Jason Binn and Selita Ebanks at Marquee. (Patrick McMullan)

When describing Marquee, the recently reopened upper-Chelsea nightclub, you might find yourself falling back on that Talking Heads song “Heaven.” You know, the bar where nothing, nothing ever happens? When a nightclub reopens exactly one decade after its first inauguration, in the exact same spot, with the exact same owners and the exact same name, it’s hard not to drift back to the verse: “When this party is over, it will start again; it won’t be any different, it’ll be exactly the same.”

Marquee, located in the dead zone of 27th Street and 10th Avenue, might not be exactly the same as it ever was, but it’s close. It’s also not heaven—and neither is it Heaven, the gay club on Sixth Avenue. Instead, it is a beacon of not-quite-old-enough-to-be-nostalgic New York, which had its heyday in the early to mid-2000s. Founded in 2003 by the then-newly minted Strategic Group, launched by party promoters Jason Strauss and Noah Tepperberg, Marquee took the space of a former taxi warehouse at a time when Chelsea was the place to be, and not yet the place to avoid at all costs. (Today, it should be said, the reasons for avoiding Chelsea at night are quite different from those in the pre-Marquee era: it’s no longer dangerous, but simply full of misguided gents who still think bottle service is a fine way to impress women.) Stars and scenesters mingled at Marquee, forging a tentative detente with the gossip columnists who lurked in the shadows, avoiding the pulsating lights and straining to hear anything at all above the din of a deejay with oversized electronics.

But by 2008, the scene at Marquee grew stale, and even its owners got bored, preoccupied with their new Marquee outposts in Las Vegas and Australia. (Not to mention LAVO, AVENUE, TAO and the Venetian.) Six years in the running, four years dormant, and now: rebirth. And it won’t be any different, it will be exactly the same. More or less.

As Mr. Tepperberg wrote in an email to The Observer via email:

A lot of people, not just in New York, had a real fondness for Marquee - it was a special place to so many of us and we wanted to preserve that. At the same time, we knew we needed to update it and make it a place that spoke to today's nightlife culture, which is why we completely redid the entire space... At the opening, we were astounded by the feedback we got from everyone. People just went crazy. We knew there was a nostalgia there associated with the old Marquee, which is why we had the doormen greet everyone with "Welcome Back to Marquee," but what really blew us away was how much people loved the new concept. You could tell that people have been missing that in New York, which is why I think the response was so overwhelming.

Outside the new/old Marquee on opening night, guests were greeted by a collection of golf carts topped by with luminescent toadstool roofs like something out of Alice in Wonderland. Whether these decorative flourishes were also functional was a topic of conversation among those waiting in line. We never found out.

Tall, muscular drag queens—a once-prevalent local bird sighted less and less frequently over the past several years, since high-profile Chelsea clubs like Marquee were shuttered or forgotten—were peacocking at the entrance. The imposing bouncers seemed to know each of these ladies personally, and opened the black velvet rope (so much more chic than its red counterpart) to let them pass.

But there was also an element of new: the door “list” was no longer a physical entity, but a “constantly updated spreadsheet,” according to the slim-lipped man at the door. “If anyone ‘just put you on’ on their list, I would know,” he replied curtly to the people ahead of us, who were apparently trying to talk their way into the opening-night festivities. His eyes never left his iPad mini, which was so small we wondered how he could read any names off it at all. “Now, when you’re not on the list, there’s no excuses. If you call someone who can add you on the list, I’ll see it updated in 10 seconds.” The group stood to one side, dejected.

It had just turned 10, the official start time of the party, but already an assortment of hipsters, aging club kids, Jersey boys, models and celebrities was arriving. Legendary nightlife photographer Patrick McMullan was snapping the beautiful people, who that evening included Tyson Beckford, Timbaland, Nicky Hilton, Brandon Davis, Eve, Swizz Beatz, Akon, Busta Rhymes and Patricia Field. If Messrs. Tepperberg and Strauss couldn’t exactly rewind the clock, they could certainly make their guest list (for one night at least), look like it had back in 2003.

Inside, we ran into Mr. Tepperberg at coat check. We asked what he most hoped to see in the crowd that evening.

“A lot of old friends,” said the Strategic Group co-founder, who really looked as if he had just walked off the set of The Shield, or possibly The Sopranos. It was an odd choice of words, since Marquee seemed packed with young faces: models danced on the catwalks crisscrossing the vast two-story structure, while pulsing lights and a giant—God, is that? Yes it is!—disco ball in the middle of the room kept us pleasantly disoriented. One young-looking man named Jensen was particularly eager to walk us through the difference between old nightlife and new nightlife, as he was developing a “social networking service for models and events.” (Woof, there’s something that we don’t miss.) “What people are looking for in models has changed, although it’s kind of the same,” he said. “They’re always looking for tall women who you know, stand out. But today you also want to see a girl with good skin.” Skin? Really? Pushing aside images of Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs, we convinced ourselves this new focus on the epidermis was due to upgrades in lighting over the past decade.

“Also, people didn’t use to be on their cellphones this much,” he complained, pulling out his cellphone and to dash off a text. “People used to actually talk to each other.”

At least we think that’s what he said. The music was so loud we couldn’t be sure.

After admiring the view from the second story—where hundreds of books were stacked along the wall next to the black couches, a nice, classy touch—we scooted downstairs, where we ran into man-about-town Justin Rocket Silverman.

“This place looks exactly the same,” he said.

Downstairs, we ran into Du Jour’s Jason Binn, who told us, “This place looks completely different.”

“I guess there might have been a different staircase over there,” Mr. Silverman conceded.

Unlike the relaunch of, say, the Beatrice Inn, there was no judgment passed over the changes or lack thereof at Marquee that night. Everyone just went with it: a party was happening, and everyone was there.

And, as we found out during the stampede toward the coat check, Marquee had another thing in common with the bar in “Heaven”: Everyone will leave at exactly the same time.

dgrant@observer.com

Ira Glass and Mike Birbiglia pose at The Bing Bar

It's winding down, celebs are fleeing, the open bars are starting to dry up, and The Observer's 4 day long hangover is starting to catch up with us—enough of the sob story, we're going back in for more.

