Yatrofsky, 29 and heavily eye-linered, will see the publication of her first book, a collection of photography called I <3 Boy, this month. Some 40-odd pages, the book is a study of young, usually naked men—many of them photographed in the one-bedroom in Carroll Gardens that she shares with her boyfriend, Bobby Davidson.

Sitting in that apartment on a weekday afternoon, Yatrofsky discusses her work while Davidson brings me a cup of mint tea before disappearing into his closetsized office. An upright piano dominates the space, while simple framed prints flank the floor-through apartment and a curiously large flat screen TV hides stacked issues of GQ and Butt.

Startlingly skinny and mostly sans bodyhair, Yatrofsky’s models are most-often stretched out on wooden floorboards, with unmade beds—perhaps the one visible on the other end of her home—emerging from the corners of the frames. They all live in New York, mostly Downtown and in Williamsburg. She finds them through referrals from friends, or occasionally by approaching them at parties "if they have an interesting look." Generally, they’re gazing at an unseen, off-camera object and wearing a serene, almost vacant expression.

And while these images are not truly erotic, they aren’t sterile or overly stylized. Their appeal is sensual and soft—a weirdly incongruous beauty that isn’t masculine in the traditional sense, but unquestionably male. Indeed, without being fully conscious of it, Yatrofsky’s book attempts an old Greek idea: a reverence for the appeal of a youthful, pubescent male. The book’s title (read: "I heart boy") is the name of Yatrofsky’s blog. She really does heart boys, and has been shooting pictures of them, many with trou dropped and cocks swinging, since she was an undergrad studying fine arts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her introduction to this sort of work began while taking photos in male strip clubs on the industrial side of the strip for Q Vegas, a local gay rag.

"In Vegas, if it’s all nude, you can’t serve alcohol. So it was like, soft drinks and dicks," she says, sipping water from a coffee mug she sets on the floor. Unlike in straight strip clubs, where taking photos is verboten, dancers—gay and straight—in the all-male clubs loved to ham it up for her camera. Yatrofsky found their candor and comfort with their bodies appealing.

In 2006, Yatrofsky moved to New York to get a masters degree in photography at Parsons. In the hopes of making extra cash with freelance photography, she posted Craigslist ads that led to shooting portraits of a guy who wanted to masturbate on camera. Being from Vegas, Yatrofsky was nonchalant and says now, "Dude, whatever he wants do in his session, as long as he understands that this isn’t a sexual exchange, and he pays his sitting fee."

What interested her was that this client didn’t want the photos, only the experience—enough that he was willing to pay for it.

"Men want to be seen naked," she explains. "And not, like, revealing themselves to someone in an illegal kind of way. I mean, like, they want to feel beautiful and be celebrated for their sexuality."

In exploring this, Yatrofsky—who now pays the bills as a commercial photographer and photo editor— filmed herself shooting pictures of these exhibitionists, who in turn were masturbating on a couch in her school studio. After showing a 30-second loop of one of these sessions in her grad school critiques in 2008, she caused an uproar resulting in faculty in-fighting and advisors suggesting she had psychological problems (one even called her a prostitute, although that misunderstanding has been rectified). Over the winter break, Yatrofsky received a certified letter from the school putting her into academic probation for allowing a man to ejaculate on a piece of school property.

"Still, I felt like I was on to something," she continues. "It was telling me that these reactions were really provocative and need to be explored." (Yatrofsky recently finished work on a film, Sun In My Mouth, using her book’s cover model, which echoes the voyeuristic performances she developed while at Parsons.)

At first glance, Yatrofky’s photos appear to be the work of a gay man. Not that the photos weren’t sexy, but the boyishness and the vacuous gaze did not come across as the typical aesthetic fantasy world of a straight woman. Part of the reason the images are so stimulating is that she captures quite succinctly the art of the gay male gaze. This kind of true-to-life work has already been seen, in a way, in queer publications like Butt and Pinups however, Yatrofsky’s models are younger, more hairless and skinnier. And her choice of model and attention to form does give her a certain edge: These slightly off-looking boys (one complete with a chest tattoo depicting an old camera) have rarely been represented nude.

