In case you somehow missed the eerily prescient (OK, maybe they were just playing the odds) "Britney, We Love You" ads adorning virtually every bus stop and billboard in Los Angeles over the past month or so, TMZ TV, TMZ.com's reverse-engineered television product, debuted last night, ushering in an exciting new era in celebrity telejournalism in which the word "douche" can be used to describe their misbehaving subjects. (Somewhere, Billy Bush is silently mouthing the delicious insult, working up the nerve to slip it in to his next Access Hollywood voiceover.) While we were underwhelmed by the premiere episode's big "get," some security camera footage of Pulp Fiction gimp-keeper Peter Greene's inept license plate heist, we did quite enjoy the above footage of drunk chicks stumbling around outside of Les Deux, babbling incoherently in the general direction of a TMZ cameraman while occasionally flashing their goodies, as it saves us the ten dollars in parking fees we'd have to spend to experience the most satisfying part of a night out in Hollywood.

When the Lower East Side hotspot the Box was raided last week, the accepted narrative was that it had to do with drugs, dirty drugs and the celebrities who do drugs. (And everyone pointed at poor Cuba Gooding Jr!) This was the story put forth by the Post as well as several eyewitness accounts. Simon Hammerstein, who owns the Box along with Serge Becker and a couple of other dudes, said the raid had to do with some unsigned form or something. Then we got this missive in the inbox in the middle of the night. Keep in mind our correspondent's email address includes the word "boi" and he was probably high out of his mind.

Why, we wondered, is everything so damn slow out on the town? Besides the usual pre-Labor Day vacation whatnots, of course. Page Six clears it up: Nobody's here!

Serge Becker's nightlife portfolio includes the perennially hip Joe's Pub, the now-closed Area, and the snooch-magnet Bowery Bar. Recently his properties have expanded to include virtually all of the Lower East Side hotspots: Club 205, La Esquina and the Box. The last week has been a tough one for Serge. The Box was raided and shut down (temporarily, we hear) and now word comes in that La Esquina too was raided and closed, due to its complete and utter illegality! As the Post noted, the Box raid occasioned an exodus of celebrities onto the asphalt jungle of Chrystie street. It could have gone worse. The fuzz could have found the mountains of cocaine that went into the eightballs that reportedly are included with table service. And all agree that the raid on La Esquina—it lacked a certificate of occupancy—was inevitable. But two's a trend, and it makes us suspicious. What—or who—is behind Becker's troubles?

"The Rivington Club taps into the same air of exclusivity as many of the city's hot spots, but its wares are kicks, not cocktails. The front door has a buzzer but not a sign; the tiny foyer gives way to a posh interior with red carpeting, black leather banquettes, and a chandelier. The new, vintage, and rare shoes are exhibited in a grid of individually lighted cubbyholes and a locked glass display box, and customers are perfectly willing to drop entire paychecks on the latest limited-edition Nikes. On Saturday, though, there was no mistaking the appropriate door at Rivington and Clinton: Carefully dressed kids peppered the storefront for a chance to get in—they couldn't—while two huge bouncers stood appointed on either side of a minidressed glam girl." All this plus Moby, and that fucking bench. God, we hate New York sometimes. [VV]

Sometimes two mysterious and crappy things that seem like they should be related actually are. This is great, since it reduces two crappy things into just one. For instance! The gutting sense of wonder at why the "hottest celebrity hangout" is actually the upstairs of a cruddy Soho cafe was somewhat eroded by today's revelation that the owners of "Upstairs" (as Cafe Bari is called) are the swarthy brothers Martignetti. Les freres Martignetti are the proprietors of the eponymous Bar Martignetti, which is to pink-shirted preppy dickheads what an empty parking lot by I-95 is to day laborers: A place to gather and drink and await desperately-needed attention. With that, the fog of mystery dissipates, leaving only the stench of knowledge in its place.

As it turns out, it was not Social Hollywood that was proudly reigniting the soak-and-poke torch tragically extinguished by the ceremonial dumping out of the last tubful of the venerated Splash spa's overchlorinated, DNA-rich waters. A note we just received from a helpful publicist reveals that it was the neighboring BOULEVARD3 (all caps theirs) that recently offered its upscale clientele the exciting opportunity to enjoy an evening of delicious food, top-shelf cocktails, and unrepentant, jacuzzi-enhanced fornication:

Curbed LA notes a mysterious delivery of multiple hot tubs to Social Hollywood, speculating that their sudden appearance might be a harbinger of one of those charming, "actual famous people go here!" Entourage location shoots. It's certainly a possibility, but another explanation could be that with the recent closure of local soak-and-poke institution Splash, Social's savvy owners might merely be moving to fill the void left by its shuttering by offering a more upscale, fucking-in-a-disease-riddled-crockpot experience to its patrons.

We were all ready to place coins on the eyes of clubby old West Chelsea, say the mourner's kaddish and move on. But the neighborhood—once the festering apotheosis of New York clubdom but of late home only to the sordid, the has-been and the almost-ran—isn't dead yet. As New York reports, J. E. Englebert, the Staten Island nightlife entrepreneur from whose loins sprang Quo, Pre:Post and Retox, is opening a new venture in the neighborhood: "In October [Englebert and his partners will] open a 4,000-square-foot lounge called Suzie Wong's." The name comes from Richard Mason's 1957 novel The World of Suzie Wong, later turned into a ballet (pictured!), about a Chinese prostitute with a heart of gold. Kind of like those who hang out in West Chelsea, minus the ethnic qualifier. And swapping crotch for heart and crabs for gold.

