Transylvania on 24th Street

I was at The Cutting Room, a dark and semi-swank music club and lounge on 24th Street. There is a cavernous front room, with low leather couches, enormous gilt-framed portraits on the wall (giving the place a creepy Dracula-esque air), chandeliers, and lights so low you almost cannot see where you are going. In the back, behind closed doors, is the stage. Everyone at the Cutting Room is gorgeous, and there is, indeed, a velvet-roped apparatus thing in the front that you need to get through in order to enter. It’s so big that you really can settle in with your companion in relative privacy, even though the joint is always packed. And the jukebox plays classic 70s rock. Or, not even “rock”. For example “California Dreamin'” played 3 times in the hour and a half that I was there. And this is a jukebox, remember. People are choosing this music. And it’s loud, but not loud enough that you have to shout. It’s a great joint. There are huge windows looking out on 24th street, with massive heavy red velvet curtains hanging. You feel like you’re stepping into some crazy person’s house when you enter. Or like you are going to visit the Dunwich family. Sitting over at her own table is a palm reader. She sits there all night, just waiting for people to come over, should they choose. She has long thick black hair. One of the tables is a Pac-Man game. You can sit, and rest your martini on the screen (as I saw a couple do), and play Pac-Man to your hearts content.

It’s so dark that these are crap pictures. But the darkness somehow (to me) does capture the creepy Transylvania feel of The Cutting Room. Or, actually – judging from the hotties everywhere in sight – (for example: the chick in the 1940s throwback dress, sleeveless, with a tattoo swirling down her arm, big combat boots – playing Pac-Man and sipping on her martini) – more like Interview with a Vampire …

I had a moment where I was talking on my cell phone at the same time I was blackberrying someone. Yup. I’m the asshole. Oh well. I’m certainly not alone. So I decided to capture my meta moment. Realizing that I am totally behaving like Julia Allison right now.