Weston Bingham, an editor at the gay lifestyle website East Village Boys and the author of the introduction to I <3 Boy, finds her work to be refreshing because it "doesn’t tell you what to think." He likes that the models are not sporting hard-ons or "making their fuck face." He believes that by avoiding the mainstream clichés, "the images turn out to be a lot sexier than what we’re told is supposed to be sexy."

Others have spoken about the anonymity of her photography—indeed, none of the models are named other than en masse in the end credits (including Davidson, her boyfriend, who stands behind Yatrofsky’s vision and wants to be a part of her work).

In speaking to Yatrofsky about the model depictions, I point out that their languid forms, draped across surfaces while looking sublimely bored, reminded me of pictures of slumbering cats.

She laughs. "I like that," she says. "I can totally get that, ‘I’m not giving you anything’ [vibe] and cats are like that. It’s not about their identity, it’s about this collective idea: about male nudity and representation."

Michael & Ping’s, Michael Bruno’s Chinese eatery in Gowanus, looks great on paper: very reasonable prices, a hip location and a “green certified restaurant” status (according to a restaurant association called Dine Green). It’s clear from the start that the restaurant has its heart in the right place; however, the most important part of this four-month-old eatery—the food—is in disarray.

The concept is reinvented “Modern Chinese take-out,” with the same familiar dishes spun with (some) locally sourced, organic and free-range ingredients. Also there’s less salt, fat and oil and no MSG— foreshadowing not to be ignored.

The new, floor-to-ceiling windows speak to the restaurant’s industrial past as a woodworking studio but also set the space apart from the still-grungy neighborhood. The interior—with exposed bricks, an open kitchen and a wheelchair ramp that curves along the left wall from the entrance—is inviting and modern, but not intimidating.

There’s no table service since the show here is fancy take-out (it’s open for lunch and dinner during the week and after 4 p.m. on weekends), so you order and pick up your grub from a polite woman at the counter, a vantage point from which you can also observe the other employees stir-frying your bean curd and lighting low-calorie oils on fire.

The menu has plenty of familiar items— appetizers include roast pork spring rolls (two for $3) and scallion pancakes stuffed with moo-shu chicken (two for $5.75), and classic entrées like lo mein ($9.75 for chicken, shrimp, pork or veggie) and General Tso’s chicken ($9.50) are available—but it’s not photocopied from your corner Chinese place. Some culinary curve balls include bao buns served with pickled cucumber (two for $5), a bahn mi sandwich ($8.75) or, curiously, a baked curried chicken samosa ($2.50 and described as “empanada style”).

I started off with a beef satay with spicy peanut sauce ($3.75), in which the meat was tender and the peanut sauce was fresh, if not terribly spicy. This was followed by an order of steamed vegetable and tofu dumplings ($4.50)—refreshing and crunchy. Next I ordered the wonton soup, a cloudy broth with soft pork dumplings and slivers of pork meat, both chewy in texture, but lacking in taste. The murky soup looked unappealing and was hardly savory. It lacked the satisfying saltiness of the greasy take-out variety, and while it grew on me after a few spoonfuls, I was not inspired enough to finish it.

Next up was roast pork with snow peas and baby corn, accompanied by Himalayan red rice ($8.75) and shrimp pad Thai ($8.25). Both arrived looking gorgeous: the colorful mixture of pork, green snow peas and appealing baby corns alongside a neat cylinder of dark red rice; the pad Thai a mess of vegetables, translucent noodles and glossy shrimp. My vegetables were perfectly prepared—crunchy but not undercooked— but the pork was about as flavorful as a puff of steam. The same for the Himalayan red rice: I expected something exotic, or at least a nutty, wild character. Instead I got pile of uninspired grain that even white rice would trump. The pad Thai presented the same lackluster results. My date and I got about halfway through our meal before laying down the chopsticks.

