(Lavo.)

With their 300-percent liquor markups and capricious, power-wielding bouncers, nightclubs are hardly known as bastions of fairness and decency. So it should come as little surprise that they might be charging their customers illegal fees—and no, we’re not just talking about the drink prices. (Seriously though, $18 for a vodka soda? What is this, prohibition?)

According to The New York Post, some of Manhattan's ritziest clubs are under investigation by the city for charging clients illegal “operations charges” of up to 22 percent.

The clubs being investigated include swanky nightlife hotspots like EMM Group's Bow, Tenjeune, Finale and SL, as well as Tao Group's Lavo, Tao and Avenue (also known as great spots to go if you're looking to get in a fight with Lindsay Lohan).

For example, Finale on the Bowery charges a five percent additional "operations fee" for booze and a 22 percent "operations fee" for bottle service. As the fine print on the bottom of the receipt reads, “This ‘operations fee’ is not a gratuity and is not distributed to the service staff or dancers as a gratuity.”

Paying way too much money for no reason? Yeah, that sounds pretty consistent with our clubbing experiences.

The club owners claim that these fees are fair game since they are not hidden from customers. As COO of Tao Group Bill Bonbrest told the Post, "Prices and pricing policies are clearly presented to our guests before an order is placed." However, Consumer Affairs spokeswoman Abigail Lootens claims that “even if listed on a menu or receipt, surcharges are illegal in New York.”

Club-goers seeking a refund have the promising option of contesting these fees with their credit card companies, who are widely known for their love of refunds and hatred of hidden fees.

So, weekend warriors, be warned–clubbing might not in-fact be the savvy fiscal investment you thought it was. That being said, when any night out holds out the irresistible promise of running in to a coked out Li-lo with happy fists, how can we resist?

Hiro to close in March (Patrick McMullan)

Hiro Ballroom, the two-story subterranean dance hall loved by hipsters and Midtowners alike, will be closing its doors come March, according to employees at the Maritime Hotel, where the venue is located. Also closing at the hotel is Matsuri restaurant. And while none of this should come as a huge surprise--rumors have been swirling about who would take over management of the club and restaurant space since the fall-- now we finally have an answer to that particular burning nightlife question. Marc Packer--whose name is usually synonymous with the Strategic Group founders like Noah Tepperberg, Jason Strauss, and Rich Wolff-- will be taking over management duties at the Maritime spaces. Mr. Packer is best known for his work at Las Vegas' LAVO club as well as Tao.

So what can we expect in the space where Hiro and Matsuri once were? Something that sounds suspiciously like a Stefon-themed nightclub, if his former work is any indication.

From LAVO's homepage:

Modeled after the ancient European bathhouses, LAVO is the latest “concept” creation from the visionary team that brought us Tao Nightclub and Tao Beach. During your time at LAVO, expect to run across any number of theme-inspired surprises like midgets fanning models, genuine ancient Turkish decorations, human candelabras, and Tao Nightclub’s signature models bathing in bathtubs.

That's right...human candelabras. AND midgets. Separately. We wonder how New Yorkers will react when they realize that Spicy! is a real club.

Roberta Flack. (Getty Images)

Wednesday, July 27

Clay Date

Summer’s caught up with us—and we know, we complain about it every week, but the aggregate effect of sweating this much packs a more crippling punch than Wendi Murdoch! We find ourselves regressing to childhood: leaning hard on the chocolate-frozen yogurt handle at 16 Handles, wearing shoes made of flimsy rubber and schoolboyish shorts, experiencing a surfeit of emotional lability (glee when we find shade or a seat on the subway, suicidal rage at all other times). Summer makes kids of us all! We may as well drop in on RH Gallery’s no-kids-allowed Clay Party, an arts-and-crafts shindig in celebration of the gallery’s more serious concurrent shows, “Pure Clay,” featuring Korean minimalist Lee Ufan (whose work is also in the Guggenheim right now—what a summer for this guy!), and “Contemporary Clay,” a group show featuring Kathy Butterly’s so-called “sexy cups.” They’re misshapen and intriguing and reminiscent of sex organs—and feel free to make your own at tonight’s party, at which wine and delectibles will be served. Bring a toothbrush or some dental floss—no, we’re not kidding!—to carve out your own masterpiece and pretend you’re at summer camp. (If the heat hasn’t rendered your intellect childlike already, try another glass of wine!)

