The New York club scene has changed drastically in the last few years due to clubs closing down and music trends changing.  NYC makes clubs have a dance permit so if you are in a bar without this permit you will not be allowed to dance. Talk about freedom of speech or expression for that matter!
Thursdays you will find college night which has now been a NYC tradition for several years now even though the venue keeps changing. Thursday night information can be found at GayCollegeParty.com.
Friday Nights in NYC
Splash on Friday nights was fun until happy hour ended then it was back to the hotel to relax. We went back to Splash about 11 and it was $20 cover. Around 11:30pm we went over to Mr. Blacks which had a line outside we waited in a good thirty minutes. We walked into Mr. Blacks and it was not even real how many people were crammed into this dungeon-like room. This club is a basement with a few mirror balls and the oldest cash registers you have ever seen. Mr. Blacks had good music if you could stand to move or breathe – much less dance. I was already beginning to feel that people in NYC have to sway instead of dance at some of these popular nightclubs. Mr. Blacks is on Broadway and Bleeker. It is next to a Café and I did not see a sign for the club but the line outside tells you’re at the right place.
We left Mr. Blacks (I have no idea what that name means) to go over to Opaline which is a younger crowd with a few hotties. Opaline had great music and pretty strong drinks (from what I can actually remember). Opaline is on Varick below Houston like 2 blocks. You will see all the boys outside smoking.
Saturday Nights in NYC
Element (Houston and Avenue A) is a nice space with good music $10 before 12:30 and it is in-between the circuit daddies and the hip hop teens with cute boys between 21-35. Element is a fun and popular spot on Saturdays but we had to go to Roxy to see DJ Offer Nissim from Tel Aviv. This was a John Blair event at Roxy and was a semi-circuity event but the music was amazing. I will have to put DJ Nissim in my favorite ten dj’s.  Roxy, of course is the club that has been around for years and featured live performances from celebrities like Madonna who performed earlier in 2006, while promoting her new album.
You will hear a lot of the locals in NYC complain that Roxy is too much money to get in since it was $35 unless you had a John Blair card at $25 (save $10), or you could save money with a printed flyer from JBlair.com.
Roxy also has a reputation as one local New-Yorker said it has “lots of drugs and muscle boys usually 30+ with their shirts off…. at least the 2 times I was there in the last four years it was like that.â€Â I found it to be a mix of mostly the circuit crowd with some younger guys 18+ here and there too. There were a lot of coupled people at this club.
Roxy is huge and has lots of stages and boxes to dance on. It also has a room upstairs room that plays pop, hip hop, and house music.
Club Heaven used to be the place to be on Saturdays for the 18+ Crowd but it was mostly dead the weekend we visited NYC.   We found that most of the 18+ Saturday night crowd stayed in for Sunday night or went to Roxy.
Sundays
First the bad news. Club Avalon was seized for not paying taxes or drugs or something. All I know is there are signs all over the building with big red “SEIZEDâ€. There are also signs that asked if “anyone had seen illegal activity†on this property. Club Avalon is the old Church building was featured in the movie Party Monster and has had many great dj’s spin there including DJ Irene who I saw there awhile back. This is sad news because I loved going to Avalon it is a true NYC experience.
John Blair moved his crowd over to the Roxy on Sunday nights but that did not work out too well because there were people leaving disappointed that it cost so much and it was not very busy. They were charging over $20 to enter on a Sunday night so that is expensive for a Sunday even in New York.
Club Spirit, a 18+ club, was also closed down. It was located next to some straight clubs on 27th between 10th and 11th.
Club Hiro turned out to the best place to go on Sundays in NYC. Hiro is located inside the Maritime Hotel at 16th and 19th Avenue. Hiro is normally a straight club turned gay/mixed on Sundays. There was a line outside around 11:30pm to get in this club. There was no admission but the drinks were more expensive that most of the other NYC clubs we had been to. The music was very lounge sounding and did not get better until later in the night and it finally picked up. Hiro had a great sound system but the lounge-type music they were playing early in the night made me want to scream.
Hiro had huge muscle dancers on the boxes early in the night then let everyone get up on the stages and dance. It was funny watching them dance to this lounge beat. I don’t know how anyone could possible do more than sway around to this music. I always like a club that lets people dance on the box instead of having to stare at their dancers all night long.
Hiro inside was a light show that looked more like flashing pumpkins instead of club lights. They had all these urban outfitters looking lights hanging from the ceiling that flashed in orange all night long. It was a very low-lighted club (which is a good thing most the time) and took a long time to walk from one side of the building to another. They had an upstairs lounge but it had bad acoustics and was something similar to a house party. Overall Hiro was fun but I would hate for it to be the only choice for the queens to go on Sundays in NYC.
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