First stop: Surprise surprise—The Bing Bar for a dinner and after party with the cast and crew from Sleepwalk With Me

• NPR's Ira Glass stormed the red carpet (read: stood there graciously speaking to lesser media mortals) and gave us a few pointers on the birds and the bees as we asked him how he got here: "Well, when a mommy meets a daddy, and they reaaaaly really love each other..."
• Bourbon in hand, we borrow the ear of the star himself, comedian Mike Birbiglia who through "years and years of debilitating and honest failure" arrived right where he is today. This guy's put his 10,000 hours in.
• Occupy Sundance marched around a bit outside our window, seemingly unaware that their audience was already deeply sympathetic (right?)

A quick drive-by drinking at Grey Goose and we're headed back to the basement at Bing to catch Theophilus London and Asher Roth on stage

Theophilus London commands the stage at Bing

• "I wonder if anyone thinks I'm famous..." overheard The Observer from a partygoer as we checked in with the omnipresent Hannah Bronfman, fresh from a short stint in Vegas for the Chanel event the night prior.
• Quick to remind everyone that he's probably much cooler than you, an insufferable Mr. Roth muddled about the red carpet un-ironically bouncing a tennis ball. Cool, dude.
• You kind of have to give it to Mr. London, who cites preparation, concentration and "an obsession with experimenting as much as possible with the latest tech" in getting him to where he is today. For a 24 year old from Brooklyn, he's got the stage presence of a seasoned vet.

Alright fine, twist my arm, let's go to Tao

• We found fameball DJ Samantha Ronson belting out a passable set, eventually putting the entire party on hold at microphone point to pay homage to Noah Tepperberg "Everybody shut the fuck up, there's somebody here that we have to thank, and I think you know who that is..." A crass, yet sweet gesture that didn't not remind us of the holdup scene from Pulp Fiction.
• They're out of bourbon. This is a problem.
• Sundance make out team Kirsten Dunst and Garret Hedlund realized they were sick of dancing with the plebeians and decided it was time to break it down on stage where Ronson and Rashida Jones were all too happy to oblige.
• Even Rashida Jones's name is hot.

The Observer was disappointed to learn that our red-eye flight would be cutting off our opportunity to catch LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy attack the turntables at Bing tonight, but we suppose there's always next time.

Bell, Bosworth and Aselton try On some shades for size.

While it seemed most of the action at the Sundance film festival had been happening at night behind colossal bouncers, The Observer caught wind that there was an equally exciting, yet slightly bizarre, scene taking place in the light of day: celebrity gifting suites. We took the opportunity to start our day a bit earlier to see what all the commotion was.

First stop: The Bertolli Meal Soup Chalet Hosted By Gen Art

• New York's own Byrdie Bell let us ride shotgun as she had her war paint applied by the Finns from Lumene Cosmetics, from whom The Observer dodged a graciously offered full male makeup treatment: "Don't you want your eyes to pop like hers?" (We kind of did.)
• Justin Long squeezed through a pack of iPhone wielding moms to pick up a pair of shades gratis from the Solstice team, who had just successfully equipped Kate Bosworth, Lake Bell and Katie Aselton—none of whom could determine if they liked skiing over snowboarding.
• Andie Macdowell's still got it. Like, really still has it.

Next stop: Talent Resources gifting suite (someone told me they had free Cream of Wheat samples)

• Bumped into producer Malcolm Pullinger of Wholphin and McSweeny's fame, who joined our investigation into these Cream of Wheat rumors.
• SNL's Nasim Pedrad leaned over a tall counter to snag herself some shwag from Sean John, noting that she really likes "the boy stuff, how 'bout that cardigan?" The team was all too happy to oblige.
• Cream of Wheat CENTRAL!

Moving right along: The Gansevoort gifting thing

• Are you a celebrity? Do you have feet? Do your naked feet need Sorel boots? These were the hard hitting questions being lobbed at John Heder by boot babes as he laced up.
• Everyone is wearing these freaking boots, getting the vibe that everyone may also be a little drunk.

Looks like there's a football game on? Back to the soup mongers to check in on the Giants

• OH MAN Christina Hendricks - hang on though, who's this dude she's with? Googling...Googling...she's married!?!
• Luckiest man in the world, Geoffery Arend everybody!
• Nap time.

Nursed back to health, The Observer hopped a cab back to main street to see what The Bing Bar had to offer

• Is that Andrew Keegan? Where the heck has that guy been? Oh right - practically living at The Bing Bar.
• Cobra Starship, expressing that they indeed had the capability to "go to eleven, if necessary" serenaded the crowd with more than their fair share of sweeping arpeggios.

Park City Live: Let there be Deadmau5

Deadmau5 takes Park City Live by storm.

• Waiting for Deadmau5, aka. Joel Zimmerman to assault the stage with his signature brand of electronic dance music, we run into Tenjune's Eugene Remm at his table stageside: "Can you believe this shit man? They have a pour limiter on our bottle service!" The Observer momentarily commiserated with the frustration of not being able to drink more than one shot of Patron simultaneously.
• Uh oh: the sound system is struggling. Zimmerman takes the stage.
• Promptly blows 3 speakers.
• Still somehow lights the place on fire, despite kind of phoning it in.

A quick pitstop at Chris Masterson's birthday party, and we're headed back to Tao

• We copped a squat on a banquette with the hard-to-miss king of clubs Noah Tepperberg, as he reigned over a roundtable in the house he built. We canvassed Noah on how he got here, who after promising to reveal to us at a later date told The Observer, "You don't want to know how the fuck I got here." We absolutely did.
• Fresh off the premiere of his film Red Hook Summer, director Spike Lee set up shop with a hulking posse directly in front of DJ Sinatra's dj booth, immediately proceeding to do their thing.
• Our ears are broken.

The Brooklyn-born actor perhaps best known for his role as Bobby Baccalieri on HBO's The Sopranos had just arrived at the boozy grand-opening party for the newly rebranded Sapphire New York strip club on Monday, April 27, looking very "legitimate businessman" in a silky black short-sleeved shirt.

He was a long way from Satin Dolls, the real-life suburban New Jersey backdrop for the Sopranos' fictional Bada Bing Club.

