There’s a really interesting article in this week’s New York magazine about the horrors of West 27th Street, NYC’s de facto themepark of nighttime debauchery (and more recently, murder and mayhem). While the future of the block (and NYC nightlife in general) is as “uncertain” as ever, I found the descriptions of the recent past especially fascinating.

I came to NYC in 1995, and like any good NYU student, hit the clubs right away. And yeah, the club scene at the time was a lot different than it is now. But that’s no big surprise: nightlife will always be in a state of change and evolution; what I find fascinating is the article’s description of bottle service as a practice that drastically and irrevocably changed the face of nightlife in the city.

See, coming here in the mid-90s as I did, bottle service was already a fact of New York nightlife. I never knew a time in which a thousand dollars couldn’t buy you (and by “you” I mean people that are not me!) the “privilege” of sitting at certain reserved tables and mixing your own drinks. To my friends and me that was always just part of the scene here–we had no idea what a new development it actually was. And whether or not you buy into the idea that it’s a practice that ultimately opened up the clubs to a host of “undesirables” that have now “ruined” the glory that was West 27th for everyone, it’s an interesting theory nonetheless.

Oh wait. But it didn’t quite ruin it for everyone, now did it? Really just for the celebrities that used to hang out there, since now they’ve fled from a street that’s closed to traffic (no more getting dropped off right in front of your club of choice) and swarming with cops, tourists, and rich-but-undesirable patrons.

Aw, sad. My heart goes out to the poor George Clooneys of the world, who now have to find somewhere else to feel like a “regular guy.” And especially to all those club owners that have bottles to sell… Sigh.

As for West 27th itself, well, who really cares. I haven’t been there since college, anyway.

[graphic by L-Dopa, from the New York article]