Purgatorio is a three-level nightclub that is brilliantly conceived and elegantly executed. Every nook, cranny, hallway, and bathroom is designed with the theme in mind and no detail has been over looked. However, it is kind of like partying in the world's classiest PATH train station, because the crowd is the worst in New York. Guys in untucked button downs and their girlfriends drunkenly wobbling on heels that are too high and in tops that are too tight abound. Even at the VIP opening reception, things weren't any better. Overly boozey broads caused trouble in the stairwells while the well-heeled and hip tried to stay out of their way.

The clash was even evident in the night's celebrities. Official host Perez Hilton may have been a draw for the targeted crowd, paying $39.99 and up, but he couldn't get celebrity guest Jude Law to hang out with him.

And it's a shame that the crowd may turn people off to the joint, because it is really something to behold. Viewers enter through a Victorian-themed funeral parlor that is staffed by a bunch of freakish-looking extras from the last Addams Family movie. They are then transported down to hell, the venue's first level. The path is one of the scariest and brilliant things I've ever experienced. In hell, a lounge-themed bar full of ghouls and gorgeous girls, a creepy show awaits before everyone graduates to Purgatory above. It is like the world's classiest S&M club, full of raunchy go-go dancers and several vocal and acrobatic performances. Attendees are then free to travel up to Heaven, a space dominated by a gorgeous chandelier looking device and dirty dancers dressed as angels. There's also an outdoor lounge for smokers and such with a great view of the Midtown skyline. There is nothing about any of it to improve upon, except the door policy.

Hammerstein and Weiner, the pair behind Lower East Side hotspot The Box know something about creating a unique space that is full of provocative performances. They also know something about the velvet rope. For the few who can get past the doorman at The Box, they'll find a paradise of beautiful people, crazy acts, and a devil-may-care attitude that is far too wanting in post-Guilliani hot spots. If The Box is a high end restaurant, then Purgatorio is that same restaurant during Restaurant Week, when it's more affordable and open to the rabble.

And isn't that the problem with Halloween in general, when the zombie denizens of the city's nightlife are forced to cede their exclusive realm to the spirits of girls in slutty costumes and the boys trying to get them drunk and out of those tiny little outfits? It's become an even bigger amateur night than New Year's Eve, and no matter how classy you may be, you're going to have to make room for the less qualified.

[Image via Getty and Thom Kaine]

• Especially bad taste: Hammerstein supposedly "asked the trio the Harlem James Gang to perform in blackface. And when he asked a member of a music group to perform a skit with a dildo stuffed in her mouth. (Hammerstein denies both these accounts.)"
• Drugs: "People smoked pot at staff meetings. Drank wine at rehearsal. The whole thing was fueled by drugs and alcohol. It changes the way you behave... the bathrooms were flooded, there was raw sewage on the floor in the kitchen."
• Sexual coercion: “When an act comes in, we may give them a trial run. We’d encourage them to stick around after their performance and mingle. A lot of the times, they’d end up at the bar, getting into conversations with Richard and Simon, discussing their act and maybe how they can improve it. That can turn into them staying out late and then maybe going to Simon’s loft.”
• Moby hates it (wait, is that good or bad?): Box co-owner Moby told BlackBook last week: "I don't really go there too often... I've been to a lot of degenerate places, and rarely have I seen the level of degeneracy like I’ve seen at the Box."

"Mr. Hammerstein said he had recently become engaged and would marry 'in Decemberish.' He did not elaborate. Mystery, he said, is really the core of his business."

As for charges that he regularly slapped female employees on their asses hard enough to leave bruises and that he coerced the Porcelain TwinZ, Amber and Heather Langely, to dirty up their act so that he could rename it "Twincest"? Oh, pooh-pooh. He's an artist!

“I’m a director,” he said. “I edited their show. Whether I change the tone or the color of something, I’ve never gotten anyone to do anything they don’t want to do.”

Mr. Hammerstein said employees have access to a handbook in the payroll office that explains that anyone with a sexual harassment complaint can report it to one of two people, one a man and the other a woman. “They never complained when they worked here,” he said of the sisters.

The Langleys said they had never heard of the sexual harassment policy, had never seen an employee handbook and did not complain sooner because they feared losing their jobs. A performer at the Box who has worked there for more than a year and who requested anonymity because she fears being fired backed up some of the twins’ claims, saying that if there was an employee handbook, “that’s something that just started that was never passed out for the long-term employees.”

