-Z event in the Hamptons. I knew people like Jeffrey Jah from going out. Some people resent me because I befriended the right people.

Socialista gatekeeper Jeffrey Trunell on working the door for a former doorman, club owners who scowl, and why Perez Hilton isn’t on his list.

Point of Origin: I moved to New York in 1996 to be an actor. I started working at Coffee Shop. I was a bar back and I didn't know anything. I was just a kid from Philly. I started bartending, worked at a lot of hotel bars: 60 Thompson, the Hudson, and subMercer right when it opened. I remember that was the first place where cocktails were $15. Nowadays if you're not charging $15 a drink you're nothing, but back then it was like a science experiment. My voice would always choke when I told a guy he owed me $30 for two drinks.

Sure, you've already seen the interview and photo shoot with Ugly Betty star America Ferrera from BlackBook's August 2008 issue. But for dessert, check out a few extemporaneous shots taken during the session at New York's Socialista. You may experience a little blurring, plus a little too much special-effects smoke. Real Americans won't object, though.

Take that, fashion beeotches! We knew she had it in her. Those "Ugly Betty braces" and Coke-bottle glasses couldn’t obscure the glamour gal smoldering just below the surface. An icon of empowerment, on the show and off, America Ferrera is fully owning her golden moment. Be sure to check out our behind-the-scenes gallery from America's photo shoot.

It’s a gorgeous Sunday in downtown Manhattan, and Ugly Betty star America Ferrera, wearing Converse sneakers, jeans, a T-shirt and a blue sweater, blends into the crowd as she strolls up the Bowery on the Lower East Side. Just outside the Patricia Field boutique, a former restaurant supply store converted into a temple of candy-colored fashion raunch, Ferrera stops dead in her tracks as the flame-haired proprietor who styled the "Ugly Betty" pilot and created costumes for "Sex and the City," the series and the movie, strides toward the curvaceous young actress. Styled, meet unstyled. Stylist, meet star. Emmy winners, talk amongst yourselves. Ferrera lets out a yelp of recognition: “Is that you? Pat!”

Chic, sleek, slick, elegant, and stylish are all words I’m guilty of overusing. Especially "chic." I have to admit that my posts are sounding a bit like the press releases that come attached to the invitations. It’s easy to name-drop the morning after when you’re able to copy and paste from a tip sheet, and I don’t know if there are any more ways I can characterize a chic event. (I've actually used the last alternative in the thesaurus.) Can you blame me? The amount of brain cells I’ve killed from the copious amounts of chic cocktails I've downed have made staring at the blank page in the morning a challenging experience. So here I am at the W Hotel in Union Square typing away (thank goodness for modern BlackBerry technology and boring friends!) on a review of my booze-drenched, celebrity-infested week. From Brooke Shields to Socialista, with Lauren Conrad’s bratty behavior in between.

July 4th wasn’t enough -- we just had to celebrate America one more time. Last night, Ugly Betty's America Ferrera was everywhere, as large placards featuring our August 2008 cover girl overlooked party-mongers at former Bungalow 8 doorman Armin Amiri’s West Village tropical hotzone Socialista. See our gallery of the full scenario. The affair was less a New York evening and more a Havana night (dirty dancing included), with surrounding island plants oxygenating the heated (and hot) crowd. But to Socialista’s credit, the spinning fans up top did wonders keeping body heat at bay. Our travel guides were being doled out like cigars in Cuba. The drink of choice was margaritas, the aptly named Juan Coronado was the man with the music, and we have no one but Partida tequila to blame for some people taking Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” a tad too seriously.

Hotel rooms in the West Village for under $100? As a now-cynical American disillusioned by rising gas prices and pretty much everything else, the thought of cheap accommodations in one of the un-cheapest parts of Manhattan seems farcically impossible. And when something seems too good to be true, it's because it is.

With a little (okay, a lot of) help from friends like K-Y Intrigue and St-Germain liqueur.

For more party pics, click here!

(From left to right) Photographer Paul Cupo and Molly “MySpace” Gottschalk, with friends Lucas Wilson and Charlotte Davis.

“I think I’d rather get into writing… and acting,” says Molly Gottschalk, made famous for winning a MySpace competition with photographer David LaChapelle—and later becoming his muse. It’s not that she doesn’t still love photography; rather, she’d like to explore her options. And one can’t help but wonder whether or not her move to Los Angeles has had something to do with this change of heart. It’s appropriate too, given that she’s here to celebrate the release of BlackBook magazine’s ”Hollywood Issue” at hidden nightlife hotspot Socialista.

BlackBook hits the streets (and the bottle) to find some lovely people in lovely clothes.

Photography by Maddy Simpson

Who: Lelaine Lau.

Where: Socialista

Personal style: ”More dash than cash! Minimal meets architectural meets zen—with dramatic flourishes.”

Where she comes from: “I’m an ex-agitator and activist (with three arrests for civil disobedience, which I wear with a badge of honor!), and a reforming party girl.”

Where she’s going: ”I’m originally a California beach girl. I’m just passing through New York on the way to global travels with a travel show idea I’m currently working on.”

Her story: ”My monthly 403 salon—now two-and-a-half years old—encourages the discussion and exchange of ideas through presentations on the arts, culture, and humanitarian concerns. I’ve found fulfillment by creating a fascinating and highly engaged community from the worlds of fashion, media and entertainment, and by reconciling my seemingly irreconcilable passion for both the glamorous and social with the meaningful and substantial.”