Michael & Ping’s
gets an E for effort. The restaurant did, after all, chose a hip nook in
Gowanus, next door to the rising-star pie shop 4 & 20 Blackbirds
and one block from the beloved Bar Tano. But unlike nearby
establishments, the cuisine at Michael & Ping’s lacks any kind of
bold attempt at distinctive, memorable taste. Perhaps the eatery focused
too much on saving energy and not enough on preparing a menu. Maybe
there’s no way to make healthy, Americanstyle Chinese food that also
tastes good. But most likely when we want General Tso’s chicken and
wonton soup, we’re looking for the salt and grease that have become not
just additions but essential ingredients to our favorite bastardized
Chinese dishes.

>> Michael & Ping’s 437 3rd Ave. (at 8th St.), Brooklyn, 718-788-0017.

Eight
years ago Norma Loeb, now 57, was regularly taking her mother, Lillian,
to a geriatrician after the 80-year-old Bronx native began experiencing
memory loss. The doctor hesitated to diagnose Lillian with Alzheimer’s
disease due to her alertness and cognitive abilities. Then he noticed
the elder woman’s shuffling and head movements, which were not unlike
Parkinson’s—behaviors Norma had noticed for years. More visits to
neurologists at Mount Sinai and Columbia Presbyterian caused only
confusion until one doctor mentioned the possibility of a disease called
Lewy Body Dementia. Norma did the research herself online. “I could not
believe that she had every symptom,” she said during a recent phone
interview.

Lewy
Body Dementia (also known as LBD) is a neural disease characterized by a
loss of cognitive abilities and motor control, and is closely related
to Parkinson’s disease. The ailment has distinct symptoms— including
motor disorders, hallucinations and REM sleep disturbances—however, some
of the drugs used to treat symptoms in similar disorders such as
Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s can be dangerous for those with LBD.
According to Dr. James E. Galvin, director of the Lewy Body Dementia
Center at NYU’s Langone Medical Center, a typical antipsychotic medicine
like haloperidol, normally used to treat mental disorders, can
exacerbate various cognitive symptoms in patients with LBD and can also
cause physical problems to the point of being fatal.

The
Lewy Body Dementia Center is the first of its kind to treat LBD in the
New York area, having opened in late September of this year. It works
closely with the Lewy Body Dementia Association, a national group
created to spread awareness and provide information for caregivers. The
center provides the most up-to-date testing, analysis and palliative
care guidance for those ill with LBD, which currently has no cure.

Over
1.3 million people in the United States are thought to suffer from LBD,
yet few have ever heard of the affliction— including doctors. Compare
that with an estimated 400,000 people suffering from multiple sclerosis,
according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and the
approximately one million people in the

United
States infected with HIV, according to the Center for Disease Control,
and it becomes apparent that more efforts need to be made to make people
aware of LBD. According to Galvin, who is aided with the data analysis
in “Caregiver Burden in Lewy Body Dementias”—a medical study published
in several medical journals this past spring and summer (designed by Dr.
Steven H. Zarit of Penn State University)—80 percent of LBD patients
are misdiagnosed as having other diseases before receiving the proper
diagnosis, going through an average of three different doctors.

“On
average, it takes a caregiver at least 18 to 24 months before the
proper diagnosis is achieved,” Galvin explained. “Before then, nobody
knows what’s going on and the caregiver feels burdened, isolated and
alone.”

Nowadays,
Lillian Loeb lives in her daughter’s Long Island home, and Norma is her
primary caregiver. The ride has not been an easy one—the needs of an LBD
patient often change from week-to-week, with caregiving, as Norma
describes it, like a full-time job. According to Norma, while she was
first learning how to take care of her mother as the illness progressed,
she learned more from the website of the Lewy Body Dementia Association
(www.lbda.org, formed in 2004) than any doctor.

