Nimrod Kamer displays a "finger hashtag." (Photo credit: Nimrod Kamer for Wired UK)

Today's big "So dumb I can't believe it's a real trend" trend comes courtesy of Wired’s U.K. website, in an article called "Brace yourselves for the proliferation of the 'finger hashtag.'"

According to the piece's author, who also provided seven pieces of photographic evidence, this new "trend" involves people "actually making the hashtag sign with their hands (using the index and middle fingers from both laid over each other) rather than saying 'hashtag.'"

Which would be semi-outrageous (no more so than planking, surely) and sort of makes you hope that the people currently using this gesture are "killed in a fire," as the story goes, except for one thing. This trend story is most likely a fake.

Now, that's not to say the idea of finger-hashing isn't out there, on the other side of the pond: it was first discovered, seemingly out of the blue, for this Guardian article last August, to which a Gizmodo.UK blogger responded asking everyone to please not do it. But the biggest problem isn't whether it exists in theory.

The biggest problem regarding the validity of the Wired article is that its author, Nimrod Kamer, is a merry social media prankster; a Vice filmmaker whom we once witnessed creating a fake Kenyan Obama birthing video. He also made a video of an atheist's church, which was not real at all. He has, by his own admission, tricked celebrities and random people alike into falling for his stunts. His HuffPostUK Tech piece about 20 Twitter Rules is obviously satire ("18. Unfollow ten folks every Friday," reads one), but is listed on the site as actual advice and not parody.

So the fact that Mr. Kamer, pictured as the first person in the Wired article making the finger hashtag gesture, somehow convinced six other people to do so for a slideshow does not mean it's a trend. After all, this why Mr. Kamer says that finger hashing is an important new development:

It is special because it requires two hands, forcing people to drop their phones and look at each other's eyes. It brings out the hashness in all of us, shifting our gaze from the screen, and even allowing mute people and detectives looking at prisoners through a glass to take part in this social game.

Though unfortuantely, the fact that Kamer is mocking it doesn't mean the practice doesn't exist: Like we said, there does seem to be some history of the finger-hashing before this piece, and Kamer does, on occasion, participate in actual journalism ... or at least, journalistic commentary. But that's the problem with people who punk the press: Once trolled, twice shy.

"Proof" (Imgur)

Arnold Schwarzenegger, apropos of nothing except his new film The Last Stand co-starring Johnny Knoxville (in theaters Friday!), showed up on Reddit's IAmA (Ask Me Anything) subforum today to answer questions in beautiful cursive handwriting on his iPad, which he then uploaded onto the site. Adorable!

Let's look at some of the better responses.

"How has the shift back to Hollywood from the Governor's office been?"

"My daughter Chloe who is 9 is a big fan of yours. She would like to ask which role is more fun to prepare for action or comedic roles?"

"What is the best piece of advice you've ever recieved in your life?"


"Arnold, you've lived three lives in one. You were the reason I started working out when I was a kid, you're an inspiration to all. A bodybuilder, actor then Governor. Which has been the most challenging role in your life?"

And the question on everyone's mind: "Will you be making Twins 2?"

This bonus question wasn't answered in cursive, but it still bears repeating: When asked what he most regretted, Mr. Schwarzenegger responded:

I most regret not doing The Rock. I love the movie, and it turned out well. When it was offered to me there was only an 80 page script with a lot of handwriting and scribbles and it didn't seem fully baked. But they obviously did a fantastic job.

But who would he have played? Nic Cage? Sean Connery? We don't think he'd have been believable as a  government chemist.

Little help? (agent j loves nyc/Flickr)

The problems of Pier 40 are well documented by now. Once the golden goose of Hudson River Park, the pier is now so deteriorated, it costs more to maintain than it earns for the libertarian park. In two years, the pier might have to be shut down all together. With hopes of MLS soccer headed to Queens instead and a housing proposal on the rocks, what's a park to do?

Well, it looks like Douglas Durst to the rescue.

Acting as "a private individual with knowledge of residential development" rather than chair of the Friends of Hudson River Park, which supports a housing plan, Mr. Dust said he did not think this would work, according to the Post’s Steve Cuozzo. Instead, he wants to rejigger the parking to one level instead of three, freeing up room for additional profit generating development.