But, compared to the swankly 10,000-square-foot Sapphire, located in the original Scores space at 333 East 60th Street in Manhattan, "Bada Bing is a shithole!" chirped Mr. Schirripa.

His Sopranos co-star, Vincent Pastore, agreed. "This is a little more classy than Bada Bing," said Mr. Pastore, dressed in a gold-and-blue-patterned blazer and shiny multi-colored shirt. "The girls at Bada Bing, you know, they wish they could work here."

He promptly took one of Sapphire's more beautiful blond dancers by the arm--"my next wife," Mr. Pastore said--and smiled for the cameras.

Would she really marry that guy? "I would if he asked," replied the personable pole-dancer, Constance B., sporting four-inch heels and a slinky, easily shedable shiny blue gown with the designer label Nom de Plume. The jet-setting Portland, Ore.-based stripper, a regular performer at the company's ginormous 70,000-square-foot Sapphire club in Las Vegas, was one of many sexy gals flown in specially for the splashy opening party.

Buxom Barb Wire actress Pamela Anderson soon her took her proper place among the scantily clad, appearing briefly outside in a tiny white top and even tinier Daisy Duke shorts. She posed for photographs but quickly slipped into the club without speaking to reporters along the red carpet. ("Sapphire rules!" Ms. Anderson later announced in a brief, barely amplified statement from her tightly guarded, velvet-curtained VIP booth in the back of the club.)

Actress Shannen Doherty also made an appearance, huddling with Noah Tepperberg, owner of the West Chelsea nightclub Marquee, in a big black semicircular booth by the main stage.

The newly renamed and remodeled club, acquired by Sapphire honchos David Talla, Jeffrey Wasserman, Glen Peter Bernardi and Peter Feinstein amid previous proprietors Richard Goldring and Eliot Osher's legal woes, has been open for business since January.

But, its highly touted restaurant, Prime 333, helmed by chef Jayson Margulies, formerly of Adam Perry Lang's acclaimed Robert's Steakhouse, only began serving food in March. "Steak and women go hand in hand--it's testosterone food," Mr. Margulies told the Daily Transom.

Does the chef get free lapdances? "No--I'm a married guy," Mr. Margulies said. He added, however, "If a customer feels so strongly that he wants to buy me a dance, then for the benefit of the club, I'll graciously accept it."

Still, Monday's big event was the first attempt by the new operators to reinstate some of the star-studded buzz of the old Scores days, when celebrity wrangler and longtime Howard Stern pal Lonnie Hanover was promoting the place. (Mr. Hanover now shills for rival Midtown strip club Rick's Cabaret.)

"We want everybody to know that we're here," managing partner Mr. Feinstein told the Daily Transom. "So we decided to spend, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars and have a big party."

Mr. Pastore, for one, fondly recalled the old Scores days.

"I used to come with Chuck Zito all the time," he said. "Is Chucky still allowed to come in?" Mr. Pastore asked a security guard in a pinstriped suit. "He'll be here later with Mickey Rourke!" the beefy bouncer replied.

The Board of Elections, the head of which Tim Robbins called a "corrupt scumbag" after an Election Day snafu, has issued a statement inviting the actor to produce a public service announcement about voter participation. [TMZ]

A "very, very thin" and "stressed out" looking Gwenyth Paltrow traveled Miami last week as a guest of hotelier Jeff Soffer, instead of joining husband Chris Martin on tour. (Maybe she's just sick of Coldplay like everyone else?) [P6]

Britney Spears doesn't seem to be enjoying her new, less insane existence: "Even when you go to jail, you know there's the time when you're gonna get out," she says in an upcoming documentary. "But in this situation, it's never ending... It's just like [the movie] Groundhog Day every day." [US Weekly]

The infamous team behind the now defunct Socialiterank.com may be returning to the web with... an astrology website? [Cityfile]

Marquee's Noah Tepperberg will likely receive community board approval to open a new lounge/restaurant in the space formerly occupied by Earth. [Grub Street] 

Robert Trump, brother of Donald, is scheduled to do battle with soon-to-be ex-wife Blaine in court next month. [P6] 

The New York State Liquor Authority (S.L.A.) has denied the club's request for an all-night permit on New Year's Eve, according to the New York Post.

The agency is "cracking down on applicants" for the permit -- which allows bar operators to skip the usual 4 a.m. last call and keep selling booze an extra four hours on the Jan. 1 holiday -- "denying permits to nightspots that haven't reported their plans to the NYPD, as mandated, or that have serious charges on their records," the Post reports.

Back in July, the S.L.A. voted to suspend alcohol sales at the 7,500-square-foot former garbage-truck garage turned celebrity hotspot at 289 10th Avenue -- where a bottle of Grey Goose costs $375 -- amid multiple charges of "permitting the storage, possession, use and trafficking of a controlled substance," among other complaints.

The Observer's Spencer Morgan previously spoke to the club's attorney, David Jaroslawicz, about the charges:

Irina Aleksander sweet-talked her way into Liam McMullan's 21st birthday party and discovered that the sons of society photographers like a good pair of Brooks Brothers pants just as much as the next guy.

Ms. Aleksander also got on the horn with socialite-slash-actress (aren't we all!) Annie Churchill to gab about her new online venture: a fashion retail website and online fashion-lifestyle TV show (ooh!) hosted by (you guessed it!) Ms. Churchill herself.

And wide-eyed Caroline Bankoff fell under the spell of Benicio Del Toro at a screening of his new movie, Che. Mmmm, more, por favor!

As suspected by nightlife blog Down by the Hipster and others, nightclub impresario Noah Tepperberg’s Marquee was not shut down earlier this summer solely because of a water main break. Documents (click for .pdf) from the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control filed on July 8 charge that a months-long undercover sting yielded seven different occurrences of “storage, possession, use or trafficking of a controlled substance” at the club, and one instance of “storage, possession, use or trafficking of marijuana.”

The alleged body of evidence resulted in charges against the club owners, Noah Tepperberg and Jason Strauss, for failing “to exercise adequate supervision over the conduct of the licensed business,” and on July 18 an emergency summary order of suspension of their liquor license was put in effect.

Suspend the license? “The club was never closed to my knowledge,” Mr. Tepperberg’s lawyer, David Jaroslawicz, told the Transom. “They may have had a water main leak,” he added. Another client of his had a fire not long ago. 