“They
are the only organization that had any information,” Norma said. “They
also had an online support group that was very helpful to me.”

After
participating in discussions, a woman from the organization’s website
asked Norma if she would help to create a monthly support group for
caregivers, since there was no support system beyond the website in the
tri-state area, or even as far away as Boston. Since 2007, Norma has
started two monthly groups, one in Manhattan and one in Long Island.
Both groups draw caregivers seeking support from the local population as
well as from Westchester County and New Jersey.

“There’s
not a person [involved in the groups] who hasn’t been thankful to hear
from everybody that they’re not alone, to learn helpful things about
their daily caregiving,” Norma said. “It’s so widely undiagnosed,
there’s no awareness of it at all. Even GPs don’t know about it.”

Despite
the difficulties associated with taking care of a loved one, especially
a parent and the role-reversal of parents and children, Norma Loeb has
no regrets, calling her choice the “best decision I ever made.” She
cherishes the moments when she connects with her mother and the
surroundings that allow her to live with a loved one instead of in a
nursing home. Norma Loeb tells the members of her support groups to
focus on the positive moments of communication— those are the moments
they’ll remember.

The number was not a bi-annual statistic of Pastor Eddie Long’s sexual
conquests, but an actual Dewey Decimal system number, mounted for a
fundraising party held by Qu(e)ry, an organization of queer librarians.
Crowded with lens-wearing queer-leaning guys, girls and everything in
between, a lot of singles drifted around with longing, if not somewhat
myopic gazes.

Although not a librarian, NYU anthropology PhD student Robert Chang was
one of several bespectacled wallflowers leaning against the sign, and
admitted to having a soft spot for librarians. “I appreciate them, I am
geeky.”

He also
copped to having gotten a bit nasty in several libraries: “Never my home
institution,” said the former Fulbright scholar, “but in a school
upstate, I did get sexy near the dissertations.”

Just
as most of the librarians present agreed with the fetish for sexy eye
apparel, they also believe that the Dewey Decimal system is no longer en
vogue with the hip set.

“I use the Library of Congress, since I work in an academic library,” said Julia, a
Qu(e)ery volunteer who was using her reference librarian expertise and a
laptop to predict people’s futures. “Dewey’s structure has some biases
in it, so most academic libraries prefer LOC. You’re going to make me
sound like an asshole!” Never! But she did clear up one thing about the
bespectacled hipster fetish: “Really, it’s just like, I’m nearsighted. I
need the glasses, people. We’re librarians. You want us nearsighted.”

Seeking some wisdom from someone outside of the field, I consulted heavily tattooed go-go boy (and pirate look-alike) Calvin Clamshell, who
was sporting a full beard to offset his three nose piercings and
rhinestone eyeliner. “The smell of musty old books can be sexy,” he told
me, pausing from his gyrations. “Besides, isn’t there something
inherently exhibitionistic about reading in public?” I pondered this as
the tassel hanging from his crotch nearly whipped my face.

The evening’s main organizer, a bespectacled, white-button-down-complete-with-pocket-protector digital archivist called Amber Billey, shed
the most light on the sexiness of librarians and why she and her
polysexual crew of nerds were throwing the shindig (their second event,
she pointed out).

“Librarians
are sexy because we provide access to information. Information is
powerful, and what is sexier than a little bit of power?” But seriously,
have you ever felt sexy in a library?

“I
graduated Pratt, and Debbie Does Dallas was shot in the Pratt Library.
Personally, have I ever had a good time in a library? I’m just gonna say
‘Shhh!’”

The she-thing shebang was held in the The
Angel Orensanz Foundation on the Lower East Side, and the
organization, founded by Sasha Eden and Victoria Pettibone, awarded
producer Lynda Obst and HBO vice president Maria Zuckerman for
forwarding WET’s mission, to challenge female stereotypes and give
women a voice through the power of media.