It would have the same number of parking spaces, currently 1,700, by converting it from a self-parking facility to one with attendants who would move cars into a three-level “stack,” which would fit into the existing ground floor with 20-foot ceilings.

Freeing up the second floor and roof would make room for 500,000 square feet of commercial space, Durst said. But he wouldn’t build or operate it himself; rather, the Trust would solicit proposals from other developers.

Given the area's booming tech sector, he seems to think this good be a good spot for a technology campus of some sort, or, pitching to the neighborhood's other historic strength, galleries and shops.

Mr. Durst argues this plan is preferable because office space is less contentious than residential development, and it might have an easier time getting approved in Albany, which must approve any changes to the pier's financial structure. If done right, it might not even need Albany's approval at all. Wouldn't that make life easier?

In the same article, the project's editor-in-chief—(2011 NYO Media Poachable) Chris Mohney, who will be leaving his post as the Vice President of Content at BlackBook—explained that it will avoid "forced attempts at corporate boosterism." This is odd, because a forced attempt at corporate boosterism is exactly what this nebulous project sounds like. Then again, Mohney (who, before BlackBook, was an editor at regular Tumblr-antagonist Gawker) will be manning the project with Jessica Bennett, a journalist leaving her post at Newsweek/The Daily Beast to jump on board.

Full Disclosure: Mohney was once this writer's former boss at BlackBook for fifteen months, ending in 2010. Seeing as how he's no longer this writer's boss, however, we felt free to harass him about whether or not he's jumping the fence, and what this thing actually is.

NYO: One of our co-workers who covers intersections of media and tech noted the response to criticism that this isn't corporate boosterism as "[expletive] [expletive for 'stupid']." How is it not?

Chris Mohney: That’s a fair question (laughs). I’ve been paying attention to criticism, complaints, and the lack of understanding of the general concept. The objections that I’ve seen so far seem to fall into one of two ideas. One, Tumblr’s not serious enough to merit this kind of attention, and the other, that the project is going to be some elitist popularity contest. All of which is the furthest thing from what I’d want to do, or what I’d sign up to do. Jessica and I are synmpatico in that we’re not interested in doing PR. Yes, we want to highlight cool and creative things. But it’s a lot less 'look at all these wonderful Tumblrs' and more 'look at all this great work on Tumblr.'

NYO: This isn't inherently just a shill for the platform?

CM: We don’t want to pimp Tumblr as a feat of functionality. It’s meant to be: There happens to be a really cool community doing work in and around Tumblr. We don’t want to highlight the way they’re doing the work so much as the work they’re doing.

NYO: How does this differentiate itself from, say, the staff blog?

CM: The stuff we produce has to be of the highest standard. We have to do quality work that’s of that standard. It could be something that has nothing to do with Tumblr. It has to have an outward-facing perspective. Now I’m speaking in a million different abstractions; as you can tell, we’re still starting. I’m not even starting until the end of February—there will be a lot of soul searching until then.

NYO: The Times piece didn't really make clear what form this is going to take. It's going to take over the staff blog, and/or it's going to be it's own thing? What the hell is it?

CM: That’s what we have to figure out. Obviously we’ll do something with the staff Tumblr. That will be sort of the house organ. I’m hoping to kind of expand its role. Most important to me than how its expressed, or how it looks, is that the quality and sincereity of it is of the highest level. We don’t want to promote things for the sake of promoting things. We don’t want to promote something because we have to or because something is ‘Tumblr Famous.’ I think that kind of thing is lethal, especially to the bullshit detector of people who are on Tumblr or people who write about Tumblr.

NYO: Give me an example of a post on this thing. What's getting covered?

CM: The simplest thing, of course, is somebody who has a Tumblr, who’s using it to put up great work that we like. Something we think isn’t getting attention or that’s being overlooked beyond the followers they have. It’s a Radar-esque approach.

NYO: How is this not the Radar, then?

CM: The things we write about and the things we’re saying have to have as much value as how we say it.

NYO: So does this eliminate the possibility of you covering things on Tumblr that are kind of terrible, or at the very least, have a negative connotation to them?

CM: Not necessarily. The approach is kind of like: We’re only going to go after things that we generally appreciate, but the things we produce highlighting them have to stand alone.

