(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?

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

Aliza Avital, thin and towering and striking like a modern-day skyscraper, sat in the conference room in the offices of Eastern Consolidated, where she had just been promoted to senior director.

Eastern Consolidated Senior Director Aliza Avital (photo credit: Hannah Mattix)

The Israeli native explained to The Commercial Observer how her background—first as an accomplished child gymnast, then as a personal trainer for the Israeli Defense Force, and then as a dancer with Broadway dreams that were never actualized—helped instill in her the patience and wherewithal to see even the simplest of building transactions through.

One such building was 10 Fifth Avenue, a mixed-use property that had been on the market for two years. The sellers were the Manieri Group, according to public records.

“It was a very difficult, complex deal,” said Ms. Avital. “It took 24/7 [communication] on the phone. It was very hard.”

Complicating matters further was her client’s lack of access, from the firm’s Italian location to its unfamiliarity with the English language. Ms. Avital had to use Mario, a family friend of the sellers, as a middleman between them.

'“I wouldn’t have minded going to Rome to meet the guy, but I couldn’t even get information about that. We couldn’t even get his phone number,” she said.

Then there were the seller’s expectations: The $15 million asking price had left the property languishing on the market for two years.

“The smaller deals are much more difficult to do,” she said.

Ms. Avital, along with Eastern Consolidated colleague Nancy Tran, eventually sold the property to Benchmark Real Estate LLC for $9.21 million in April 2011.

The countless false starts, the endless negotiations through a middleman named Mario, all of it was tough for Ms. Avital to deal with. But she is no stranger to dealing with difficulty.

"My business, the communication with people, it’s very, very difficult,” she said. To help keep her head above water, Ms. Avital abides by a simple acronym.

“I have my three A’s,” she said, adding three more A’s to her alliterative name. “‘Availability, Ability, Affability.’ That’s my triple A.”

Those three A’s have suited her well, way back to her childhood in Israel, where she came from a humble background in Kiryat HaYovel, a neighborhood in southwestern Jerusalem. As a child, she was a talented rhythmic gymnast and believed she was on the path to eventually making Israel’s Olympic team.

But a knee injury as a teen cut her career short. Later in life, Ms. Avital did her compulsory military service for the IDF, where the grueling training runs helped foster the mental toughness and patience she says she carries to this day.

“I was in a four-month course to be a personal trainer. That was the most difficult, athletic level that I’ve ever seen,” she said.

Running through training obstacles, including running on a beach and then up a mountain, all while holding an Uzi and other military equipment, wore on the young Ms. Avital. “I finished by crawling [across] the line, but I got that degree and that made me a stronger and tougher person,” she said.

In 1999, shortly after finishing her military service, she moved to New York City, armed only with two suitcases and $1,000, to pursue her dream. “I wanted to be a dancer on Broadway,” she said. “But I didn’t realize they had so many talented [dancers].” After a slew of failed auditions started to take its toll, Ms. Avital, then 21 and living in a basement apartment in Forest Hills, said the great distance away from her family and her struggles achieving her dream started to add up.

She found herself in a restaurant, drawing up a list of reasons why she should stay in New York City versus returning to Israel. “I was ready to go back home, because I figured I’m not going to make it here,” she recalled. On a whim, she took a bartending course and, upon getting her license, worked as a bartender at hotspots like Tao and 212 Restaurant and Bar.“Do you know ‘Coyote Ugly’? That’s how I was,” she said.

Despite being a self-professed teetotaler, working as a bartender brought her money and fun.“I was so good at that,” she said. “I loved every minute of it.” It also brought her face to face with a customer who instantly recognized in her the potential to have a long career in real estate.

“He said, ‘You have to understand, you’re not going to make money for 12 to 18 months,’” she recalled. Through that contact, she met Debrah Lee Charatan, who asked Ms. Avital why she should bring her on as an apprentice.“I’m struggling all my life,” she recalled telling Ms. Charatan. “I want to make a lot of money and I like nice things.”

