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According to the Post, the number of New York City bars and clubs that applied for and received a required permit allowing them to stay open all night on New Year’s Eve dropped for the second straight year. Only 165 New York City locations managed to submit the application on time and received the permits, which allow them to stay open until 8AM on January 1st, a significant drop from 2008, when 388 bars applied for an received the permits. Last year, only 39 bars heeded the SLA’s new requirement to submit their application 45 days before December 31, forcing the SLA to extend the deadline. Don’t expect SLA savior Dennis Rosen to do it again. Just 31 days left to make your plans!
· Many New Year’s Pub Permits Get The Eve-ho [NY Post]
· SLA Extends Deadline For New Years Permits [~ENY~]

Via eater

It’s that time of year when thanks, presents and awards are given out. My experience–okay, they mean my age–often has me asked to judge some award or another. I’ve been around a really long time. When I started out a club was something you hit a drunk on the head with at a saloon. The good people over at Night Club and Bar have asked me to judge some categories for them this year for their Nightclub and Bar Awards, “To recognize and applaud the best in U.S. nightclub and bar concepts and operation”. There are concerns that revealing this top secret info will result in corruption or subtle persuasion. I must agree that shocking as it may seem, some people in the club industry cannot be trusted to play fair. So I wont tell you what categories I’m judging, but I’ll say this: If you are a nominee, don’t call me about anything. No need to catch up, or chew the fat, or see how I’m doing. I’m doing great. If you were me you’d be doing great too.

And the nominees are…
Bar Awards Categories
●Bartender of the Year: Sponsored by Absolut Vodka
●Beer Bar of the Year
●Cocktail Lounge of the Year: Sponsored by Absolut Vodka
●Hotel Bar of the Year
●Small Wonder Bar of the Year
●Sports Bar of the Year
●Wine Bar of the Year
●Nightclub Awards Categories
Club Awards Categories
●Mega-Club of the Year
●New Club of the Year
●Nightclub of the Year
●Ongoing Promotion/Party/Event of the Year
●Resident DJ of the Year
●Single Promotion/Party/Event of the Year
●Ultra-Lounge of the Year
These awards will be presented at a VIP reception at the Nightclub and Bar Convention and Trade Show, March 8-10. It’s the 25th anniversary of Nightclub and Bar and they are to be both congratulated and taken very seriously. For further information try nightclubandbarawards.com.
The other day, a bunch of guys and dolls from my generation of clubbing were sharing stories and Powers Irish whiskey at a dive bar in the l.e.s. See, it’s not all Boom Boom Room, 1Oak and Avenue for your humble servant. I likes to mingle with the peeps too. We were having one of those back-in-the-day discussions, and it was presented that the big difference between now and then is that everybody who hangs in Williamsburg today were the bread and butter of cool clubs then. There is a lot of merit to this argument. I had been to BK earlier in the evening. I go there as often as I drink and hit a few spots. It is getting harder for me to celebrate the validity of New York nightlife when every bk place I visited was vibrant and packed, and more importantly devoid of bottle service baboons. Uncle Stevie finally discovers Brooklyn! It’s not at all like that. The mega clubs from back when had hipsters as filler rather than the frat boys. The hipsters just don’t bother much with NYC joints, as few in the city cater to them. Still there is Brooklyn cool and Beatrice cool, and that gap is so big you could drive a PBR delivery truck through it.
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The hotel lounge craze refuses to die. Coming in the new year, Hotel on Rivington will be opening its new CV lounge, while the Gansevoort will give it another go, opening its ground- floor Provocateur bar. And later in the year, SoHo’s Grand Street Hotel will rise over the site that once held the Moon dance Diner, including a VIP lounge. And, for those missing the temporarily closed Jane Ballroom in the Jane Hotel, it reopened for business, quietly, two weeks ago.

via pagesix

While the details surrounding the Tiger Woods post Thanksgiving domestic auto mishap are still murky, it appears there may be a mistress involved name Rachel Uchitel. It is rumored that the squeaky clean Woods is very “friendly” with Miss Uchitel, so friendly that Wood’s wife picked up a golf club and started swinging at him at the dinner table.

Uchitel is a curious character in her own right.  A former Bloomberg television producer, her fiance was tragically killed in 9/11, causing her to suffer a self-described “breakdown”.  She eventually reinvented herself in the nightlife world, working VIP relations for Pink Elephant in NYC, Tao in Las Vegas, and most recently was a short-lived partner at the Griffin in NYC.

It was at the Griffin where she was reportedly “rubbing shoulders with Woods” in June of this year.  Her “relations” with clients have garnered her quite some home-wrecker infamy, starting with an affair with married television actor David Boreanaz. Nevertheless, Uchitel has been somewhat tight-lipped about her fame-whoring ways, stating that she “never kisses and tells”.  That being said, she has been snapped with the likes of Steven Dorff, perennial D-list wrangler, and Ryan Seacrest to name a few or her high-profile friends (romances?).

In the summer of 2007, when Rachel worked the door at the Southampton nightclub Dune, she told the Newsday that her favorite line was when people say to her:

“Rachel told me to come by.” “Dude,” she says, “I’m Rachel, and that’s the most idiotic thing you can say.”

Ah yes, priceless indeed.

Via Guest of a Guest

After Alan Richman and Robert Sietsema laid into it, the latest to join in the backlash against the much-ballyhooed burger at Bill’s Bar are greasy-grub enthusiast NYC Food Guy and, perhaps more damningly, Times critic Sam Sifton. The latter says the burger is “amazingly both crusty and underdone, underseasoned; it soaks its supermarket bun into a pulpy submission. It has no flavor. It is deeply uninteresting.” Interesting. With that, we’re going to turn our minds away from special sauce and begin to contemplate … cranberry sauce! Have a lovely Thanksgiving, folks — we’ll see you Monday.

Bill’s Bar and Burger [NYT]
Bill’s Bar & Burger in Meatpacking District Overrated By Critics [NYC Food Guy]
The Early Word: Bill’s Bar & (Meh) Burger [Fork in the Road/VV]
Earlier: Can Alan Richman’s Takedown Kill the Bill’s Burger?

Via Grub Street