NYO: Highlighting things you appreciate on Tumblr still sounds a little...optimistic? Shill-y?

CM: I totally agree with that, in the sense that if you’re celebratory, you obviously have a tone problem. I wouldn’t want to limit it if there’s an interesting piece, if there is something that has a negative tone, even if it is something that presents an image problem to the company.

NYO: Ha! Really?

CM: It’s not going to be some independent unit, but we are supposed to have the latitude to critically engage with this stuff. It can't sound like some celebratory masturbation machine.

NYO: But at the end of the day, you're still an organ of Tumblr. How're you planning to pull that off?

CM: It’s really important—especially because this is an experimental approach—for us to constantly question what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, and to entertain that question seriously inside and outside of Tumblr. For this to be taken seriously, it can’t be seen as PR. It has to be able to respond to criticism and questions. Like that one.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Treat Yo Self!

Updated below with a response from list founder Alisha M.

Foursquare, the social-networking app that allows you to "check in" to venues, become a mayor, meet up with your friends, and find out which Starbucks locations have been masturbated in, now has a new crowd-sourcing function. In the words of Parks and Recreation's Tom Haverford, it's time to "Treat Yo Self!"

In the recent episode "Pawnee Rangers" Tom (played by Aziz Ansari) explains that "Treat Yo Self" is an annual tradition where he and former coworkers Donna go to the mall and...well...treat themselves. Treating yo self can apply to buying anything from a massage, mimosas, fine-leather goods, to a fully-functioning  Batman costume.

Yesterday, a FourSquare user named Alisha M. started a New York list called "Treat Yo Self," naming NYC's best spots to get pampered. New York's "Treat Yo Self" list quickly went viral on sites like Buzzfeed, leading some to speculate that it was part of a Foursquare marketing tie-in with NBC. (Foursquare has frequently collaborated with outside corporations and networks, including Bravo, The History Channel, The Wall Street Journal, and Pepsi to name a few.) However, when The New York Observer asked co-founder Dennis Crowley if this comedy spin-off was part of a promotion, he responded via email: "ha, random user generated content i believe :)"

It's the smiley face emoticon that sold us. Still, Alisha M. may not be just a "random user." She describes herself on Twitter as a "social biz consultant & event schmoozer." Her resume lists her current profession as a freelance writer and social business consultant:

I assist travel networks, start-up companies, social enterprises, and small businesses on content marketing and audience development through marketing outreach, leading events, business development and social media. My strengths here are being an insightful writer, leading marketing and tech research, running community outreach, and providing insight on PR tactics.

So is Treat Yo Self's FourSquare just a clever crossover hit, or a clever viral marketing stunt?

Update: Just a crossover hit! Alisha responded to us via e-mail (and in the comments):

It was a silly idea I had the other night after having a nice dinner at Tea and Sympathy to create a list of places I go to when I want to splurge. And, being a huge fan of Parks and Rec, I wanted to dub it TREAT YO SELF. I have no affiliation with the show, it's simply my own homage to the show and of course the city I love.

So just genuine show-love and pampering tips! Go on everyone, treat yo self to one of Alisha's tips:

Occupy the Boardroom!

Even if you're not quite sure where you land on the Occupy Wall Street debate (perhaps you are Warren Buffett-type, who believes in capitalism and the markets and even personally bailed out banks, but also believe in the people's right to assemble; or perhaps you just couldn't be bothered to pay attention yet), you still might be interested in OccupytheBoardroom.org, which provides the straightest line from your laptop to the desk of a Citigroup executive.

Launched on Saturday, Occupy the Board Room is a new site that provides those with a valid email account an opportunity to choose a "pen pal" in the top 1%, to whom they can voice their frustrations about America's economic issues. Created approximately 3 weeks ago, the site originally intended to release the email addresses of almost 200 bank executives to the public. But according to one of the site's co-founders, Olivia Leirer, research revealed that if the group released that information, they could be prosecuted if their call to action unwittingly crashed the email servers of the nation's biggest banks.

"It's part of a new interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act," Ms. Leirer told The Observer by phone today. "And of course, it's not our intention to cause any harm."