“She’s the only person who knows about and uses
phrases like ‘cultural hegemony,’” said movie witch Nora Ephron, presenting
the WET award to Obst.

After a trio of short plays featuring Rosemary DeWitt, Ron
Livingston, Rachel Dratch, Maulik Pancholy and Zachary Quinto, rows
of chairs were exchanged for café tables, a dance floor and a
breadbox-sized red carpet area. It was while standing on that very
carpet that the dreamy Quinto informed New York Press that his name is
officially pronounced “Kwin-to,” and, exasperated, crinkled his
wonderfully monolithic forehead at our query about the tonguein-cheek
nature of the acronym “WET.”

“Really?” he said, his eyebrows like a constellation.
“Can’t you ask a question about the organization itself?” He was also
surprised that we noticed how much he’s been popping up around town all
of a sudden.

“I
live here now!” he said, chuckling.

“I’ve been here about a month. It’s my favorite city
in the world. Aside from the people I left in L.A., I don’t miss it over
there at all.”

With
a slightly less serious grimace, DeWitt was more open to the idea of a
play-on-words.

“Maybe
they thought that would boost their ticket sales,” she said, with a
glimmer in her eye.

Thank
goodness for 30 Rock’s Pancholy, who was the only actor who could
adequately address the question of wetness (except for his own: his
wettest-ever memory was “my shower, this morning”).

“If it at all makes people
uncomfortable, I think that it’s interesting,” said Pancholy, now
referring to the organization. “I mean, why is women’s sexuality so
scary to certain people? Good for them for putting it out there.”

“It scares the crap out of
me,” I admitted, fidgeting with my expertly tied summer-weight scarf.

“Then,” he said with a
smirk, “you’re going to have a really fun night!”

Despite my knee-jerk cynicism, Hoke, as all the kids call him, wasn’t spouting bullshit. Performance art works because people standing around a room eventually get bored, even with beer.

Hanging around the Grace Space were young and diverse artsy types sipping Budweiser and red wine, surprisingly nonplussed by the torrent of rain that flooded Brooklyn. The space—filled with odd junk, bits of old stages, benches, a serviced bar and walls painted off-white—had funny nooks where reasonably attractive twentysomethings wearing skintight pants or thickly developed beards grouped together to chat. In the center of the room, a youthful accordionist pumped away, giving the room an atmosphere of a French metro platform.

A smiling girl with a fresh nose piercing handed out postcards for future art shows, while Jeffrey Byrd, a bald, mid-thirties artist in a blue pinstripe suit and yellow tie, walked around smiling at people, occasionally taking out his earplugs and responding “yes” to whatever was said to him.

The five artists who performed various futile activities continuously throughout the evening provoked outwardly verbal responses from their audiences, ranging from disgust to laughter.
“Hoke told me there’d be some money, free beer and nerdy girls,” said Phil, the 26-year-old accordionist who wore steel-framed glasses. His instrument of choice is upright bass, but his shifty-eyed demeanor was creepy enough that I kept checking my left-hand pocket to make sure my wallet was still there. “Half the money I make comes from just playing the Twin Peaks theme a lot,” he said.

A visiting Chinese artist who wouldn’t give me his name lay on the ground shirtless under a light fixture, spitting rocks at the bulb. Idiotic clapping ensued whenever he succeeded in hitting the light with a gentle ping.

Chen Jin, a middle-aged, Beijing-based performance artist, thoughtfully cracked 20 eggs onto a tabletop made of mirrors, slightly inclined by two piles of records. Silently, the crowd watched the intact egg yolks migrate across the table and splash onto the floor. And across the room, 37-year-old artist Coral Short sat and allowed her partner to feed her about 120 nails (the kind you hammer into the wall), which she eventually gagged upon, spitting them onto the floor along with some suspiciously yellow saliva. She was then fed a box of feathers. “It’s more about using hard and soft materials,” she said, once her palate was clear. “It’s pretty autobiographical.”