Ten months into working with Ms. Charatan, she made her first real estate deal, a building sale on West 86th Street that drew an $80,000 commission. Ms. Avital, a noted clotheshorse, spent $2,000 of it on a Prada purse. “That was my cheapest purse,” she said with a laugh.

She joined Eastern Consolidated in 2003, and since then has worked on over 25 deals valued over $650 million. She helped sell a residential building at 330 East 63rd Street to Stonehenge Partners for $39 million in 2007, and another residential building on 120 West 21st Street for $138 million last year.  

Last year was perhaps her hardest, she said. Ms. Avital, who is married to an OB/GYN and lives in an apartment by the U.N. Plaza, was asked if she had children.

She said no.

“I had a tragedy last year,” she added. “I’m working on it, hopefully one day.”

The Commercial Observer apologized for bringing up the matter, which Ms. Avital kindly brushed aside.

As she had mentioned earlier in the conversation:

“When I was a child and I was a gymnast and I got rejected because I was not good enough to go to the Olympics, because I got hurt. That killed me,” she said. “A lot of the times I work on the deal so hard and they don’t happen, it kills me,” she said.

“But I don’t give up.”

drosen@observer.com

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.

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

As a teenager, Taylor Plimpton went clubbing in New York when he returned home to East 72nd Street on breaks from boarding school.

"Back then, one of the first clubs I went to was Limelight, which was just a totally crazy scene," said Mr. Plimpton, recalling his introduction to nightlife in the early 90s. "Like, transvestites in Santa Claus suits. It was totally out of control. Good times."

It was after 9 p.m. on a Thursday in early July, at a place called the Park, a bar and restaurant the size of an auditorium on 10th Avenue. Mr. Plimpton was explaining why he has written a memoir about going out to nightclubs and why, considering that he conceived the idea when he was 24 years old, it is only coming out now, when he is 34.

"Really, it was my friend Zoo who had the idea," he said. (Zoo is Taylor's sidekick in the book who feeds him medicinal shots of Dewar's.) "We went out a lot back in the day and did our thing. In his mind, if I wrote the quintessential book about New York nightlife, then we'd get in everywhere, no problem. Like the Playboy Mansion...and Mark Twain said, 'Write what you know,' and that was something I knew."

Mr. Plimpton was dressed in jeans, a pin-striped gray blazer and a blue polka-dotted tie done into a double Windsor. He has his father's deep-set eyes and the childlike grin, topped off with matted-down blond curls.

"It didn't happen as quickly as we had planned, and now that it's finally coming out, we don't even go out that much," Mr. Plimpton continued. "There was a whole process of transcribing notes and organizing them into chapters. There was a whole process to the creation of it. Going out and raging till 4 in the morning is actually not conducive to waking up and getting to work in the morning. ... By the time it sold, it was in pretty good shape, because I edited the shit out of it."

Notes From the Night: A Life After Dark, out later this month from Crown, is a memoir told as a composite of all the nights Mr. Plimpton has spent out at places like Lotus, Lot 61, Bungalow 8 and Marquee.

Like other city kids, Mr. Plimpton, born in Southampton, went places he shouldn't have been before it was legal for him to be there. As a seventh grader at St. Bernard's on Upper Fifth, Mr. Plimpton used to sneak drinks from his parents' parties. When home on breaks from St. Paul's, the boarding school in New Hampshire, he checked out Tunnel and Life and the Upper East Side's anonymous Irish bars. On another break from Reed College, he discovered Moomba, the club that epitomized the '90s New York of Leonardo DiCaprio and VIP rooms. And it was after college, when Mr. Plimpton was working as an assistant at Men's Journal, that he became a regular at the clubs along Manhattan's West Side.