Instead, OTBR has figured out a way around the process by having people write in their letters to a group blog, which then digests and tags the appropriate representative, who will receive the emails. At least ostensibly that is how the program should work: Ms. Leirer told us that the site's lead developer dropped out a week ago, leading the members of Occupy the Board Room to reach out the OccupyWallSt.org, where the Internet working group donated some of their "most creative volunteers" to the cause.

Over 4,000 submissions have been received thus far, and Ms. Leirer—the communication director for New York Communities for Change—says that the aim of the site is to provide people an open-ended forum. Taking their cue from the Occupy Wall Street movement, Occupy the Board Room asks that no website that posts about the new program uses any sample messages as a guideline, to avoid a non-organic structural system that OWS has so studiously avoided.

Of course, Occupy the Boardroom does provide another option besides being part of a mass email/blog: Users are encouraged to go make "BFFs" with the bank executives listed on the site, which can include anything from "paying them a visit" to "pursuing them to the ends of the Earth." To avoid a lawsuit, the site won't provide contact information for anyone listed, but does encourage you to use Google to find the person of your choosing.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about Occupy the Board Room is its coalition: founded by formal labor groups and organizers, the 80+ legitimate organizations involved with the project represent the next stage in true movement building with their direct call to action.

Now, go find Vikram Pandit's work address and have fun!

All it's cracked up to be.

On a charming August night, The Observer was sitting on our fire escape with two friends, having cigarettes, having beer. We had brought out an iPhone dock, a diminutive speaker machine that plays music right from a mobile device, at a decent, but not offensive-to-the-neighbors, volume.

Then, with a jerk of an arm, there came a crash. The iPhone dock, nudged at, spun down four stories and smashed unceremoniously on the Houston Street sidewalk. Still affixed to the dock’s protruding metal slab was our iPhone. A retrieval trip downstairs found a young woman holding the mess of technology. She handed it sympathetically back to us.

We examined the damage. Not good. It had been crushed to a pulp. The frame had cracked considerably, the SIM card sputtered out like a rancid animal tongue and the once-sleek corners were marred beyond help.

But I was hardly the first victim of a battered iPhone.

Let’s play a game. Do you have a cracked one? Have you been careless enough to go caseless, a state of the phone where a single mishandling can lead to a nasty slit across your screen? Look at your phone, turn off the backlight, and rotate it slightly to catch a good reflection—maybe you haven’t even noticed, but there’s quite possibly a spindly wisp of a line running horizontally from left to right.

For the last few months, more friends and acquaintances have revealed the imperfections on their phones. They might even reveal with with pride—there’s a sort of community emerging.

We have been privy to the following conversation, with little variation, rather frequently of late.

“Oh, yours is cracked, too,” said a friend to a young lady, over dinner at a small French restaurant on Orchard Street in July.

“Yeah, it is!” she replied in solidarity.

He was getting her number when the recognition hit. They both had gashes in their glass. They took the phones out to compare and the faults nearly matched up, like two touched-together palms with lifelines of the same size.

“What happened?” said the first friend

“I dropped it,” she replied.

“Look at that,” he said.

Never fear, this is not cause for mourning, not a moment to lament these blemishes to the vaunted work of the industrial-design gods in Cupertino. The thing is: cracked iPhones are cool now! The splinters displayed as a badge of honor here in New York. You have your demolished jeans, you have your beat-up apartment in deep Bed-Stuy. Now you can have your tough-looking mobile personal communication device.

(Can iPhones come pre-cracked, to save time? Sure. Why not.)

Adjusting to the new reality, we found ourself newly in possession of a blighted device, the dark face that once sprang to life with a single click blanketed in a spider web of broken glass, chunks of the sharp stuff falling out as we turned it over in our fingers.

But you know what? It looked pretty awesome.

“I’ve noticed that some iPhone users see cracks as street cred,” a writer told me. “Like, I was balling out with my phone so hard that I dropped the thing, cracked it, and I’m STILL using it.’ A cracked iPhone is clearly superior to any other type of phone that doesn’t have a crack in it.”

We had put out a notice on Twitter—how iPhone-appropriate!—asking those who’ve carried around a shattered phone in their pocket to come clean. Some replaced them out of shame, others sucked it up.

“[I’m] on my 4th iPhone,” one said. “Parents said the cracked one(s) made me look poor.”