The final straw was artist Steve Vanoni, who, around 1 a.m., orchestrated the most energetic part of the evening, an indoor bike race supplemented by confetti, silly string and the deafening sound of 30 onlookers honking on plastic duck calls. The winner was Ryan Piotrowicz, a film director whose mockumentary The Project won the 2008 Sundance Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature.

“I thought Steve Vanoni was bringing his ‘pulse jet,’” said Piotrowicz, referring to the Grace’s advertisement that promised “a highly explosive device” that “blasts paint onto naked human forms!” According to Vanoni, his compressed-air machine can be heard from a mile away.

“No it doesn’t hurt!” Vanoni claimed. “We’ll be doing it on a barge in the Hudson this summer, you should come!” 

Entering the soiree’s secret location (an East Village storefront) with my cohort, a young gent clad in black Armani briefs tossed us garbage bags (“mandatory clothes check!”) and marked our forearms with giant numbers, 109 and 110.

Moving in, I caught a glimpse of two go-go boys slathered in body paint, wagging their junk at a crowd of mostly over-forties in sagging but festive briefs. Toward the back, a third dancer stood on a stage, sipping a drink and nonchalantly tugging at his denuded crotch.

Breaking my gaze, I wandered over to chat with Nardicio, who spoke to me about the experience of working with Levi Johnston and his career in dirty parties. “Initially I didn’t intend for these things to be sex events, just an open-minded space where people don’t feel inhibited or constrained by rules.” Yeah, right.

“As for Johnston, he was such a polite and earnest guy, but if we didn’t have Playgirl there’s nothing we have in common to talk about. Of course, we would have preferred full frontal shots but I’m happy with the results we got, not to mention the political impact it had,” he said before pausing to hug a naked 20-year-old. “Plus,” he continued, “it opened up all sorts of doors for me: the people at NBC and all of these newspapers keep telling me to keep in touch!”
Speaking of touch, I felt oddly conflicted about keeping my pants on in this crowd of fancy underwear: Christian Andrew, 2(x)ist, Dolce & Gabbana.

And as I was scribbling in a notepad, Guy #128—a redhead named Max wearing black Bjorn briefs—told me that my wearing pants was “akin to the choices that anthropologists have to make during field studies.”

I almost dropped my pen. “Did you just say ‘anthropologist?’” I asked.

“Yeah. You should read Margaret Mead Made Me Gay, it fleshes out some of these theories better than I can explain.”

All of my blood drained into a newly formed erection. “Did you just recommend a book to me at this party?!” I almost yelled. “Can I get your number?”

Meanwhile, outside of the bathroom, a crew of aging hipster was grouped together like wildebeests, mimicking the animal behavior of sniffing each other’s crotches. 

Heading into Arena on
Sunday night for The Pill Awards, which honor underground gay videos
and multimedia, I was accosted by a gaggle of muscle men attempting
edgy, Downtown looks (any excuse to feel the vinyl pants at Pat Field’s boutique) and, of course, the smell of testicles wrapped in tights.

The night was emceed by porn-starturned-singer Colton Ford and drag queen Hedda Lettuce, with
the latter explaining that The Glammies—awards for glittering night
crawlers—are “much less attractive; at least they shave at this award!
I did too, but I had to choose between my face and my nuts.”

But just like The Glammies, The Pill Awards were a shit show: nobody could explain why singing trio Whore’s Mascara ended up presenting the Virgin Pill awards to themselves (poor planning?), or why Ari Gold also ended up awarding himself with a Pill for Best Pop Video.

Thank goodness then for Billboard charttopping singer Jason Walker, who enchanted the crowd with his soulful vocals—his performance was by far the best of the evening.

