“We’re booked through September on keg service,” said Alex Mynatt, a bartender at Superdive, which opened earlier this month. Mynatt credited online press as the secret to the bar’s straight-out-the-gate success: When word gets out that you let customers actually mix their own drinks, the masses are bound to get curious.

“People ask us, ‘why do you expect us to tip you if we’re the ones making the drinks?’” said Mynatt, who teaches the often heavy-handed pourer how to shake, stir and twist like a pro. “It’s obvious. Because we’re the only bar that lets you do that.” Stingy people! At $6 per cocktail and $5 for any one of four beers on tap, 20 percent’s a pittance.

On a recent Sunday night, the crowd at Superdive looked to be a small group of soon-to-be regulars steadily trickling in, some delighting in their turn to play bartender or DJ by scrolling through the bar’s iTunes library. But the large space remained mostly empty: no one forcing his way into the spotlight on the bar’s massive piano, no women occupying the isolated row of chairs one website lovingly deemed “the fuck-off seats.” Um, what part of $6 cocktails are people not grasping?

Across the street, fellow newcomer Destination (a side project of the folks at Bowery Wine Co.) markets itself as a measured departure from the dive-bar circuit, with fewer—or rather, different— bells and whistles. Step inside the front door, which is guarded by something akin to a bridge’s troll, and bask in the trendy glow of low lighting, lounge seating and specialty cocktails.Would you like a champagne-based drink known as the Mile High Club? Of course you would. What about a margarita Jell-O shot, complete with a gummy worm, or a gooey snack aptly named the rice whiskey treat?

Destination promises to start cooking up food more substantial than alcoholic candies, but for now the menu is all liquid. And yummy! The Truck Stop Lemonade or the Slappledapolous Islands Rum Punch are perfect examples of the dangers that come with mixing drinks well enough that the alcohol is all but tasteless. Our advice? Stop by Destination for an after-work cocktail or beer—there are 10 on tap—and then do your heavy hitting at Superdive. A good stop along the way, Destination is a perfectly remodeled low-key hangout, but there’s nothing to write home about behind that swanky facade. Take a Jell-O shot for the road, though, just to be safe.

> Superdive

200 Ave. A (betw. E. 12th & E. 13th Sts.), 646- 448-4854

> Destination

211 Ave. A (betw. E. 13th & E. 14th Sts.), 212- 388-9844

“I still listen to the music that I listened to in high school, which was the ’90s,” said Arfin, whose book, Dear Diary, chronicles some of her high school experiences. “I was like, total hardcore punk riot grrrl, and after that I was a total hip-hop raver.”

The music at Loser is great, and it’s a huge relief to know that for the first time in a while, Usher’s “Love in this Club” cannot and will not be played.

“Me and Greg differ on the music,” Arfin said. “I play mostly Dee Lite and Jay-Z and Biggie, along with some alt and punk stuff that no one wants to hear. He’s into Alanis and Liz Phair—more commercial stuff.”

“Usually from around midnight to 1 a.m. I’ll do an hour-long hip-hop set,” she said. “It’s just really hard to go from Alice in Chains to Bobby Brown, you know?”

Oh, well. Whatever. Nevermind.

The sound system at Santos’ surrounds the floor on all sides and blasts at an “11” on Spinal Tap’s scale of one to 10, making the weekly event the loudest party you’ve never been to. Last week’s show served as a birthday party for Jonathan Toubin (pictured), a frequent DJ at the club and mastermind behind New York Night Train records. Brooklyn’s Golden Triangle and Michigan’s Awesome Color performed—the latter meriting an appearance by Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore—as well as go-goer Anna Copacabana and guest DJs. Projections from The Mighty Robot AV Squad. Phew! Monday nights around here get a little hectic.

Toubin’s party was the last of the secret performances, but not to worry: The events from now on are “declassified,” which will hopefully translate into greater audience turnout and mo’ money for W.K., who must need a new pair of white jeans by now. Toubin, for one, doesn’t mind the change; he’s more interested in packing ‘em in for the DJing that’s paying his bills.

“It used to be, if people wanted to dance, the music DJs would play had to be techno or contemporary pop and hip-hop,” said Toubin, who spins rock music. “Now, a lot of people who are involved in different types of music are getting interested in dancing. It’s a really good culture change.”