“Psh I’m still on smartphone I think lucky #13,” tweeted another. “Maybe this one will last more than 5 months???”

“Oh man, mine was shattered and the butt of jokes for MONTHS but then it got stolen,” said one more. “Does that count?”

Yes, that counts.

Oftentimes it’s just laziness keeping New Yorkers from fixing their phones. Brian Phothimat, a tech fixer-upper who claims to be able to replace your screen in “5-35 minutes,” said with discernable dismay that he knows people who wait inexcusable amounts of time to get new screens.

“I have clients who sometimes wait 2 to 3 months because it’s not that important to them,” he said

(He then noted he was on the phone from Hawaii, on vacation. In the event of a dropped phone in the next week, well, his clients would be flat out of luck.)

“It gets really bad—when they try to slide it in they cut their hands,” he went on. “Your cell phone is your livelihood! It’s not good to look at. I cracked my iPhone three times and I had to get it fixed right away!”

Well, evidently many others feel differently. After talking about this for a while, we started getting tips, unprompted, from friends. There would be cracked iPhones at parties, cracked iPhones at the office, cracked iPhones on buses in and out of the city.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, our iPhone buzzed with a text from a close college friend who had just finished brunch in Brooklyn with four male acquaintances.

“Playing Taboo at a beer garden,” the text read. “One of them has a cracked iPhone.”

“Noted,” we typed back.

Another ping.

“Apparently there’s a background that is a picture of a crack.”

That is true, but cracked backgrounds are only the beginning. At this moment, just a few single clicks and you will be in possession of cracked iPhone wallpapers, cracked iPhone screen savers, cracked iPhone apps and cracked iPhone games.

Not all cracked iPhone apps are made equal, mind you. Being thrifty, we first picked up “Crack Me Up Lite”—it was free—which does little more than let you browse through none-to-convincing pictures of impact-heavy glass, and then blow them up full screen. Boring. So we ponied up a dollar for “Shattered Screen Joke,” which added one key element of a cracked iPhone app: the high-pitched exaggerated ka-pleesh! sound that attempts to intimate what it sounds like when an actual accident occurs. A nice touch, but nothing close to the real thing.

The full version of “Crack Me Up,” however, is pretty stellar. When you load one of the backgrounds, you can shake your phone to add more and more cracks, each shatter accompanied by a satisfying crunch. If you don’t have the courage to scuff your iPhone up on the ground, this would no doubt suffice.

But how could The Observer even test these apps out, when our phone lay dormant and unblinking after the four-story fall? The day after, we ventured to the Soho Apple store, where the air was thick with discontent. Every five minutes, another citizen approached the genius bar with a crack, or an iPhone that wouldn't turn on, or a model gashed badly on its bottom USB dock.

The estimate for fixing our phone was $150, and we declined.

Luckily, a friend had an old phone he was set to donate. We met in Williamsburg to complete the exchange. He handed it over at a busy intersection, and as we headed off toward brunch, the sun bounced off the screen and through the blinding rays we saw, across the top, a big visible crack. We thanked him and slipped the phone into our pocket.

nfreeman@observer.com

There, right there!

Our colleague Nitasha Tiku over at BetaBeat has a rundown on where, exactly, the city might place Mayor Bloomberg's ballyhooed tech campus. Turns out Roosevelt Island wants it badly and is flexing some political muscle to get it:

Ultimately, the decision for where to host the campus looks like it will rest with the city, but the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation, the strip of land’s “own mini-government,” will give their two cents as the plan evolves. For island natives and their representatives, the campus looks like their ticket to relevance. Assembly member Micah Kellner said, “This is a way to integrate the island fully and completely” with that other island to their West.

[Local City Councilwoman Jessica Lappin] and others think the city should raze Goldwater Memorial Hospital, which was built in the 1930s and is due to close in 2014, a year ahead of the campus opening.

More here.

tacitelli@observer.com  ::  Follow on Twitter @tacitelli

La Pomme.

Thomas Monson, the founder of Bookabottle, met The Observer at midnight on a corner of Union Square in a black two-door BMW. He leaned a dress sneaker against the door, drumming his fingers on his knee and listened  to opera by the blue light of a third-party stereo system. This was actually very much in keeping with our expectations—on the website’s FAQ, the people behind the company site are described as “a group of Ivy League nerds that like to party.”