Nominees who also performed and presented awards included The Ones, gay rapper Cazwell (who performed a functional stage version of his “I Saw Beyoncé at Burger King”) and his bosom-ed buddy, scene queen Amanda Lepore (“Oh
look, like a little bit of confection,” quipped Lettuce), whose trim
go-go dancers developed massive erections, injecting the room with some
much needed entertainment value, during her performance of “Cotton
Candy.”

The only thing more ridiculous than Lepore ascending a staircase was the presence of Samwell—the YouTube
star of the “What What, In the Butt” from 2007—who actually flew in to
accept two awards! In doing so he illogically beat out a more recent
YouTube sensation actually from New York, the lovely and completely
unspookable Brittney Houston, who was wearing a Gem and the
Holograms-inspired look complete with five-inch purple pumps and what
she called an “abstract algebra mini dress, stitched together by mice in my basement.”

Aside from Houston, the only other flawless queen hanging around was RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Bebe Zahara Benet who,
after presenting the last painful award, forbid me from leaving the
floor with her scary, glowing eyes. “I’m doing a show!” she said.

“Me
too!” I thought, scared that I would get trapped in Arena forever. “The
incredible disappearing Jew,” I said mostly to myself, and ran off to
the safety of Brooklyn.

Sitting directly underneath Union Square’s model-waiter mecca Coffee Shop is
The Union Square Lounge—formerly used to handle the overflow from private events at the adjacent 4,000-square-foot Union Square Ballroom—New York’s next great subterranean nightclub. Maybe.

While only the lounge has been open to the public since 2001, its original launch date was September 11—and while the owners have kept it open ever since, it’s been little more than a chilled-out lounge for informed neighbors and NYU students with generous allowances. But beginning Nov. 9 party promoter Michael Gogel will take over the spot and attempt to give it the cache that clubs like The Beatrice Inn or The Jane Hotel had—you know, when they were still open.

“Nobody knows where this is,” Gogel says of the Union Square Lounge (owned by the Gotham City Restaurant Group). It’s true that the door, at the back end of Coffee Shop on West 16th Street, seems a bit hidden despite its convenient location.

Gogel’s goal is to create a new destination for night owls who don’t want to put up with the trials of terrible parties, touristy crowds and bottle service bullshit. He plans on having no dress code and no pissy door-guarding) to lure in the different party sects—hipsters, club kids, models and their money men—that only rarely seem to happily commingle.

It’s not clear exactly how Gogel will execute this utopian idea of nightlife—mixing Uptown and Downtown without ending up almost completely Jersey and Long Island. Aside from curating the music (which will fluctuate between rock, soul electronic and will use only live DJs, no iPods) and keeping drinks at a somewhat reasonable $10, he seems to be relying on the help of his hefty nightlife Rolodex.

Gogel plans to bring in Dowtown nightlife fixtures like Richie Rich—in the hopes that the former Heatherette designer will drag along some of his insanely dressed club kids—and a rotating list of guest DJs.

The ballroom, currently in a soft opening, has already been host to DJ Peter Rauhofer, the a staple resident at the Roxy who won a “best remixer” Grammy in 2000 for his reworking of Madonna tracks, and Gogel plans to present a diverse bunch, including Stretch Armstrong (a pioneering ‘90s hip-hop DJ who helped put Notorious B.I.G. on the radio) and Gloomy Palmz, a lounge DJ from the Brooklyn-based French art collective le-sexie.com.

Gogel, a Frenchman himself, also plans to lure in rock ‘n’ roll types like model Jamie Burke, the Bloody Social frontman who can normally be found lurking at Lit or The Delancey, and DJ Lucas Walters from the now-defunct Le Royale (formerly Luke & Leroy, where the Misshapes first flared up). Perhaps unique to the New York scene will be Gogel’s international flair—the atmosphere he hopes to create is very Euro, very “young Parisian.”

But getting the cool kids in is only half the battle; how does Gogel plan to keep the assholes out?

“Intolerance,” he explains. “The judgmental types will leave as soon as they see the eclectic mix of people.”

Here’s hoping!