"KNOW THE TIME TO OVERLOAD...

Godzilla
E side of Orchard, S of Houston
LES
Manhattan
[The Word On The Street spoke true, though it took a long time to find this place (and it wasn't really a finding but instead a being taken to)...wild and expensive. I am very ambivalent about the whole affair.] [You reach for the door, but before your hand touches door pops open; you're nearly yanked into the foyer where you pay twenty and get the full arms-up-pat-down while your money is slipped through a slot in the wall resulting in another door opening, another yanking: into a loud poorly-DJed scene where a limited number of tiny drinks cost ten each, and you're the only one bothered by this since you're the only one not hopped up on somethingerother; and still no one is dancing except the woman behind you on the balcony who has been shaking it with the constancy of a machine and yells as you collect your coat, "You're leaving?" to which you respond, "Yes, and why don't you come with me?" "I can't stop dancing!" and judging from the fact that her shirt is translucent with perspiration, she's probably correct. The plants hanging from the ceiling are a nice new touch. Even daylight can be terrifying.] [Uh-oh. It's 5:47 a.m., a Friday night or a Saturday morning, depending on how you look at things.—MD2020 and I have just returned home...after a night of work, caught Last Call at the smoking lounge, where we were permitted to drink until 5, at which time we hopped a cab to Orchard, only to discover...where the fuck is Godzilla? The entire street was clothed in aluminum roll-down security gates. We walk home, as we have done so many times, rapping pseudo-beat-poetry in the expanses of The Grid. By the way, can anyone say what's become of this place? Is it time to pinpoint the "new" Manhattan after-hours option?] [OK, so maybe Godzilla's still in biz, but the way in which I found this out is absolutely unacceptable: see Agent 00-summer.]

Belle Valentine

Good Times Bar and Grill
Metropolitan @ Berry
Northside (Willy-B)
Brooklyn
{ BrooklynBelle 10/13/00: I had a few drinks behind me that could speak for themselves...and I found myself stumbling in a drizzling rain at 4am on a recent Tuesday night. Ahead on Metropolitian and Berry, I see bright lights. A movie set. Friends await hovering around the craft services table and I join them. At 4am in Williamsburg there is no food to be had and I was grateful. Fortunately, The Good Times Bar saw it's opportunity to make some extra cash that night and we all needed something to wash down our cheeseburgers. I ushered myself in along with the grips and P.A.'s. An older gentleman behind the bar welcomed us in with flourish. He told us stories. He turned up the jukebox every few minutes and when a potent salsa number erupted he immediately escorted me to the floor to dance with him. I held my own. One of his hands was knarled with what looked like arthritis and he caught me looking at it. "The Mafia" he whispered. "What?" I questioned! He continued, "I was A fencing champion! 20 years ago. The Mafia wanted this bar and I wouldn't sell it to them...so they sliced my palm with a knife... I still fence, though." He returned to the bar and brought out two swords. We spent the next hour taking turns fencing him in the back room. He gave us good tips. We helped ourself to the bar. He didn't charge us anything. I'm going back soon.} { Hogo de Bergerac 1/27/01, 7:22 a.m.: After hours entertainment features exciting events, such as 'Fencing with the bar owner (sabres) at 4am', when the bar never even opened, in the first place. After losing embarrassingly to your host (who was an Olympic class swordsman in 1980) you can try your luck at 'disarming the nun-chuck wielding proprietor with your bare hands at 5am'. All in good fun, my friends, Hogo steers no one that far into the wilds. That small gash and bruise on one's temple will be the delight of one's friends for the week to come, particularly in light of the hairline fracture in the kneecap of one's host, as a result of shots traded in those little plastic cups.}

Keenan's Piano Bar
204 @ Broadway
Inwood
Manhattan
{ Eclipse the Gum 12/29/00: The original blue-collar debaucherie. Here was smacked with a pool stick. Here had a dirty cop try to sell me drugs. Here was exiled for seven months. Here drank hours for the price of three drinks. Here has tempered over the past four, but nostalgia rules the drunken.}