“I’m not a nightlife person,” Mr. Monson said as he pointed the car west through the rain. Next to him sat Seung Hee Kim, a very attractive woman in a short skirt and wellies. The FAQ phrase is more about the spirit in which the site was created, he said. “I don’t like going out. Like right now I really just want to go to sleep, and Friday for me is a crazy day because I literally do a 22-hour day on Friday, every single Friday.”

It was perhaps inevitable, in the Groupon era, that the frenzy for local discount sites would infect the nighclub bottle service business. Bookabottle works like this: Users select a day and a preferred environment ("upscale lounge" vs. "nightclub"), and Bookabottle allows them to pick from some 30 venues and a variety of liquors. Pre-booking means that bottles that usually cost around $350 can be had at a 20 percent discount. The purchaser then flashes his receipt at the bouncer, bypassing the line outside.

It’s a controversial concept. If you’ve ever had to watch a friend explain that you can actually save money with bottle service if you get enough people to go in on the bottle, you’ve experienced Bookabottle’s somewhat tragic contradiction first-hand. And quite possibly lost contact with that friend.

Mr. Monson is confident that there’s a large market for the customer who wants to make it rain responsibly, and at a designated time, and, more broadly, wants to change the very nature of going out. Mr. Monson is obsessive about customer service, and raises his voice only when he talks about the seedier elements of nightlife. At times he projects the air of a dorm’s RA, who, hey, guys, likes to have fun too, but just wants everybody to be safe while they’re at it.

At some point in the night, a customer service representative will swing by to check up on each customer. Ms. Kim usually handles this duty, Mr. Monson explained, because customers are around 80 percent male and would “much rather be greeted with a beautiful woman” when it comes to customer service. Ms. Kim stared out the window during the compliment, and after it.

“I stay up until about four just in case there are any issues,” he said. “[Ms. Kim] has my phone number, the mangers have my phone number, the customers have my phone number.” He demurred on the topic of what goes wrong at 4 a.m., referencing hypothetical mischarges. “For the most part things run very smoothly, but we’re still in this beta stage where I still haven’t gotten things perfect, and not to say that everything will ever be perfect, but we can do a lot better than what’s going on right now in nightlife.”

It’s hard to say what exactly appealed to Mr. Monson about the first stop of the evening, La Pomme on 26th, which seems like a fairly standard nightclub and shares the block with two barbeque restaurants and a place that teaches Israeli martial arts. Nostalgia perhaps—the room is purplish and glossy in the way things were on TV shows at the end of the ’90s.

“We booked the bottle service because one of our girls is engaged,” said Bookabottle user Reno, a tiny woman in a tight dress who falls in the just-under-30 age range. She waved at the group of friends dancing in place around their table. The shin-height table held their liter of Ketel One and chasers. “It’s a pretty good deal.”

“She’s taken, she’s taken!” one of the friends shouted, trying to wave the Observer away. Reno shot her a look.

“We don’t even do bottle service much, but we do party a lot and we were looking on-line, and we saw this stuff it was like, Ah, Bookabottle what’s that?” said Reno (her name comes from Indonesia, not the place where you shoot men just to watch them die). They’re regulars at R-Bar, but this was their first time at La Pomme. “We wanted to try this place out. We go all over the place, our girls do, and we party a lot.”

How frequently?

“Once a month,” she said, then considered. “In the summertime, we go out every weekend. Especially on rooftops, because it gets too hot.”

“Exactly!” her friend Helena agreed. She’d scooted around the miniature table because she heard someone discussing partying, or discounts. “I’m Yelper,” she said. “I do a lot of research, I try to save money. I’m Chinese, so I’m cheap, but I like to spoil myself.”

The conversation transitioned, seamlessly, to the women trying to convince the Observer to take a shot. Other members of the party, who’d been otherwise involved in bounce-dancing or chatter, fell into the chant almost reflexively.

“Shots, shots, shots, shots, shots,” they said. The Observer said and did nothing, and the chant died down.

The Observer piled back into the BMW with Mr. Monson and Philip Kennard, the site’s CTO and co-founder, who’d met us at La Pomme. Ms. Kim had been waiting in the back seat.