Clay Party at RH Gallery, 137 Duane Street, RSVP for tickets at gallery@rhgallery.com or call (646) 490-6355.

Thursday, July 28

Visiting the Goon Squad

We didn’t establish ourselves as great artists at the Clay Party last night—our sculpture was more “conceptual” than “formal.” But after a day spent driving out East, we’re more eager to indulge our childish sides than to think about artistic endeavors. What a relief that the artist John Codling—formerly a big-deal Wall Street type who now makes celebrity-inspired multimedia work—is hosting a movie night at the Waasteria Gallery. His multimedia art show there, inspired by Jay-Z, won’t distract our attention from The Goonies (a kids’ movie, for adult attendees, to raise money for Solving Kids Cancer). It’s a collision of artsy pretension and Hollywood cheese even weirder than the paintings of Christopher Walken that launched Mr. Codling to fame. The Goonies! Really, it’s as though he knew precisely the mood we were in—to think about nothing! A few more weeks of regression and we’ll either be cured and ready to take on Proust—or playing with coloring books.

John Codling’s show “Me I Play” closes tomorrow at the Waasteria Gallery, 77 Industrial Road (Wainscott), and the screening takes place at 8pm with pizza, tacos, ice cream, beer, wine, and popcorn, 8pm, visit http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1848957281 for tickets.

Friday, July 29

Photo, Synthesis

Okay, we’ve recovered—and we’re ready to take intellectual matters a teensy bit seriously. Of course, we’re also still in the Hamptons, so art’s best served with cocktails and canapés—as at tonight’s opening reception for Terri Gold and Steve Miller’s exhibition, “Planet.” Ms. Gold photographs shamanistic, spiritual elements of disappearing cultures, while Mr. Miller himself is showing X-rays of exotic flora and fauna (we’re sure he tried to find a life form in the Hamptons to X-ray, but a picture of our rosé-swollen insides wouldn’t sell many prints). “You’ve got an educated audience interested in these issues … and you’ve got people who can afford art out there!” says Mr. Miller, who shows around the world but lives part-time out East. Catch them while you can—this show’s running through July 31, and Mr. Miller’s jetting off later this year to present a print of a python’s X-ray to a zoo director in Brazil.

4 North Main Gallery, 4 North Main Street (Southampton), 5pm-8pm, visit 4northmaingallery for information.

Saturday, July 30

Save Some for the Fishes

Newly-minted CSI star Ted Danson is to attend a party in honor of Oceana, the save-the-fish charity that reminds you that just because you love ahi doesn’t mean you can feel good about eating it … We’re dragging our heels about attending, but only since we know that all the consciousness-raising going on will give us pause about dining on our favorite summer repasts: shrimp cocktail and oysters. Speaking of those aquatic treats, visitors to midtown’s egregiously casino-themed eatery Lavo may partake in both at the “bikini brunch,” ginned up for those who can’t quite make it out East. Men must wear shirts, while women are quite encouraged to wear bikinis. It’s just like you’re at the beach! Actually, wait, it’s more like you’re waiting tables at Hooters, but paying instead of getting paid.

Oceana Hamptons Splash Party, a private home in Southampton, 7:30pm, for tickets visit oceanasplashparty.org; Lavo, 39 East 58th Street, bikini brunch begins at 2pm, call (212) 750-5588 for reservations. Sunday, July 31

Lord Styron

Though in life William Styron was known to prefer the relative isolation of Martha’s Vineyard (we said, “relative”!), his work remains the perfect beach read for the Hamptons as well: nothing’s quite so bracing a corrective to an afternoon of sitting by the pool and an evening of parties as reading something grim and knowing like Lie Down in Darkness. Anyway, Georgica Beach at midday can be crushingly depressing. Styron had a difficult time negotiating literary fame, though his daughter seems perhaps less conflicted: Alexandra Styron mined her childhood for intriguing and enlightening anecdotes and insights, which she crafted into the memoir Reading My Father. Tonight she’s reading at the Quogue Public Library. (And boy, does she know how to do a summer reading schedule—she was in Vineyard Haven a few weeks ago and East Hampton last night.) There’s no choice in the matter—we’re going to check it out.