To talk about Taylor's upbringing is to talk about George Plimpton the father and George Plimpton the husband to his first wife, Taylor's mother, Freddy Espy — both roles secondary to George Plimpton the editor. In George Being George, an oral biography of Mr. Plimpton published in 2008, friends, rivals and former lovers describe how fiercely Plimpton resisted marriage, how much he resented Freddy for making him a husband, how, despite being married, he was still mostly available to women and how Freddy eventually began to drink. (Taylor reviewed the book for The Rumpus, writing, "I remember feeling sick with a kind of envy of the kids at the Review, many of whom he treated a lot more like his children than he ever did me...(I was his real son, you know? Where was the love, the time, that spotlight of attention for me?).")

The family home at 541 East 72nd Street was not just where Mr. Plimpton and his older sister, Medora (now a nurse and mother of two in Vermont), grew up, but where The Paris Review's offices were situated on the bottom floor; where Leonard Bernstein gave Mr. Plimpton big slobbery kisses and, as one story in the book goes, once slipped into Mr. Plimpton's bed, only to be pulled out by Jay McInerney; where George began seeing Sarah Dudley, who became his second wife; and where Ms. Dudley Plimpton, now Taylor's stepmother, will throw him his book party later this month.

"My sisters have been raised very differently," Mr. Plimpton said of the 15-year-old twins from his father's second marriage. "My stepmom is not laissez faire. In my teenage years, I could get away with all sorts of crazy shit and they definitely can't, and they seem super-innocent as a result."

Notes From the Night is less a narrative of events with characters and a plot than a literal collection of notes, an internal monologue written almost like instructions on how Mr. Plimpton and his friends maneuver nightclubs. There are sections on surviving hangovers ("grilled cheeses, fries, and bubbling, cold Cokes"), on convincing doormen to let you in ("for me that means being a gentleman — and beyond that, fuck it"), on dancing ("I'm a complete idiot on the dance floor"), on women ("Thank God for all the infinite varieties"). There are friends named Fatdog, Hobbes, Stibbs, Tako and G; Mr. Plimpton goes by Tap. There are larger questions, too, which appear to propel the book: Who are we? Where are we? What are we doing here? At first there are no concrete answers. Then: No one, nowhere, nothing. And finally: It doesn't matter. 

The book seems to be about enjoying the process, the hunt for something in those clubs, though we never quite learn what that is.

"The whole idea sounded a little nebulous to me," Jay McInerney, who blurbed the book, told The Observer. "I knew for years he was writing a book about nightlife. But I was impressed when I finally read it.

"It must be difficult for Taylor," he added. "His dad was a very prominent writer, and it can't be easy to write in that kind of shadow. Just the fact that this has come into existence, to some extent, he's gotten past that. It could be real daunting. I wouldn't necessarily want my son to become a writer."

A galley of the book also went to Terry McDonnell, editor of Sports Illustrated and an old friend of Taylor's father, who said he enjoyed it. "Taylor is doing his own thing," he said. "I don't think George would have written about that stuff in quite the same way. George would put himself in a situation where he was clearly a fish out of water. It was in that context that he was so effective. Taylor is not a fish out of water."

Back at the Park, a little after 10 p.m., the clientele began to appear younger, louder, more intoxicated. A wobbly young man accidentally backed into our table and slurred an apology. "The world I'm describing is not at all what's going on now in my life," Mr. Plimpton said, looking around. "I'm older and my body just can't take the abuse anymore. And I have a long-term girlfriend so, as far as a man's impetus for going out in the night, it takes away that sense of infinite possibility." (Mr. Plimpton and his girlfriend, an actress, live on the Upper West Side.)

Mr. Plimpton is currently working on a book of essays about his father. Asked what their relationship was like, that grin, strained and a little goofy, spread across his face again. "I think I'm still figuring that out."

ialeksander@observer.com

And then there is Rachel Uchitel, the alpha gal of them all: A mysteriously powerful honey-brunette in shades and designer clothing who met Mr. Woods through her job as a “VIP nightclub hostess.” Press outlets have variously referred to Ms. Uchitel, 34, as a party planner, a club promoter, a New York socialite, a nightclub waitress and a professional party girl. None of these, however, accurately describes what Ms. Uchitel actually did for a living.