Mr. Jaroslawicz eventually came to the point. “That fact that some idiots tried to sell drugs—you know, do everything you can to prevent it, but you know, if some idiots want to sell drugs, they’re going to sell drugs,” he said. 

As for the swift, seemingly seamless handling of the matter, the lawyer said everything was by the book: Cops had a lawyer, State Liquor Authority had a lawyer and Mr. Tepperberg had him.

“You always, always try to cooperate with the police,” he said. “Because they’re protecting you from the crazies, but they’re also the ones who control things.”

In this instance, cooperating meant allowing the police to supervise the installation of additional security equipment. “It was not cheap at all, I can tell you that,” said Mr. Jaroslawicz.

Mr. Tepperberg did not return several calls for comment.

Marquee was already on thin ice for an alleged assault and a health code violation in ’06, among other things. Was this a sweetheart deal?

“I don’t think they got a sweet deal. They got a very, very specific arrangement, which was approved by the proper authorities,” he said. “For you to say they got a sweet deal, I don’t know where you’re getting that from.”

smorgan@observer.com

“Maybe a sculpture?” asked Mr. Tepperberg, who was wearing Helmut Lang khakis and Adidas slip-ons.

“Or a girl in a bikini,” suggested Mr. Strauss, waving around his blue-tinted Oliver Peeples sunglasses.

Out back by the pool, the hot tub, the future tennis and beach volleyball courts--as the two tried to rouse Russell Simmons on his cell phone--it appeared that come Memorial Day, the place would live up to its nickname as Noah and Jason’s Playboy Mansion.

“I’m pretty famous for my hot-tub parties,” said Mr. Strauss. The house sleeps 25, is about a mile from Conscience Point and will be crammed with famous and barely legal clubgoers until Labor Day. Noted potential guests--MTV’s Carson Daly and actress Tara Reid--and friends like Nikki and Paris Hilton, Max LeRoy, Ivanka Trump, Sean Lennon and Shoshanna Lonstein get V.I.P. treatment at the velvet-roped club, where a reservation for a table and a bottle of alcohol goes for $300. After hours, the party continues back at the house. In June, there will be real live playmates for Conscience Point’s Playboy party.

To avoid any buzz kills, the two club owners have also rented the house behind them for $55,000 and expanded the parking area. And it wasn’t clear if Mr. Tepperberg was joking when he said they planned to install a Budweiser net so the volleyball wouldn’t stray into the 75-foot buffer between his house and the neighbors’.

Sean (Puffy) Combs will also be up and running again as a host in time for summer 2000. In April, after he paid a $2,000 fine to the town of East Hampton based on charges that he had 500 more guests than his permit allowed at a Fourth of July party last year, 30-year-old Mr. Combs signed a contract to purchase a bigger house on seven acres in Quogue, for $3.9 million.

Mr. Combs is on the senior end of things this year in the glorified summer exurb, formerly saved for the established-and-successful. Now it’s a beach ready to be assaulted by the under-30-with-immense-disposable-income crowd. Two other party promoters have also purchased huge houses. Michael Ault wants to build a singles party community and there are Real World–style houses in the making, where 22-year-old D.J. Samantha Ronson and her pals have been invited to come hang out. This is not their fathers’ Hamptons.

Last year, the house rented by the Conscience Point owners “was … like camp,” said one regular who once ended up in the pool in her dress. Well, camp with champagne. “It was always a party.” Mark Ronson (who crashes at his parents’ place in Bellport) celebrated his 26th birthday at the club before returning to the beach house at 6 a.m. Chris Barish, 27, who stays at his dad’s Southampton estate on Dune Road, and Peter Morton’s son, Harry, 19, who also stays with his dad, often stopped by to play basketball, shoot pool, take a dip, or “pregame” with a burger or beer before going to the club. And Danielle Field, 21, daughter of Interscope Records founder Ted Field, would visit when she wasn’t at daddy’s rented estate. Kid Capri D.J.’d at Mr. Tepperberg’s birthday party at the house last summer; the party was attended by Q-Tip and Ivanka Trump, 18.

A Conscience Point regular remembers Ralph Lauren’s son David, 27, complaining that he had to drive all the way back from the club to his father’s mansion in Montauk. “He has a driver wait outside the club in a big Explorer-type jammy,” she said. His sister Dylan, 25, who just started a candy company, also frequents the club.

This year Nikki Hilton and her sister Paris, 19, may be permanent fixtures. Last year, they had to make due with a room at a bed-and-breakfast while their parents toured Europe. But their father, Rick Hilton, bought them a Dutch Colonial estate on three acres off Wickapogue Lane for $2.385 million in October; renovations will be completed by the end of the month. Mr. Hilton said the house features an exercise room, a wine cellar and a pool with waterfalls. “I’m sure we’ll be having a housewarming party,” he said.

But that won’t keep his daughters home at night, now that they’re even closer to the Conscience Point summerhouse and another right down the road. “We have too many friends to entertain in Jason’s dad’s Dune Road house in West Hampton,” said Mr. Tepperberg about laying down a $116,000 down payment. “You can’t be a promoter in the Hamptons without a house essentially.”

Identical twin brothers Neil and David Levenbook, 28, agree. An Internet lawyer and a headhunter by day, respectively, they organize parties for Life in Manhattan and Conscience Point in Southampton. In February, they bought a house down the street from Mr. Teppenberg and Mr. Strauss’ house for about $700,000--after renting for the past four years in Southampton and Quogue. The five-bedroom, four-bath wooden contemporary has a pool, tennis courts, hot tub and a basketball court.

The brothers, Long Island natives who graduated from Hofstra Law School, will use their new house the same way as the club owners. “There’s lines at clubs and it’s all about who you know. We can walk our people in,” said Neil, claiming to have as many as 50 guests on a busy weekend night. They offer models, young corporate executives, dot-commers and even pro athletes a place to stay in exchange for their getting drunk in public in the clubs.