Quogue Public Library, 90 Quogue Street (Quogue), 5pm

Monday, August 1

Flack Attack

Were you wondering what’s going on with Roberta Flack? Question answered: per her website, she’s currently at work on an album of Beatles covers. If you’d like to see her in the flesh and maybe try to get her to sing a few bars of “Killing Me Softly With His Song” (or perhaps “Octopus’s Garden”), drop in on the enthusiastically named Bright Lights! Shining Stars! gala, an event in support of the NYC Dance Alliance Foundation and its college scholarships. Ms. Flack is to accept the Ambassador for the Arts Award, a fitting prize for someone bringing new attention to little-known British pop music. The guests include wee Tade Biesinger—a preteen NYC Dance alum who’s now known for Billy Elliot, and Tony-winning choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, who’ll be reunited with his In the Heights writer Lin-Manuel Miranda, one of the guests of honor. All these months later, we can finally feel good about supporting youth dance without fearing we’re sending youths into a future of Black Swan psychosis!

Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, 566 LaGuardia Place, cocktails at 6pm, awards and performances at 7:30pm with dessert and Champagne to follow, call (855) 692-5678 or visit nycdance.com for tickets.

Tuesday, August 2

Today’s Special

Some causes—like youth dance or the career rehabilitation of Roberta Flack—are simply unimpeachable. That may help explain why the host committee for tonight’s fund-raiser to benefit the Special Olympics, the Special Olympics Junior Committee Summer Social, is so gloriously lengthy: 28 do-gooders, as well as 47 on the junior committee. The host committee includes well-connected model Lauren Bush, her sister Ashley Bush, someone else’s sister Dabney Mercer, and roman á cleffer Anisha Lakhani. The evening of drinks goes down on the Hudson Terrace, on the far West Side—we’ll see you there, along with all of our nearest and dearest social friends!

Hudson Terrace, 621 West 46th Street, 7:30pm, visit http://summersocial.kintera.org/ for tickets and more information.

Wednesday, August 3

Kids Stay in the Picture

Remember how we could bring ourselves to support youth dance only  grudgingly? (Those Black Swan emotional scars, embedded with feathers, run deep.) Well, we’re yet more willing to support the artistic endeavours of youth when it comes to the performing-arts camp that produced Natalie Portman (her characters may be crazy, but boy, does she seem sane!) and Mariah Carey (well, Ms. Portman’s sane enough for both). The Oscar winner and the rainbow enthusiast both attended day camp at Long Island’s Usdan Center, which buses in artsy kids from the city. Tonight it holds a fund-raising gala. Current campers take the stage to perform with the Met soprano Monica Yunus—boy, are we jealous! Back when we were kids, all we did was make sloppy pottery and watch The Goonies. In fact, that’s all we’ve done this week!

185 Colonial Springs Road (Wheatley Heights), dinner at 5pm and concert at 7pm, for tickets write to gala@usdan.com or call (631) 643-7900.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

And now, as the year ends, we have another less-than-enthused take on this little piece of Sin City excess deep in the heart of Midtown. Writing for Bloomberg, Ryan Sutton doesnt waste any time in slamming the place -- out of the gate he shitkicks the ostentatious, expensive and average-tasting meatballs, then accuses the shrimp scampi of being frozen and the veal of being nuked out of a can.

"Lavo’s forte isn’t making food," Sutton writes. "It’s making money."

Ah, you want to make money, Lavo. Well, in that regard you're cleaning up. Sutton reports that the line at the bar was perpetually eight deep and felt so encroached by the packed-in crowd that he compared moving around the 180-seat room to "a game of chess."

Unable to equate how faux-glitzy digs and mediocre food could pull in boatloads of cash, Sutton cut his losses and asked his server for the answer. Her response says it all: "We have really good PR."

nfreeman at observer.com |@nfreeman1234

"Welcome to Club Victoria," a voice echoed over the sound system. Then the voice said to turn off all mobile devices. "If you have to be on your phone during a show like this, you have other problems."

The highlights were extensive and hard to pick out, or even distinguish, from the entirety of the show. The Victoria's Secret models came out dressed like sailors, peacocks, cowgirls, Nascar pit crews, boxers, Amazon princesses and their natural angel garb — all while managing to wear basically nothing at all, of course. The country club scenery featured Aryan clones sculpted like Greek statues, while jungle scenery featured dark-skinned men with face paint dancing with arms akimbo. The closest the thing came to understatement was when the models just wore underwear.

Akon sang a song while endless pairs of endless legs walked up and down the runway next to him. Katy Perry belted "Firework" as sparkly purple mushroom clouds somehow clung to her as a dress. Vin Diesel fist-pumped in the front row the entire time.