Mr. Monson used to be a business vice president at Hopstop—at his insistence, let’s just say he’s around 30—and, he explained, there are some things about nightlife that he doesn’t understand. He goes out of his way to pick the clubs with only the finest reputation and the most stellar customer service around, so who would want to go anywhere else? Conversely, what club could turn down the guaranteed market he’s offering when the mark-up is already so obscene on a $40 bottle of Grey Goose?

“If you know that you can sell your inventory, and you’re not making a 1500 percent markup but you’re still making a 1200 percent markup, common sense says do it,” Mr. Monson said, pounding the wheel with a palm on the last two words. He is, he explained, an “entrepreneur down to the bone.” This is not his only venture, but he clearly thinks it’s among his more promising ones. He says there have been several hack attempts on the site and his email, in an attempt to steal his business model. He’s lost 40 pounds developing it.

Ms. Kim also decided to wait in the car at R-Bar, just below Houston. R-Bar is supposed to be strip club-themed—there are enough oddly placed poles to wear out even the most space-creative ecdysiast—but with its red lighting and gold-framed paintings, the an overall effect of the place is “Haunted Mansion meets an erection.” The waitresses, and the manager, all wear red t-shirts.

We found the shaved-bald Bookabottle customer Sanjay not far past the entryway stripper poles. He gave his friend Anup’s shoulder a hearty slap.

“He just settled down a little,” Sanjay said. “But this man here was single-handedly supporting the New York nightlife industry for a while. He was far more notorious that I was.”

Both were a-bit-over-30. Anup looked left and right out of humility. “My doctor said I need to calm down!” he said.

“He also just got married recently,” Sanjay said. “That’s the big reason. And my girlfriend’s leaving me so I’m going to start going out more.”

He added, “It’s a mutual understanding. I’m just not the guy she wants to spend the rest of her life with.”

Their cramped table was only a few steps from the bar, making its convenience factor low, but they’d attracted a few friendly females, including another bride-to-be, this one in a veil, wearing a ring with a flashing plastic jewel. She said she wasn’t sure whose table this was.

The two work in finance (“Don’t mention that too loudly because we’re not a very popular bunch right now,” Anup said seriously. “We’re having fun but nobody’s asked me what I do for a living. As long as I get them drinks, things seem fine.”) They weren’t attracted to Bookabottle for the discount, then, but for its guaranteed entry.

“You know how it is with New York City nightlife,” Anup said. “You’d have to know the bouncer who would let you in and you’d have to sort it out with them. This way you don’t have to worry about the hassle because Bookabottle is at the club beforehand. If your bouncer’s on vacation or whatever you don’t need to worry about that shit.”

It's important to keep the glamour in perspective, Mr. Monson said repeatedly. “It’s so easy to get sucked into nightlife, if you’re working in that business.”

This was on an earlier phone call, where he’d dropped the RA act to adapt the tone of a burned-out rocker. “The second you forget the party is not yours is when things start to go wrong.” If he ever seemed tempted by the nightlife game himself it was at Cielo in the Meatpacking District, which has a great reputation in nightlife “the same way Goldman Sachs has a great reputation in finance,” he said.

After a businesslike frisking by the giant manager George, Mr. Monson and The Observer entered the club to stand at the back of the room as green lasers scanned just above head-level. The walls were some kind of gray leather upholstery, segmented like an airline seat, or a padded room. George sidled up and crossed his arms, indicating the DJ, someone famous to people who follow that kind of thing. There were no customers here. Mr. Monson just wanted The Observer to see the place.

“My goal is to go through life completely unnoticed and unspoken of,” the Cornell grad said later, growing philosophical as he drove The Observer to the A train around 2:30. “Ultimately I hope to end up somewhere completely isolated, maybe in Montana or something.”

At the subway, he asked that Ms. Kim step out of the car so that The Observer could see her wellies. They’re part of his latest venture Zoubaby.com, which offers a patented way to monogram rain boots.

Update 3:40 p.m. Corrected Mr. Kennard's title, and added his name.

Mr. Simkhai

THERE HAVE BEEN MANY HAPPY BOYS who have found their perfect matches on Grindr, the social network for single gay men, but founder Joel Simkhai has a favorite.