“People have actually gotten very interested in this profession and what she used to do exactly,” said Hector Longoria (no relation to Eva, though “we’re from the same town in Texas”), the “director of guest services” at the Griffin on Gansevoort, where Ms. Uchitel had the same title. “Our job is like a concierge service for nightlife. It’s catering to our celebrities, bankers, trust-fund kids, billionaires, anyone who wants that special experience,” he explained. “If it’s bankers, they might want to be seated next to a bunch of cute girls, so we hire promoters who bring girls in. A lot of it is just making sure they have a good time—arranging a limo driver or going with them if they get too drunk; if they want food, I’ll order it; I plan travel and vacations. It’s a service—anything they want, I get it for them. Often, I’ll gather up a lot of girls and we’ll take clients to dinner.”

Concierge … service … clients: All corporate-sounding buzzwords that mark the crisp professionalization of a somewhat murky new enterprise that offers considerable profit and perks to its largely female or gay male practitioners.

When The Observer reached Mr. Longoria, he was on his way to Dolce & Gabbana, where he was taking a client shopping. “He’s a Wall Street guy, so I’ll dress him up, and he’ll probably throw me a suit or something. It’s easier if you’re a woman or a gay man to do this job because I’m not a threat to these guys.”

Mr. Longoria also has dinner with clients at least twice a week, phones them at home to check in and accompanies them on vacations when invited.

The job in VIP relations, or “hosting,” as it’s euphemistically known, was born out of the bottle-service decade, when billionaires and celebrities began to spend $10,000 or $20,000 at a table—or $160,000, as a Malaysian billionaire named Taek Jho Low recently did at the Avenue Lounge in Chelsea—and someone, preferably a busty girl, was needed to provide the sort of hospitality worth spending money on.

“There is so much competition with the different nightclubs to get those big spenders that a lot of high-end nightclubs have set up people like Rachel,” said Mike Heller, the longtime nightclub promoter–turned–marketer who is responsible for turning Dune into the Axe Lounge in the Hamptons last summer and booking Lindsay Lohan for various events. “Their job is not to sleep with their client, but to make sure that everything is organized, like a car service, a private jet or a hotel hookup. Rachel has been working in the business for many years and built a great clientele.”

‘THE UP-SELL’

Ms. Uchitel, whose grandparents ran El Morocco, relocated to Las Vegas after the death of her fiancé in the 9/11 attacks (a New York Post photo of her in full anguish, looking blonder and less pillow-lipped than now, got picked up around the world) and found a job at Tao, co-owned by former boyfriend Jason Strauss, owner of the nightclubs Marquee and Avenue. This is where she built a Rolodex of wealthy and loyal clientele that later earned her work at New York nightspots like Pink Elephant, Marquee, Stanton Social and Griffin.

“We hired Rachel because we knew she had a client base. Even my waitresses here don’t get hired unless they have a client list to fill their tables every night,” said Rocco Ancarola, the owner of Pink Elephant, which is on West 27th Street.

Mr. Ancarola’s other hosts are mostly men, he said. “Rachel as a girl had an advantage because she was wined and dined more than the male hosts. She would have dinner with a client and then call ahead and say, ‘We’re on our way, I’m coming in with Mr. So-and-So.’”

The job of VIP host(ess) is different from that of a waitress, who actually provides the bottle service; or the promoter, who makes sure women in miniskirts and wobbly heels arrive in droves at the nightclub; or the “models,” the girls hopelessly waiting for a Victoria’s Secret contract or moneyed husband, whichever comes first.

“Hosts call clients during the day and ask how their night was and get dinner with them and befriend them,” Mr. Ancarola said. “These big spenders come in, and it will be four guys and the host will find some girls to sit with them. I do the same thing that Rachel does in my own way with female clients. I’ll call up the Marias and the Jennys and the Marys and say, ‘Hey, what are you doing, come to dinner.’ I’ll show up to a restaurant with a group of girls, and it makes me look good to have eight girls with me, and I’ll make sure that after dinner, they’ll all come to the club.”