When the South Street Seaport was New York’s mecca of commerce and trade, the saying used to go “All streets lead to South Street.” Nowadays, the only things going to South Street are tourists who’ve just had pictures taken with the Wall Street bull and his giant balls. Seaport Past and Future, a free exhibit of the South Street Seaport redevelopment plan by General Growth Properties, opened last Tuesday night in the hopes of giving the area a much-needed makeover.

Partygoers ran the gamut from scenesters like Brooke Geahan of Accompanied Literary Society fame to curious historians and Wall Street douchebags, like Craig “I fly onto the island in my helicopter each morning” Reilly. Reilly was looking forward to going to a strip club later and didn’t seem particularly interested in the exhibition. Luckily, his friend David Goldoff, a partner at the Camelot Realty Group, had some musings on the plan.

“This neighborhood used to be prostitutes and fishmongers,” he said, somewhat ruefully. “Now it’s Bugaboos and MacLarens.”

It’s this image of the South Street Seaport that James Sanders, curator and designer of Seaport Past and Future, hopes to correct.

“The seaport today is not reflective of the rest of the city the way that it used to be,” Sanders said. “It’s like a cat with nine lives, always being reborn. So far it’s had about five or six.”

Sanders, a seaport regular since the 1970s, said the charm of the area is its ability to balance continuity and change. Apparently the neighborhood drunks agree.

“Sanders!” one man yelled as we entered a bar nearby the exhibition, the crowd subsequently breaking into applause.

“The South Street Seaport will still be for tourists,” another project coordinator whispered to me. “That’s the whole point of a new development in New York. But this [redevelopment] is an opportunity for everyday New Yorkers to also partake in the area. The South Street Seaport needs New Yorkers.”

In an attempt to capture the energy of a time when the East Village was a playground for junkies and gangs, squatters and the homeless, photographer Q. Sakamaki recently released a book of photos spanning 20 years in the park—bounded by avenues A and B between 7th and 10th streets—aptly titled Tompkins Square Park.

“I’ve wanted to make this book for a while now,” said Sakamaki. “It was a big moment in New York for the struggle against gentrification. In the last five years, photographic technology made the book possible. Then the 20th anniversary [of the riots] came, so three years ago I decided to do it now.”

Sakamaki—who has covered war zones overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq—was interested in documenting not only the activists and supporters of gentrification, but the homeless themselves. “My core interest has always been in human beings and ongoing emotions,” he said.

Tompkins Square Park is homage to the struggle against gentrification that residents faced, but, to be sure, is not a means of romanticizing the poverty that followed. Rather, it is an acknowledgement of the initial loss of what Sakamaki called “a sense of freedom.”

“I don’t completely denounce gentrification,” he said. “Even I think it is part of natural human development. But if gentrification is too drastic and too quick, if it does not protect the needy, I strongly oppose it.”

Starr—whose actual age is “somewhere between 25 and death”—celebrated her annual 21st birthday party last weekend at tranny landmark Lucky Cheng’s on the Lower East Side. Showgirls danced the night away onstage while a balloon artist “blew” penis after inflatable penis, Starr smiling and schmoozing from her table of honor all the while.

“I don’t like to garnish attention,” said Starr, all glamour and a hint of nipple, of her low-profile daytime alter ego. “This is more of a character. It’s a commodity.”

The crowd at Starr’s party was more or less divided into two categories: men dressed as women and men lusting after men dressed as women. Bobby, a man in the latter category who preferred not to give his last name, asserted himself as straight but curious. He came to the party alone and planned to leave in similar fashion, as snagging a date was “not realistic”. A boy can look, though! “You never know what I could bump into,” Bobby said, presumably with no pun intended.

When she’s not hosting parties for throngs of loyal fans, Starr keeps busy maintaining her website, filming movies, developing a line of adult toys—including a life-sized doll of herself—and staying forever young with plastic surgery and injectables. Sounds like all work and no play for Starr, who has no real plans of settling down soon. It’s hard to find a man not threatened by her career and status, she said. After all, Would you want people to have access to an anatomically correct doll of your girlfriend?