“There was a serviceman in the Air Force, stationed in Baghdad and Kuwait,” Mr. Simkhai said on the phone from Los Angeles, where he lives. “He used Grindr to connect with other gay men in the military—and locals!”

The smartphone application, which debuted in March 2009, employs G.P.S. technology to conjure up the profiles of gay men who are in close proximity to the user. Since its introduction, more than two million men in 192 countries have logged on. Through the social network’s chat channel, users can arrange anything from a friendly coffee date to a random quickie.

And it’s discreet. The soldier stationed in Baghdad didn’t ask, didn’t tell and didn’t care.

“He was just so thankful,” Mr. Simkhai recalled. “It literally brought tears to my eyes, and I thanked him for his service to our country.”

BORN IN TEL AVIV, Mr. Simkhai grew up in Long Island and attended Tufts. After receiving a double major in international relations and economics, he headed to New York, where, despite being young, attractive and out of the closet, Mr. Simkhai found the hook-up scene less than satisfying.

“I’ve always kind of wondered who’s gay around me,” he said. “I’ve always had the situation where I make eye contact and nothing emerges.”

Mr. Simkhai reached out to Dodgeball creator Dennis Crowley and asked if he could develop an add-on for his startup—which was later bought by Google and inspired his next project, Foursquare—for gay men to pinpoint the exact location of other gay men.

When he declined, he decided to create the thing on his own. The second generation iPhone came equipped with G.P.S., so Mr. Simkhai asked a software developer in Denmark to lay the groundwork for a startup that could utilize that technology.

Grindr has been wildly successful, at least among its target audience. Now, two years after its launch, the app is poised to grow its user base to include women and heterosexuals. Code-named Project Amicus, the new arm of the site will debut later this year.

Being straight, I had only recently become familiar with the Grindr app. I was first struck but the name, the racy insinuations of that word, the way the d and the r rub up against one another. Nice branding!

Mr. Simkhai, however, plays coy on the subject of Grindr’s sexual implications. “That’s not what it’s really about,” he said. “We looked at a coffee grinder, a social stew, mixing people up; that was the inspiration for the name.”

We told him the name reminded us of hardcore foreplay.

“Even if you were to grind two people together, that’s not sex,” he said. “It is intimate, and that’s cool. We’re not scared of intimacy.”

In that case, I asked Joel if he thought it would be O.K. if I got a Grindr account of my own.

“I guess you can try it out,” he said. “It’ll be a good test.”

FIVE MINUTES AFTER creating an account on Grindr and uploading a good-looking picture of myself holding a bottle of Chambord—when in Rome, right?—I received a message from a man wearing a button down shirt and flashing a toothy, wholesome smile. He was 32 years old, six feet tall and 400 feet away.

“Very cute,” he chatted me.

“Oh cool,” I chatted him back. “Hey, wanna meet near 321 44th for a smoke?”

“I wanna fuck,” he responded a few seconds later.

“I don’t think I’m ready for that,” I said. “It’s 4:00 in the afternoon?”

“Damn,” he replied. “BJ?”

I’ll give him credit for persistence. “OK, have to be honest,” I said. “I’m a writer for a newspaper, and I’m writing a profile of grindr, so I wanted to try it out.”

“I’d love to play with u : )” he said.

A FEW DAYS AFTER I talked to Mr. Simkhai, I heard back from the military guy he mentioned. He’s a sergeant, first class, works in air traffic control and used Grindr to keep in touch with his boyfriend—they met on a military base in Mississippi—while on duty in Baghdad.

“There were about four or five other men on Grindr at my base,” he said over the phone. “We actually put together a volleyball team, all of the Grindr people. We didn’t name ourselves ‘The Grindrs’ or anything, but we were a team.”

As he moved from one corner of the country to another, the sergeant would fire up his Grindr app to touch base with the homosexual community there.

“You can go anywhere in this world, and you can launch Grindr, and you can find other gay men feet from you,” Mr. Simkhai said. “It tells our user, ‘You’re never alone.’”

That sounded good to me. When Project Amicus launches, a new mass of people will find friends, partners and one-night stands just feet away. Straights may never be as direct about sex as their gay counterparts tend to be, but the new app will at least facilitate the courtship process. All you have to do is whip out your iPhone, that instrument in your pants pocket, and say hello.