Last week Page Six somewhat vaingloriously proclaimed that they knew where the latest "celebrity sanctuary" was but, of course they weren't going to tell us if we didn't already know. Well, Richard "Dicky J" Johnson, we already know. As Down By The Hipster relays, the bar is cleverly called Upstairs— and it's in the most unlikely of places.

If you watch only one video of a vicious catfight taking place in the parking lot of a Hollywood club today, make sure it's this TMZ clip of the melee at Les Deux on Saturday night, where indiscriminately aimed bitch-slaps could have proved far more deadly than any drive-by gunfire outside of Teddy's. While the part where one of the combatants loses her top is nice, the footage's highlight is easily the moment when a lucky fight fan claims a freshly liberated hair extension as a souvenir of the ritualistic actress-scalping he's just witnessed.

Secret bars: Kind of awesome, or also kind of annoying, especially if one has to enter it through a phone booth in a cheesy hot dog stand as one does at PDT on St. Mark's. We've made our peace—but one woman has had enough! In the Post, Maureen Callahan declares war on PDT. The weirdest part of the story isn't that this article (secret bars are so over) has been written about many times before (here and here and here) but that Callahan picks such an unassuming target.

According to an item in today's Page Six, there is at least one place in town where celebrities and industry power players can enjoy a refreshing cocktail without being surveilled by media spies, an old-school establishment that deals harshly with the interlopers who might text news of their whereabouts directly into the evil mainframes of the Tabloid-Industrial Complex. This is a tale of Aniston, protected:

With the ongoing incarceration and/or rehabilitation of other wildly popular, troubled starlets hampering the dissemination of breaking news about their fluid intake, we turn to Us Weekly for up-to-the-minute information on what the last free member of the Lindsay/Paris/Britney troika has been drinking, courtesy of a club manager who doesn't believe in treating the consumption of a couple of cocktails by a famous person as a shameful secret:

In the real New York, bar bathrooms serve as fitting rooms for trying on potential pairings, an all-important step before making that one-night commitment. Luckily for us, Slut Machine has been around all the blocks. In this occasional column, she rates which restrooms of N.Y.C.'s watering holes are best for non-traditional restroom activities.

When emo-troubadour Pete Wentz opened Angels and Kings, a bar in the East Village, our douche canary in our douche mineshaft keeled over and died. First of all, Pete Wentz is going to be there. As he tells Page Six: "Yeah, I'm just gonna be local and drink umbrella drinks." So this isn't your normal dive. According to one of his business partners, this is a dive where "anyone can go and have sex in the bathroom and not get in trouble." So it's located in international waters? We sat down with Maura Johnston, editor of our music blog Idolator, to discuss the musical and societal implications of the bar the kids like to call AK-47.

Boucarou Lounge, at 64 E. 1st Street, is enjoying its soft opening. As per the PRopaganda: "At 2000 square feet, Boucarou will be the first comfortably sized lounge on the LES, offering an elegant and sophisticated atmosphere, complete with a sliding skylight mezzanine. Designer Breanna Carlson crafted the subdued gold and mocha-hued d cor to be upscale yet laid back, and chic but down to earth." We'll be the judges of that—by stealing the one good idea Harper's ever had.

The newly opened West 55th Street restaurant Amalia recently unveiled its downstairs lounge, D'Or, a cavernous stab at downtown cool. Let's visit the upstairs first. Owned by Vikram Chakral of the OTT Dream Hotel and Greg Brier, Amalia is glorious midtown chic, an 8,000 square-foot hyperbolic dining "experience" complete with a portrait gallery (with framed paintings on the ceiling—CEILING!) and a black chandelier (black!).

We knew that it was only a matter of time before a news organization with Us Weekly's vast investigative resources would finally marshal the courage to finally expose Hollywood's Drug Problem, a social scourge that threatens to devour our finest, excess-prone famous people, greedily gnaw at what's left of the meat on their malnourished frames, then vomit back up their coke-bleached bones into the nearest luxury rehabilitation receptacle, preferably one with easy beach access. How bad has the crisis gotten? Says a highly placed Us "scenester" who's obviously been to at least one bar in WeHo in the last two years, "Coke is so not a big deal for young stars in Hollywood. It's like having a drink." Indeed, the public consumption of illegal narcotics is now so accepted that many of the city's finer nightlife establishments will deliver punchbowls brimming with blow (in a variety of flavors) directly to one's VIP booth, where parties can unashamedly blow rails at their leisure, eliminating the onetime annoyance of having one's drug use rushed by a bitch with a shy bladder constantly banging on one's bathroom stall door.

That's what Metafilter's internerds are currently trying to decide. Not that the Third Ave. frathole is lacking for competition: other popular candidates include Mars Bar—"they have always been cleaning up after a fight any time I've been in there" and "most of the staff and clientele resembel [sic] Johnny Thunders as well, including the women"— and "anywhere in TriBeca." We were pleased to see two bars we've worked at on the list, but where are the other two? And have the Metafilterers glaringly omitted any other rank-smelling, overpriced get-drunkeries? We hope you'll help fill in the blanks.

The Worst Bars In New York [MF]
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