Mr. Combs entertains both young and old for pleasure. The estate he is buying in Quogue, called Winnecomac, has seven acres of lawns and landscaped formal gardens, which include a lily pool and a pergola. The three-story manor house built in 1907 features 10,000 square feet, eight bedrooms, eight bathrooms, 10 fireplaces, a staff wing, an elevator, a wine cellar, a heated seven-car garage and a four-bedroom guesthouse. The East Hampton house, on 1.6 acres, is not on the market.

Then there’s Britain’s Channel 4 version of MTV’s Real World and the Yahoo! Syngery Spa which is supposed to be a live Internet feed from a 11,000-square-foot Water Mill house with a spa, screening room, basketball courts and even a gourmet chef. Samantha Ronson and photographer Patrick McMullan, 40, who has recorded the goings on at Hamptons clubs for years, have been invited to the Channel 4 house. “I never agreed to live there, but I will be staying there,” said Mr. McMullan, who is a firm believer in forgoing rent in favor of house-guesting. “I think it’s going to be, kind of a house with a bunch of groovy people. And I’m, like, one of the groovy people invited.”

At 30 and 33, Eric von Brock and his brother Gordon, co-owners of Tavern nightclub in Southampton and Lava Lounge in Manhattan, are seasoned Hamptons party-givers and homeowners. They bought a house in Watermill four years ago and now want into Southampton. But in stark contrast to Mr. Tepperberg and Mr. Strauss, the von Brock’s use their nine-bedroom house on Deerfield Road with a pool, a Jacuzzi and a volleyball court for what Eric calls, “a very peaceful, nice get away from Tavern … at least by day it’s peaceful …. It’s more of a hibernation place by day,” he said. “We try not to overload it …. When I owned at 26, I was more into the share thing--it wasn’t a hassle yet.”

The brothers do promotions similar to those of Mr. Strauss and Mr. Tepperberg, and although they are competitors, they joined forces for a large-scale New Year’s Eve bash. But they draw different crowds. Last summer’s guest list ran from Bijou Phillips to Oliver Stone.

“Southampton is absolutely, definitely becoming Daytona Beach–y,” said Michael Ault, who prefers the more family-oriented Bridgehampton but plans to rent in Southampton for the summer. “It’s just changed and is a lot less attractive …. We’re all scrambling to find the next spot.”

That may be partly of his own doing. Two years ago, Mr. Ault, 35, and David Sarner, 36, owners of Chaos nightclub, bought four acres in Sagaponock for about $1 million to build an entertainment complex. Mr. Ault calls the planned gated complex that will include several houses, a pool, hot tubs, probably 12 bedrooms and a small lake as a “fun fantasy retreat.”

Nothing has actually been built yet on the plot, and brokers in the Hamptons were skeptical about the plan’s fruition. “There is no way they’ll get a permit for that!” declared one Bridgehampton broker.

“We have felt inclined to graduate to that level,” said Mr. Ault, who during the summer of 1996 rented an old house on Main Street in Southampton with his business partners Tony Theodore and Mr. Sarner for about $80,000 to use a promotion tool for their nightclub Spy Bar, a club past its heyday. “We would bus girls from Elite and Wilhelmina and Ford [modeling agencies] out to the house and there were some mornings when the owner would show up with the police and see 40 people camped throughout the house,” said Mr. Ault, expressing remorse for the “tragic” fate of the homeowners’ silver and porcelain.

Lara Shriftman, 30, who co-owns a public-relations firm, said she had enough of the young scenesters in Southampton but she won’t leave because she said she doesn’t have time to drive any farther from Manhattan.

“It’s so weird,” said Lizzie Grubman, 29, who runs a public-relations firm with Peggy Siegel about the Daytona-fication of Southampton. “I feel so old.”

Ms. Grubman is sticking it out in Southampton this summer, but not her ex-boyfriend, Andrew Sasson, 30, who owns Jet East and a piece of Conscience Point. They both used to spend summers at the home of Ms. Grubman’s father, entertainment lawyer, Allen Grubman. Mr. Sasson bought a house on Sag Harbor Road in Bridgehampton for $875,000 on May 1, but he has even considered bringing one of the doormen from one of the clubs over to keep young party-crawlers out.

“How much is an electric gate?” Mr. Sasson asked a broker on May 6.

Until this year, brokers have consciously tried to keep young renters as far west as possible--Southampton or Quogue--and they’ve also sometimes turned them out when they said they wanted to buy.

“I don’t take them to places where neighbors will be unhappy,” said broker Elizabeth Clark of Aguam Realty, who refers to Mr. Tepperberg and Mr. Strauss as “my moguls.” She sent them back to Quogue last summer, saying they should come back to her Southampton office when they were older. “Are we old enough yet?” they asked this fall, when they decided to buy a house. The moguls looked at 75 houses with three brokers before settling on a classic Mediterranean. “Anything south of the highway wouldn’t work,” added Ms. Clark.

Brokers and residents have reason to be happy about the young frolicking at their own risk. Stuart Epstein, owner of Devlin-McNiff Realty, reminisced about a deck of a house in Sagaponock that collapsed last summer under the weight of late-night revelers. The house at 359 Parsonhee Lane with four bedrooms and a heated pool, which belonged to a gallery owner, was sold this year for $1.3 million to a builder who bought the house and the one adjacent to it for $1.2 million.

But a lot of money is still convincing people to rent to 30-year-olds. Phyllis Schlessel, a real-estate agent with Dunemere and Associates, rented a $400,000 house in Quogue with 11 bedrooms and a wraparound porch to Adam Cohen, 30, and his girlfriend, Jennifer Sultan, who sold their Internet company, Live Online, in January for $70 million. The lease included a stipulation--conceived by Ms. Schlessel--for the dot-commers to split the $35,000 cost for the owner to install a pool and deck for the summer.

“There are people who just don’t know what to do with [their money],” said Ms. Schlessel.

Judi Desiderio, a broker at Cook Pony Farm in Bridgehampton, was struggling to tear a 31-year-old Internet executive away from his desk long enough to show him properties upward of $3 million. They spent one day looking until they had to shine headlights at 9:30 p.m. to see a house. One bought a plot of land on Flying Point Road in Southampton for $500,000 and another bought a $1.8 million house in East Hampton.

