How To Kill Nightlife

I ripped off this bottle service menu at Lotus last night, just to show you non-New Yorkers what this new "gilded age" is doing to nightlife in Manhattan. With hedge-fund managers and other Wall Streeters happy to plunk down $620 to have a $40 bottle of Grey Goose on their table, what sense does it make for club owners to cater to the rest of us? (Oh, and don't forget the mandatory 20% gratuity tacked on to all bottle sales.)

Bottle service is nothing new, of course, particularly in towns full of high-rollers. But the unprecedented wealth that has infused this town over the last decade or so has not only created a real estate market that makes large nightclubs untenable, the money has flowed down into smaller venues, places that lure the jillionaires with the "prestige" of showing off their dumbass willingness to pay stupid money to prop a bottle on their table.

The Village Voice says "bottle service corrupts the soul of New York City nightlife" and that the glorification of these elitist venues is at the heart of the winding down of Gotham nightlife in general. True dat.