Kokie's
error 404
Northside (Willy-B)
Brooklyn
You know the score, kittlings. { BrooklynBelle 2/4/00: Stay no longer than an hour...or depending on the season...before dawn rears its unforgiving forehead. This is a tried and true method.} [Y'all still know the score, but do you know this song? If you don't, well, it's easy to learn, so everybody now, and a 1 and a 2 and a 3 (no, let's make it waltz time):
Poor sigh-borg civilian,
I'm going to drop in, oh.
On the northside east avenue they whisper,
Even the random alum.
I'm making a mistake,
Though my ass I should shake,
My sure-okays number a million.
L train me over for ten mins,
I'll never be a poor sigh-borg civilian.] [Augury takes its point of departure from shreds of memory which cannot be sewn back into a whole garment.—The madness of Kleist; or, the madness of referring to Kleist in a note on an after-hours club. Bonk, crack, inspector. So I am naked but not cold, exposed to prophecy:  not going (back, over) for a long, long time. Door-rejection can be born lightly as long as drunken carloads aren't screaming about drugs and throwing bottles.] { gray-Neo and e-Lux 4/9/00: We're a lot less set than Theo and his hypersensitive "not going (back, over) for a long, long time," so one night with PK1 we went over there in the pouring rain to only find out that K's closed for a couple of weeks...what! are they on vacation or something?! We're not exactly regulars or anything at this place yet this closed thing can't be a good sign for those who are.} { BrooklynBelle 5/4/00: Kittlings BEWARE!!!! If in fact this haven/hell is open (they've closed their doors some weekends past to lay low)...Enter and leave with goods at your own risk. The man with the badge is lurking and waiting on corners in the early hours waiting to frisk you and cuff you after you try and abscond from this spicy, degenerate dwelling with the plastic packet. Though, I heard an interesting and amusing urban myth for those who dare...Recently, a young woman was leaving the establishment and escorted aside and searched...and although she did have on her person the materials in question...APPARENTLY!!!...these materials were scientifically researched and proved to be so below par...that it was deemed unfit to be titled as such and she is still considered to be an upright citizen...albeit lucky and stupid. Stop getting what you pay for, I say and go the fuck home at 4.} [The Word On The Street...no longer technically after-hours...eh? While apparently still along a more illicit pathway, Kokie's is closing at 4 these days. There goes—going, going, gone—the neighborhood.]

Mary Lou's—RIP
N side of 9, 5/6 Ave
Greenwich
Manhattan
Infamous, infamous, if you've got some cash to burn, swing through around, say, 4:30, be nice to the junior doorman, and
[1/23/00: At about 5:30 this morning, I am met by a closed door, a closed door through which can be seen, not an enormous sea of wacky after-hours characters, but instead two elderly Italian men quietly drinking wine at a small table. I peek through the door, and their response is a back and forth arm gesture that seems to mean that this after-hours open secret got itself a little too open.—Can anyone confirm the death of this dear old standby?] [Word On The Street is "Nevermore." RIP, Mary Lou's.]

Club 2000—RIP?
24, 6/7
Chelsea
Manhattan
["CLUB 2000 / THE ONLY PLACE TO BE / 145 WEST 24 STREET / BETWEEN 6TH & 7TH AVENUE," says the neon green biz card I found recently in a box of things  for sort. Handwritten verso: "Deranged, Queen of the Night." Well, that  is my scree, and suddenly it all came back to me: tottering out of Veruka around Last Call one sultry night; a man wearing a satiny cape and shoes completely covered by duct tape; he asked me for a cigarette, then declined because unfiltered cigarettes stick to his lips; he offered me this neon green card and assured me that, if I mentioned him, Deranged, Queen of the Night, I would get in like—snap! I never checked it out, and I regret that, I guess.]

...OR THE TIME TO BRING UNDER." -Karp