One film-industry executive in his early 30’s, who wanted to spend between $40,000 and $50,000 for a summer rental, hired a driver to speed a check out to the Bridgehampton rental agency to beat out what his broker called the competing “Wall Street brats” with buying power. And he still lost out to a higher bid, but ended up renting a $45,000 house in Bridgehampton North. Cook Pony Farm picked up the driver’s fee--anticipating white-glove treatment would bring him back to buy next summer.

But Hamptons brokers may have been expecting even more of the young rich to knock on their doors. “Dot-coms do not have time to go to Hamptons every weekend,” insisted Jason McCabe Malacanis, 29, editor of The Silicon Valley Reporter. “The idea of spending six hours driving to the Hamptons and back and wasting all that time is unacceptable to the efficiency-minded Internet person.”

On May 6, over lunch at Sag Harbor’s B. Smith’s restaurant, broker Paige St. John of Cook Pony Farm in Bridgehampton, 38, sister of Whitney Fairchild, told a story about showing a carload of five 20-something houses for summer rentals in April. The renters, including a publicist, insisted that money was no object because a banker who works for George Soros was writing the check for the house of their choice.

Ms. St. John took the group to the house of developer Jeff Collé, a self-declared “builder to the stars,” on Town Line Road in Wainscott, which is on the market for about $10 million but can be rented for $350,000 for the summer. “It’s a Federal house with apple trees,” said Ms. St. John. “It’s a grown-up house …. They actually wanted to play grown up.” Even though she charmed Mr. Collé by gushing over a picture of his good friend Alec Baldwin, there was no way he was going to fork over his keys to a cute young publicist with big party ideas.

According to Mr. Tepperberg, the crew ended up renting a house in Water Mill next to Wilzig Castle, the house complete with a movie theater that rapper Jay-Z rented last summer for $30,000 a week.

“There definitely seems to be a younger crowd in Southampton than there was a few years ago,” said Dan Rattiner, editor of Dan’s Papers, the Hamptons’ free weekly paper, who partially credits the remodeled and expanded movie theater last summer for the town’s revival.

“I think what’s happened with people in their mid-30’s are becoming successful with the Internet--it’s allowing them the opportunity to buy into this market at great levels,” said Jason Binn, the 32-year-old publisher of Hamptons Magazine and South Beach’s Ocean Drive Magazine and son of multimillionaire Moreton Binn. But, he said, referring to longtime residents like Howard Gittis, George Soros, Ahmet Ertegun and Peter Morton, “the core institution here will never go away.”

In a case of role reversal, Marci Klein, 33, a co-producer of Saturday Night Live, signed a contract to buy a house overlooking the ocean from Beach Lane in Wainscott for $3.75 million in March. Her father has yet to rent a house for this summer.

The clubgoers, too, are stepping up to the plate. “I’m part of the community now,” said Mr. Tepperberg. “I’ll be at community-board meetings.”

“Owning a house is like [having] a baby,” said Mr. Strauss, who one night last summer, considered jumping off the second floor of his house into the pool, but was convinced by a friend that the act would indeed kill him.

“I’m being selective on the grounds that I do own the place.”

Last Thursday, on the night of his 30th birthday, the nightclub owner, marketer and entrepreneur Noah Tepperberg took a stand against that sort of oppressive normativeness. By midnight, he had left his roaring 20’s behind—not for sophistication or maturity, but for a state of suspended merrymaking agelessness.

“Awww,” cooed a young model as she approached the gargantuan Tao on 58th Street, the three-story pan-Asian restaurant where Mr. Tepperberg was holding the dinner for his birthday extravaganza. She was looking at an enormous bus parked outside. A banner hung beneath its window that wished the birthday boy a happy 30th. “That’s so cute,” said the model, her stilettos ticking as she crossed the street.

After dinner, the bus would serve as a rolling party as it transported Mr. Tepperberg and his inner circle to Marquee—the sometimes-exclusive, sometimes-not Chelsea nightclub that he co-owns.

If it wasn’t the high-school prom, it was close.

Outside Tao, a beefy group of bouncers shared the door with three young women in short, pinstriped skirts and tight little shirts to match. They were dressed as “Venetian girls,” they said, to celebrate the restaurant’s Sept. 24 expansion into Las Vegas—an expansion that would occur with Mr. Tepperberg and his partner, Jason Strauss, in a fuzzily defined commercial enterprise with Tao’s owner, Marc Packer.

The girls actually looked like candy canes. “We’re just working the door, looking cute,” one said. Another smoked a cigarette and yanked at her top.

Models lined up outside, some of them invited and others merely curious about the party going on inside. “I’d like to know what the event is about, at least,” one girl said to her friend as she turned away from the door. “All right—we’re going to the Four Seasons.”

The waiting-room-cum-bar inside Tao was just about packed by 9:30 p.m. Publicists from Syndicate, one of Mr. Tepperberg’s vague associates in the nightlife scene, hung together around a couch. “Tinsley Mortimer will be here,” said Sam Ong to a colleague. “Tinsley, from Virginia. Socialite. Gorgeous. Stunning.” Actress Ali Larter, someone’s client, lounged on a barstool.

When Mr. Tepperberg himself walked into the restaurant at around 10 p.m., he was wearing a casual button-down shirt and a pair of white sneakers. He moved like an easy target through the sea of designer dresses and sleek black suits. The only real competition for most casually underdressed was from Page Six scribe Chris Wilson, who defiantly arrived in a T-shirt. He hunkered down on the sidelines with Stuff editor Cory Jones.

Soon, the procession of models became a parade. Red Hot Chili Peppers front man Anthony Kiedis, whose band surely provided the soundtrack to Mr. Tepperberg’s high-school days, had taken his seat at a dinner table inside. He was an appropriate blast from the past for an evening in which time was no object.

Mr. Tepperberg was celebrating more than just a birthday tonight; he was celebrating—and also exhibiting—his ascension to the top of a certain circle of New York society. And while he didn’t exactly come from nothing—he did attend Stuyvesant High School—he is certainly an unlikely candidate for the head of this kingdom. He is said to love chess more than clubbing, and he is, well, charmingly schlubby.

According to friends, it was his relentless networking and raw talent for throwing parties that put him here. He was in college, the University of Miami, when he began hosting in earnest. He hasn’t stopped since then—although, with Strategic Group, his firm with Jason Strauss, the partying has become a professional hustle. Advertisers have gotten onboard with Strategic Group, as it claims access to all of their most-wanted demographics.

