Southside To Celebrate 1st Birthday Of Meaningless Name Change
[Bella's (R), Southside (L)] Anthony and Tom Martignetti will toast the 1st birthday of their Soho club, Southside, on November 5th (invite below). But what are they really celebrating? Besides its name, little about the venue has changed since the brothers brought a loyal preppy crowd to 1 Cleveland Place in 2006 with Bar Martignetti and its downstairs bar, Bella's.
What's actually being recognized next Thurdsay is a time-honored tactic used by bars to stay relevant in NYC by putting a fresh spin on the same old formula that brought them initial success.
To pack in fickle New York crowds, clubs have to reinvent themselves. Even if a venue appears to be going strong (as Bella's did when it became Southside last fall), overhauls are not unheard of. Still, as much as nightspots like to shed their own pasts, they often look back in time for inspiration. And so Southside mimicked the palm fronds and reservation policy of Bungalow 8, which itself recalled the tropical motif of Indochine, the cokey '80s celeb magnet (who are celebrating their own 25th Anniversary with a party tonight at Bergdorfs). And of course, Bella's was widely seen as a downtown satellite of pearl and pastel-friendly Dorrian's.
In their race to avoid becoming cliches, club owners constantly rely on a big one: everything old is new again.
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Colin
October 29, 2009
10:18pm
I would tend to disagree with the post, on a few levels. Firstly, Bella's was not especially crowded on any given evening prior to the redesign. Second, the crowd that went to Bella's was very much an extension of Dorian's, I would hazard that the crowd at Southside is substantially less so. That's not to say it isn't still much preppier than, say, greenhouse, but it does pack in it's fair share of hipsterati and those who would like to be hipsterati. Lastly, Southside still manages to pack the venue three nights a week. While I think it is fair to say it is not as packed as it was in the first month or two, the fact that they are still running a fairly tight ship and pulling a good crowd is an accomplishment.
cold
November 1, 2009
7:03pm
first off...the place is not a club..... it more of an underground upscale bar. and secondly, the only reason they pull anything crowd is bc of its LOCATION... place is shit
Jeff
November 10, 2009
9:46pm
The owners of southside are overweight douchebags. They spend all their time leering over the hoebags that come to the club. And once even got their faces punched in by some angry boyfriends that followed them outside one night.