When the spectacle ended, balloons fell from the rafters and lilted unnoticed onto the heads of the unsuspecting audience. No one knew the balloons were falling, because every set of eyes was locked on the line of models exiting the stage.

Outside, The Observer ran into Adrian Grenier. We asked if he knew any of the models in a personal way.

"No," he said. Then he paused. "Well, Alessandra was in "Entourage," but I don't really know her beyond that."

He didn't elaborate. 

We told him we'd see him at the after party, at Lavo. An assistant whisked him into a car and we walked to the 6 train.

At 10:46 p.m. we got a text saying that Paris Hilton had arrived at Lavo. The subterranean rock-lined den beneath the restaurant of the same name was already air-tight, and the only breathing room was reserved for the row of bottle-service-clad tables. There were Victoria's Secret models tending bar, Victoria's Secret models walking around with strawberry and vanilla Stoli cocktails, Victoria's Secret models dancing with Russell Simmons, and Victoria's Secret models offering trays of tuna tartare. Also, the TVs played the tape of that night's Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Michael Bay was there.

Then Paris Hilton arrived, and everything changed. Derek Blasberg, nominally an editor at Style.com but really just a runway and party attendee, escorted her to her table, where her sister Nicky and chilled bottles of Champagne awaited. As flash bulbs popped and smokers stealthily lit cigarettes, we greeted Paris Hilton.

"I thought it was fantastic as always," she told The Observer, of the show. "I love Katy Perry, she really rocked it tonight."

What about your budding music career, Paris?

"Well, I'm finishing my new album right now, so next year."

Any plans to play at, say, the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show?

"I think it would be an honor."

Katy Perry arrived shortly after and took over a nook beside Akon, Maroon 5, and their respective entourages. When the DJ started spinning "Sexy Bitch," on which Akon sings the hook, his crew and the people around him began shouting — "Yeah, 'Kon! Sing it, 'Kon!" — until he propped himself up on the seat and danced, pointing to the crowd. Later, when "California Gurls" came on, Katy Perry climbed on the ledge beside the table and let everyone marvel at her, hovering above them like a busty, elegant figurehead on an old ship.

The Observer spoke with Katy later in the night. Well — we asked about her performance but she smiled that big cartoon smile and said she wasn't doing interviews. We turned around to find that we were actually standing at Maroon 5's table, where perenially stubbled lead singer Adam Levine snuggled with girlfriend Anne Vyalitsyna. Anne Vyalitsyna is very much one of the Victoria's Secret angels, and very much stunning in person. She is both wonderful and amazing, Mr. Levine assured us. 

Then, in that same scrum of female beauty and rock star excess, we found Twitter co-founder Evan Williams drifting in the middle. We had seen him before standing with partner Biz Stone — who appears in commercials for party-sponsor Stoli — talking to Adrian Grenier, who had twitpic'd himself grooving on the Lavo dancefloor earlier that night. We asked if there were any big names at the party who had yet to jump on the Twitter bandwagon. Paris? No, she has a Twitter, Evan told us. 

"Wait, Paris Hilton is here?" he asked.

We nodded, pointed directly behind him, and then Twitter co-founder Evan Williams had a chat with Paris Hilton.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234 

A: We get sentences like this!

Take your girl down and get some vodka on. Your boys as well.

Well then! Lavo is the newly opened, big-plattered, glitz-heavy sister eatery to Tao. "You know Tao, Buddhaman," reads a real sentence in this story. "It’s where Kim Kardashian had her 30th birthday party." So Lavo is that kind of place — the kind of place where power-suits bring done-up petite girls to gawk at the opulent, McNally-on-steroids space. How, then, do you review such a spectacle?

The whole brouhaha inspired Sifton to get epistolary with his Times piece. He framed the review by opening with a concerned question from a 6'3", 220-pound bro who just wants to take his smoking-hot girl — and his six boys, of course — to dinner. Is that too much to ask? 

"We’ve been to something like 10 restaurants now, and I think her favorite foods are truffle fries and ketchup," the composite bro confessed to Sifton. "But she drinks Champagne. So maybe bottle service?"

It turns out this guy is in luck! Lavo, Sifton replied to the bro, is that Shangri-La that beefy hedge-funders heretofore only imagined — the place where they take their girls in the sports-addled, Kobe-craving annals of their minds.