Just as Mr. Tepperberg threw his first party at Stuyvesant, Mr. Strauss himself got his start as a promoter as a 17-year-old at Riverdale Country School. He had wanted to have a party for his friends, so he convinced a club owner that he was a 21-year-old Columbia student. He rented the place out and packed the room with 400 high-school seniors.

Though ostensibly a dozen years out of high school now, they still have that teenage nose for the cool kids—although it’s true that even back then, they were old before their time.

Yet, Mr. Tepperberg’s mother—just one of the 400 guests at the massive dinner party—didn’t look the least bit worried at her son’s development. He had hired a man in leather pants to stand onstage during dinner and play a fiddle over the pounding techno. “This would be good,” he probably said. “This would probably go well with the enormous Buddha on stage, and the weird ‘Made in U.S.A.’ sign that is also there for some reason.”

As the last of the sushi swam in from the kitchen, the man of the hour, all smiles and sneakers, leapt from table to table, starting conversations and shaking hands. These were his people—his models, his traders and his demi-celebrities.

“This party is everything that Noah Tepperberg stands for,” a fashion designer said. “He stands for lots of models and music.”

By midnight, people stood to dance at their tables. Nicky Hilton (Are you enjoying the party, Ms. Hilton? “Yes”) made cute with Entourage boyfriend Kevin Connolly (Are you going to the after-party? “I’m tired, I want to go home”), hugging in the center of the enormous dining room. Lydia Hearst verbed about, and Anthony Kiedis had left his seat to the young, spiky-haired Ryan Cabrera.

Mr. Cabrera once dated Jessica Simpson’s sister. The chandeliers, hanging 35 feet above, changed color to the beat.

Outside, where limousines and taxicabs had already started carting guests to the after-dinner hoedown at Marquee, a man in a rickshaw pulled up alongside the doorman.

“How’s the classiest joint in town?” he asked.

“Good, thank you, my man,” the doorman said. “You remind me of Seinfeld—you remember that one?”

At Marquee, time itself disappeared. About 1,200 were packed into the two-story nightclub, the darkness overwhelming and the pushing oppressive. Bottles of Grey Goose graced every table, and two dancers dressed in see-through gold lace writhed in uncomfortable slow motion atop a box.

Hardly anybody in the club had a job.

“I play the flute,” said one girl. “I live in Paris.” Her name was Anna, and she was in town auditioning for Juilliard. “I do this at night, then I get up and I practice for six hours. And then I do this again. At least I’m not one of those who sits at home, with the cat and the mom and everything.”

Another girl had recently graduated from Brooklyn Law. “I refuse to have a job that I don’t want. Maybe that makes me an ass,” she said. “I’ve done too much and gone through too much school for that.”

“I used to make clothes. Now I’m part of what they call the Wonder Class,” said Matt Damhave, formerly of the über-hip Imitation of Christ clothing company. He swayed by the bar with a drink in his hand. “Am I having fun? Yeah. When there’s no reason to wake up in the morning, I have fun.”

That one could go either way, obviously.

“It’s very frontal here,” said a sweet Vietnamese woman who had just moved to New York from London to work as a publicist. “It’s always ‘Let’s go here’ and ‘Let’s do this.’ London is much more subtle.”

“I love my BlackBerry,” said a nearby photographer. “I don’t understand people who say they don’t want to be connected. I love what I do. Whenever this thing rings, I hear the cash register ring.”

At around 2:30 a.m., in one of Marquee’s shadowed side rooms, a man in a suit sat on a couch with his elbows on his knees and a cigarette in his hand.

What’s 35 like? The Transom asked.

“It goes fast,” he answered slowly. “Thirty to 35 went in a blink. They go by like months now. If someone told me when I was 22 that I’d still be coming here now, I wouldn’t believe it.” Nearby, a young man strummed a blond girl like a guitar.

On the bright Monday afternoon that followed, Mr. Tepperberg reflected in his office. “Ten years ago, I started my marketing career,” he said. “If you had asked me then if I would still be going out to nightclubs and restaurants, I would have said yes, I’m sure.”

He considered his age. “You know, it doesn’t feel a whole lot different,” he said.

—Leon Neyfakh

The Loaners

On a Saturday afternoon, The Transom set off for the chic Lower East Side retail district. That ’hood’s not just for the post-teen trust-fund set anymore—nowadays, even the well-heeled ladies of uptown head on down for a leisurely shop and a nosh.

But The Transom had a specific mission: MTV’s Video Music Awards, that annual commercially hedonistic romp, is in Miami on Aug. 28, and flashy new outfits were in order. And, to be frank, the price had to be right.

At a Ludlow boutique, the wedge-heeled clientele had the sort of smooth, moneyed hair that normal people can only dream of pulling off in 90-degree humidity. There, The Transom found itself draped in a slouchy blue cotton-Lycra concoction that would pass as the perfect dress.

When faced with the exorbitant price tag—coupled with the thought of life-altering, bank-breaking upcoming expenses, such as a round of poolside drinks at the Raleigh—an inquiry was made about the store’s return policy. The salesgirl noted that there wasn’t one, really, and so The Transom hesitantly asked if perhaps—and Gosh, I hate to even suggest this—but surely they might be willing to loan the dress, not that I would ever normally ask such a thing.

“Sure!” replied the store owner—after, of course, the Video Music Awards were mentioned. “I just dressed a bunch of other girls this week. Entertainment lawyers or something—they didn’t want to look too sexy … ,” she giggled while scribbling down her phone number. And just like that, there were three separate outfits in a brown bag. Hello, carry-on!

All over the Northeast, it seems, pretty girls are making astute preparations for Miami. “I was shopping in the Hamptons over the weekend,” sighed Daily News gossip reporter Johanna Piazza, who is also headed to Miami, “and it was a cathouse of girls fighting for the last half-priced Rosa Cha bikini.” The fashion pre-parade to Florida, Ms. Piazza noted, consisted mostly of “P.R. types, event planners and gold-diggers who follow the party.”

