Heather Tierney, apothecary-at-large for Chinatown destination Apothéke on comparisons to Amy Sacco, being the bad twin, and dealing with Chinese landlords.

Have people compared you to Amy Sacco? Admittedly yes, and I am honored. She is giant in this business. I might know 1% of the people she knows, so it is flattering for someone to say I am like her.

Where have you been going out? I like small places that have an identity. I like La Esquina ... I think that place is brilliant. It's completely original, and it still holds up. It will be there a long time and the food is excellent. I like this place in Williamsburg called Moto. It's in this old check-cashing shop. It’s a random location in the middle of nowhere. They made a great Parisian bistro/bar with great details. It's just so charming. Sometimes they have a band, and you have to walk through the band to enter.

Nightlife impresario Dirk Van Stockhom on his new venture at 98 Kenmare Street, being a 13-year-old English playboy, and why Sudan is the new global hotspot.

Where do you go out? I am very much a bar/restaurant guy. I go to Rose Bar ... when I can afford it [laughing]. Milano's on Houston. My favorite place in the whole of New York is the Ear Inn on Spring Street. It is the most classic bar because they don’t give a damn. It is full of regulars and some of the most interesting people. You also do see models and actors, next to regular people. It is no bullshit, great drinks, great food. The owners are two of the nicest people in the world. It is a real community bar. Big supporters of the arts. Don’t tell anyone though, it will spoil it [laughing].

DJ Todd Mallis on being born with a DJ's name, why you'll never be Amy Sacco, and how people in the scene can go from green to dark if they aren't careful.

What clubs are you working at these days? I am currently working at 1Oak, Citrine, Marquee, and Southside. They are green lighting, trying to keep it cool. I used to do seven nights a week for months at a time.

Bouncer-cum door legend King doesn't like rejecting people at the velvet ropes, but explains why some nights his own sister won't make the cut, while a dude in a blue whale suit breezes inside.

Point of Origin: The first nightclub I ever worked at was The Building. It was a second job, I was already working during the day as a bartender, and I wanted extra money. A friend of mine was dating a guy much too old for her who was managing the club, and through her I got the job. They actually got married, so I guess he wasn’t too old for her, and she is still my friend, so I probably shouldn’t say shit like that. He’s a good guy. He is one of the guys who runs Waverly Inn. I met with him and he said, “We will give you a job as a bouncer, you have broken up fights before?” and I said, “Yeah, sure."

Cain Luxe's Jaime Mulholland on sailing to New York's promised land, surviving the W. 27th Street club disaster, partnering with the Brazilian female mafia, and almost going broke before hitting the big time with his expanding nightlife empire.

What places are you involved with? The first summer [after opening Cain in New York] we took over Cabana in the Hamptons. It had been a dead space for a while. We redid the whole space to make it look more like Cain, the South Africa beach club. We also took all our staff. It wasn’t just hanging a sign. It was taking what was authentic to Cain and putting it there. It was incredible. It was packed, lines around the corner. Luckily it was very successful. The following year we didn’t know if we wanted to do it and David Sarner owned the space and brought in Pink Elephant. We went to Jet - another successful year. The third year we were opening in the Bahamas on Paradise Island. Three pools, a restaurant, DJs, all outdoors, very celebrity driven, high-end clients. In a new tower they opened, The Cove, that’s $800 to $8000 a night, beautifully designed. It’s a great extension of our brand. We opened GoldBar the same time we opened in the Bahamas. It was insane. It’s half the size of Cain. We kept it under the radar, away from Page Six. It has a great following. Lenny [Kravitz] wrote a song with GoldBar in it on his new album. Great clientele. It will have long legs. It has a tight door and the quality is good. I am proud of it. We have four venues in four years and are now regrouping. We bought a hotel in Montauk and redid it. It’s called the Surf Lodge, very chill.

Foreign-born bottle-service diva Reka Nyari on why men with ties buy $5,000 bottles at clubs, inventing a nightlife resume to avoid the pole, and parlaying industry connects into a career in photography.

Where do you go out? I go to Beatrice or Rose Bar. I also will still go to the bottle service places to see my friends. A lot of my friends still work in the business. They work at Cielo, Bijoux, and Marquee, so I will go to see them. I also will go with friends to Schiller’s and chill and have wine. A friend has a table at Bungalow 8 every Thursday, so I’ll go sometimes.

Francesco Belcaro (of events/promotions concern Made in Italy) comes to America, meets the right Austrian chick, wakes up a top-tier New York scenester, works the door at the Box, and shakes hands with his 13,000 closest mates.

Point of Origin: I was not supposed to be in the nightlife scene. I have a real estate company and an event planning company. The event planning company is Made In Italy. We work with a lot of big Italian companies in the city, and they sponsor us. When we started, we wanted to market ourselves and create a buzz for both companies to get more clients. We decided to create this night called Made In Italy, and we created a mailing list. I personally know a lot of people in the fashion business because of my family’s company, and my partner [Francesco Mo] knows a lot of finance people and entrepreneurs. So we started to do this party, not for money, but to market ourselves. It turned out that the night was cool, and more sponsors wanted to be a part of it and have their products known to our mailing list, which is over 13,000 people right now -- people that we know personally and shake hands with. So my partner and I decided to get involved in nightlife.

Michael Ault, owner of the Pangaea clubs in Austin and elsewhere and the man behind legendary New York clubs like Spy and Chaos, checks in with the scene (New York) where he once reigned.

How did you start in the nightclub business? Growing up in Palm Beach in the 1970s, every night was a party. All the families on the social scene were expected to host large events at their homes, mostly charity balls and large dinners. Both my mother and father's family took this ethos to extreme lengths. So as a child, most of what I recall were large parties, planning, logistics, caterers, florists, car parkers, bands, guest lists, phone books, and fun. No one ever considered them "businesses," because they weren't, but they were extremely complicated productions to produce and promote. To be completely frank with you, I'm not certain that I was ever really a component of the nightclub business. In many ways, the concept of a business and "party" are often mutually exclusive. If you're concentrating on the business, you'll often lose sight of the party. And naturally the reverse is invariably true. But to answer your question, my first clubs as an owner were Merc Bar and Surf Club.

New York Nightlife Association prez and Los Dados owner David Rabin on re-opening the legendary Lotus, commuting to Moscow, and suckering his partner into doing his other job.

What are you up to these days? We are re-doing the Lotus space, though we don’t know what to call it yet. We’re doing it with Mark [Birnbaum] from Tenjune. Just yesterday we got the plans for Double Seven in New York, which we’re trying to re-open on Gansevoort Street near Los Dados by the end of the year. I don’t know if I believe it myself ...

Rose Bar partner and creative director Nur Khan rocks out with Metallica in his living room, trains with Shaolin monks, holds court at his drinkery, and caps off the night at the Beatrice Inn. Just don’t ask him to sing karaoke.

Point of Origin: I actually converted a decrepit old movie theater in Connecticut (my home state). It was one of those old balcony movie theaters. I rebuilt that and turned it into a live music venue, a rock venue. I did that while Diana Ross’ husband was my partner, and we brought in Ron Delsner. Delsner was promoting Roseland and the Academy Theater at the time. This was probably 1990-91. I was commuting to Wall Street. We had this great music venue, and we took all the acts that came to Roseland and the Academy and rerouted them up to Connecticut. It was like a smaller version of the Ritz. Back then, there was such huge talent coming out of this venue: Radiohead, Nirvana, Pearl Jam. We called it the Marquee Theater.