More importantly than what she did, perhaps, is what Ms. Uchitel made; it is this that gave her leverage in her relationship with Tiger, a leverage lacked by text-leaking and evidently heartbroken Jamie Grubbs, or Today-blabbering Jaime Jungers. (Indiscretion is a tactic of the disempowered.) Salaries depend on experience and what sorts of names are on a hostess’ contact list, but according to one nightclub owner, who paid Ms. Uchitel a commission whenever she sent clients to this owner’s downtown club, she did very well indeed.

“If you’re working for one club, you get a retainer of $1,500 to $2,000 a week, plus if the client spends over certain amount, you get a percentage,” said the nightclub owner, who requested anonymity to avoid being linked with the Woods scandal. “In Rachel’s case, she got smarter. She worked for a variety of clubs, and then it becomes 10 or 15 percent of what the client spends, and if it’s a celebrity, it depends on the caliber of celebrity. One celebrity could be worth a $1,000. Then if the hostess is with the client, it becomes something you call an ‘up-sell,’ where the client spends more money because the host is at the table with them.”

 ‘YOU TAKE CARE OF THEM’

Mr. Ancarola, the owner of Pink Elephant, cited even higher numbers: “Someone like Rachel can ask for a salary of, say, $3,000 a week. Or she could say, ‘I’ll take $500 a night and 10 percent on the tables that come in.’ So it could be commission or a salary. Then sometimes they say, ‘I have Mohammed coming in from Abu Dhabi and he’s been courted by other clubs. Can you give me an extra commission if I bring him in?’ And we say, ‘Yes, of course.’”

Tracy Hannah, a 31-year-old VIP hostess at Cain, which is on the same block as Pink Elephant, said hosts who are not on salary can make between $800 and $1,500 a night.“My parents have no idea what I do,” said Ms. Hannah. “My dad is from the Bronx and my mom is from Queens. They’re in their 70s, and I’ve tried to explain bottle service to them, but they don’t get it. They think I’m either a bartender or a doorman. But there are so many titles now that even I get confused—waitresses are called bottle hosts, promoters are called table hosts—it’s all gotten very vague.”

What is clear, she said, is that “the job is really about maintaining relationships. I set up dinner reservations, I come to dinner with them and walk them in myself so that there are no problems.”

Clients often are indistinguishable from “friends,” that blandly ubiquitous term of the aughts that now can mean anything at all. Next week, on one of her ostensible nights off, Ms. Hannah will attend a holiday party with a client, for example. “One time a guy asked us to go with him on a yacht the next morning to Malaysia,” said Mr. Longoria, of the Griffin. “And he wanted me to take my entire staff, all the waitresses.” They had to skip that one, but Mr. Longoria has accompanied clients on trips to St. Tropez and Cannes.

“I’ve gone to Europe, Bahamas, Vegas,” Ms. Hannah said—often in private jets. “And when you’re out, it’s all taken care of: dinners, nights out, shopping, the beach club. It’s great. A lot of time you have to organize these things, but other times they have other hosts in other cities, and you’re just along for the ride.” 

“You’re just like a celebrity because you hang out with them all the time, so you’re on equal ground,” crowed a drag queen hostess at M2 Ultralounge named Victoria Hilton, 30, whose Facebook photo shows her with Britney Spears. “I was just with the prince of Saudi Arabia, and he invited me to some prince’s ball! You take care of them, and they take care of you.”

For savvy concierges, when the saline starts to droop and enough cash is saved up, the goal is to open their own clubs, like former Lotus cocktail waitress and nightclub hostess Jayma Cardoso, a partner in Cain and GoldBar.

Romantic relationships, however, are discouraged—even if, like Ms. Uchitel, you seem to retain the upper hand.“Do you get propositioned? Yes,” Ms. Cardoso said. “But my first job was with Andrew Sasson of the Light Group, who would always say to us, ‘The minute you become involved with your client, you lose that client.’”

“You learn by watching other people,” Ms. Hannah said, “that usually that sort of thing ends badly.”

ialeksander@observer.com