“If you know where to find a good dress, let me know!” moaned Lizzie Grubman yesterday. She has yet to finalize her Miami wardrobe. “I’m having the hardest time finding something, and they tell me I can’t wear my lingerie dresses anymore and I just don’t know what to do …. ” She trailed off, her normally aggressive voice fading into an anxious squeak. The challenge, Ms. Grubman said, is finding something casual yet chic. Why not grab a loaner? “I’ve never heard of them giving dresses to non-celebrities,” she said, surprised to learn that fellow females had scored their fripperies at no cost.

Yesterday, Us Weekly reporter Alyssa Shelasky had just come from her Brazilian bikini wax. She was next headed uptown to see an eyebrow specialist at Avon. “I’m searching for some cute, sassy, flashy dresses,” she said. “I could get loaners, but I’m not comfortable with them because I know that by the end of the night, I’ll end up with wine on my dress, or rolling around in the sand or something. But, yeah, borrowing the freebies would be completely possible.”

But what to get loaned? How shall we define the ideal outfit for this particular circus? Ms. Shelasky rattled off a list of designers and then stopped short. “Anything,” she said, “that looks like Paris Hilton.”

—Jessica Coen

The Mayor Is a Pitcher

Mayor Michael Bloomberg—jacket off, sleeves rolled up—bounced a pink Spalding ball in front of his tasseled black loafers and readied the stickball bat on his shoulder. After two feeble swings, one above the ball and one under, he finally connected with a puny pop fly. The Mayor was clearly agitated by his dismal performance, and he dismissively handed the broomstick off to a pinstripe-suited aide.

The jeers came immediately.

“I wouldn’t have choosed up and had the Mayor on my side,” Guardian Angel Curtis Sliwa said, his voice amplified for 100 or so spectators to hear. Besides acting as a star witness in the trial of John (Junior) Gotti, the garrulous vigilante has moonlighted as the city’s acting stickball commissioner since 1993, when then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani installed him to what he calls New York’s “least-wanted” post. (“My perk is a $2 ride on the mud mover into and out of games.”)

On a sunny Wednesday morning last week, Commissioner Sliwa joined the city’s police and fire commissioners to help the Mayor kick off the annual “Battle of the Badges” long-ball hitting contest, which pits the city’s oldest rivals, the cops and the firemen, against one another on a narrow stretch of concrete in Brooklyn’s MetroTech corporate complex.

Mr. Bloomberg’s bad outing continued.

After discarding the bat, the Mayor marched over to a crack in the cement that served as the pitcher’s mound. “Chris!” he barked, and the same suited aide scrambled over to feed his boss with a fresh supply of pink Spaldeens.

First up was Commissioner Sliwa, who adjusted his beret before thoroughly smacking the Mayor’s weak pitches. For a second, even stone-faced Chris forgot himself and gleefully stabbed at the balls like a boy in a playground.

Then Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly swaggered to the plate, removing his gray suit jacket—though not the ominous black cell phone clipped to his belt. “The man is totally buffed!” exclaimed Commissioner Sliwa, who had traded his stickball bat back in for his microphone.

Long-simmering tensions rose to the surface as Mr. Bloomberg sized Mr. Kelly up. The southpaw commissioner crouched down and chewed his chiseled cheek in a low Lenny Dykstra pose. The Mayor wound up. His distinctly feminine delivery fooled the grizzled police commissioner for a spell, but soon enough Mr. Kelly got wise. He whacked a line drive within inches of Mr. Bloomberg’s flinching brow and nailed a sharp grounder into the lean calf of a blond photographer. She seemed offended when no one begged her pardon.

Next up was Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta, who the Mayor quickly brushed off the pink chalk plate. The velocity of the Mayor’s pitches suspiciously increased, and Mr. Scoppetta whiffed on a couple of high and tight fastballs. (“It’s a whirling dervish!” yelled Commissioner Sliwa.) Then Mr. Scoppetta got hold of what seemed a low, outside fastball and powered the pinky 170 feet deep into the courtyard, where another Guardian Angel, named Dangerous Ground, used his red beret to block out the sun as he fielded fly balls. (“Nice play there, Dangerous Ground!” Commissioner Sliwa yelled to his comrade.)

Besides the play-by-play (“It’s an egg ball!” “That’s some serious English action!” “A foul tippy!”), Commissioner Sliwa’s duties included introducing the five elderly gentlemen who make up the brass section of the Brooklyn Dodger Sym-phony Band, which played languorous versions of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” that lulled at least one spectator into a deep, drool-laden sleep. He also emptied a cardboard box of stickball bats onto a curb and sang the praises of “the only game invented on the streets of New York City at the turn of the last century.”

The commissioner admired the spongy pink Spalding balls and mused about their humble beginnings as flawed tennis balls—“which I despise,” he added, explaining that for him, the green fuzz evoked images of the country-club set “eating their watercress sandwiches and watching the U.S. Open.”

The billionaire Mayor, who was dressed rather formally for a stickball game in navy blue suit pants, tie and an “M.R.B.”-monogrammed white shirt, does happen to swing from that very demographic.

He moved uncomfortably amidst the brawny firefighters, who flipped the stickball bats in their hands like matchsticks and wore fire-engine-red shirts that read “FDNY Stickball, Keep Back Two Sewers.” The Mayor quietly slipped out with the defeated police commissioner as soon as the inning ended.

Mr. Scoppetta stayed to gloat. “The Fire Department is always happy about winning,” he said as he waited for the rival cops to show.

They waited and they waited, and then they waited some more.

Jeff Ray, a barrel-chested firefighter with a tan and a wide Mickey Mantle face (who hit the day’s longest blast, at nearly 300 feet), waxed political about why the cops were late.

“The weakness of the cops is that they already got a contract and so are complacent,” said Mr. Ray. “We don’t. We’re still hungry.”

In the end, the cops never showed. Commissioner Sliwa, saying that he had to get going to testify against Mr. Gotti, declared a forfeit. He suggested, somewhat vaguely, that the absence of New York’s Finest had to do with his more than 70 arrests in the last 25 years.

But Lieutenant Berger, an on-duty police officer commiserating with some other cops over by the yawning members of the Brooklyn Sym-phony, had other ideas.

“We don’t want to embarrass the Fire Department,” he said.

—Jason Horowitz