But on the off-chance the date's a dud? There's a club below the restaurant where he can knock back Jager with his boys. Naturally, this club is also called Lavo.

nfreeman at observer.com |@nfreeman1234

"There's an enormous amount of energy on the Upper East Side," said the PR agent Alison Brod, like Ms. Berkelhammer an Upper East Sider. "And there's no outlet for this older person who is still going out to dinner pretty much every night up there. At 10:30 at night on a Saturday night or a Thursday night, any night, there is no place to go." Ms. Brod was alluding to a gap she believes the new club Lavo, in the former Au Bar space on East 58th Street, will fill. It was her firm that handled Lavo's opening party during of Fashion Week. 

"I know this will sound a tad geriatric," said Ms. Berkelhammer, "but I like that the music [at Lavo] isn't played so loud that you can't hear yourself talk, or think. If you want it, it's there, but you can also actually converse with the people that you came with."

Consider a typical Thursday evening at the new club. It entails something like a reverse Cinderella effect. Arrive around 11 p.m., and you'll have no trouble securing a banquette for yourself and your friends. A cocktail waitress bearing a passing resemblance to Charlotte Ronson will take your order, and you'll all be able to talk to each other in normal speaking voices. It's pleasant, not to say subdued. You'll soon decide you'll be home by 1.

At midnight, though, almost on the dot, the music gets louder and dozens of blondes in tottering heels pour in out of nowhere, clutching the arms of men wearing T-shirts under their blazers. This scene is truer to Lavo's lineage: It's the product of a new collaboration between Jason Strauss, Noah Tepperberg, Richard Wolf and Marc Packer--the nightlife juggernauts whose combined credits include Avenue, Marquee, Stanton Social, Rue 57 and Tao. The fifth partner is the stunning Brazilian Jayma Cardoso, who's been responsible for Cain and GoldBar in the city and Surf Lodge in Montauk.

The New York outpost of a Las Vegas club of the same name, Lavo was designed on the food-above-fun-below model: Its main floor is a large, 180-seat dining room, and the nightclub is downstairs.

Ms. Cardoso hopes the club will restore a sense of elegance to city nightlife. "I want people to dress up. I don't really want somebody to show up there with a trucker's hat," she said. "Because I think it's going to have that sort of like old, glamorous feel. And I want people to feel like, 'O.K., when I go to Lavo, I want to put my cocktail dress on.'"

The club's décor reflects Ms. Cardoso's vision, particularly in the details: dark hardwood accents, granite bar-tops, mirrored paneling, a Swarovski Crystal-studded disco ball, compartments built into the banquettes where women can stash their purses when they get up to dance. It's a little bit like 1960s St. Tropez and a little bit like, well, Marquee--particularly when you notice four or five bottles of Champagne with sparklers being danced over to a hedge funder's table by cocktail waitresses.

Yet the gilded age of the early 2000s is gone. "People don't feel right to draw up 20, 30, 50,000 dollars, like they used to back then. And it's just not sexy anymore," Ms. Cardoso said.

The stigma recently attached to bottle service isn't purely economic. These days, the image most Americans associate with the term "cocktail waitress" is the face of Rachel Uchitel, the nightclub VIP hostess whose affair with Tiger Woods was the first to set off a flurry of headlines about Mr. Woods' infidelity last year. Ms. Cardoso has worked with Ms. Uchitel, but doesn't say much about it: "She sent us a lot of business, let's put it this way," she said.

Ms. Cardoso has a rule about that particular problem. "Don't sleep with your clients."

Still, that doesn't mean they can't make a man feel secure. "The hospitality of the club is what stood out to me. It feels like a very safe, comfortable environment," Olympic figure skater Evan Lysacek said of Lavo. "If you're catering to celebrities, you want to have that sort of environment. They made sure everyone was taken care of and everyone had what they wanted."

During Fashion Week, Lavo hosted the after-party for Z Spoke by Zac Posen, its own official opening party and an Us Weekly party. The club has drawn a varied crowd so far: actors (Anthony Mackie, Michelle Rodriguez), artists (Peter Tunney, Rosson Crow), socialites (Shoshanna Gruss, Nicky Hilton), musicians (Ciara, Omarion). Mr. Lysacek attended with his friend Vera Wang.

"The places that are polite and have good food but have great music, they can succeed for a very long time," Ms. Brod said.

Ms. Cardoso phrases Lavo's business plan more succinctly. "You need to say, 'It's O.K. to come and have a cocktail,'" she said. "Because, hey, cocktails add up."

editorial@observer.com