[NYT]

"Alleged misrepresentation is just one of the club’s—er, dinner theater’s!—problems. Residents of the surrounding area say they are tired of wading through a sea of bottle-addled hipsters every time they walk down the block—the place has apparently been getting noise complaints since day one. Even more damning, people from the building next door showed up to inform the board that they often get carded trying to get into their apartments."

[New York Observer]

The fetish-burlesque cabaret duo the Porcelain Twinz have been performing their hot-twin act for years. They were mentioned in Neil Strauss's pickup-artist book The Game: "You know what's funny," they told the author when he tried to hit on them, "We get all our physicality out on stage... we're probably more distant than most sisters."

Last year, they were tapped to perform at the Box. They recently quit the show, posting a long screed on their website called, "This is Why We Left the Box in NYC." They accused the handsome Hammerstein of everything from neglecting his dog to pressuring them into a threesome; they also mentioned that last month, the entire tech staff quit.

Their complaints resulting from the sexed-up work environment ranged from employee ass-slapping to sex they didn't want to participate in to other types of sexual coercion and job threatening. Hammerstein also allegedly charged them $2000 a month to live in an 8X20 room in his apartment.

A former Box employee we spoke to said that the Porcelain Twinz's story is "not at all" an isolated incident—and said she quit because of "a specific incident with Simon Hammerstein." What, exactly, is going on inside this Box?

From the Twinz:

• "Simon Hammerstein regularly slaps the girls so hard on the buttocks, that it leaves handprint welts for at least two days before leaving a bruise. This has happened to one of us as well as several of the classically trained dancers known as the "Hammerstein Beauties." Simon sexually harasses the employees constantly..."
• "He abuses the tech staff on a daily and nightly basis, constantly putting them down, calling them idiots, and ripping headsets off of tech staff's heads when he is in a fit of rage over something."
• "Simon sexually harasses all of the Hammerstein Beauties requiring all of the girls to sleep with him if they want to have a job, or if they want to be chosen for a special spot in the show, while constantly pushing cocaine on them."
• 
  

  The former Box employee we spoke with said, "I've seen this stuff happen. And I've experienced similar things. There was also a lot of job threatening... the treatment of staff is pretty abysmal. The slapping of asses, etc—I would see that all the time. It was playful, but then it was... not cool."

  "I had a lot of fun at the Box, and I love it. The staff there is some of the most interesting and exciting people I've met. There are just no consequences to owner's actions, mostly Simon's. People are at his whim."

• Other allegations: filthy dressing rooms (pictured below), in which the Twinz say Hammerstein abandoned his dog for days. (An employee stole the dog at one point, hoping to protect it.)
• 
  
  

  Of course, there's something to be said about having different expectations for your work environment when it's a cabaret nightclub that bills itself as one of the sexiest and no-holds-barred acts in town.

  But still: is the Box being run like a nineteenth-century Dickensian whorehouse? Calls and e-mails to Hammerstein for comment went unreturned. As Hammerstein himself told the New York Times last year, "The show’s only as good as the people you’re watching it with."

  One of the Twinz's acts (not shot at the Box):
  

To be sure, the Chrystie Street hotspot's troubles—kidnappings of departing clubbers and celebrity-entangling drug raids—have made an irresistible nightlife story. The economics of The Box—the venue is intimate and the acts expensive—have forced the owners to allow in more high-spending bankers than consistent with the club's celebrity cachet. Predictably, Manhattan's lemming-like press, Gawker included, has been quick to declare the club over.

However, the gleeful criticism misses one point: the shows at The Box, which range from sexy burlesque to gross-out tranny acts, give the venue an energy that's lacking elsewhere. (Mos Def gave an impromptu performance the other night.) Even on lackluster nights, it's enjoyable—as one Gawker writer, who admits to being "knee-jerk snarky" when writing about the club, found to her surprise.

If The Box's pricey proposition forces it to scale back, Manhattan nightlife will be the poorer. The club's critics deserve to be chained to the speakers at Mansion. Then they'll be sorry.

"Es salaam aleikum, giga-glans! I've been wanting to call you for years! This is The Future."

"Wait. Who?"

"Pay attention, tera-tits. It's The Future. I've had your number for years on my iPortal, and it seemed like it was time to call."

"But, why now?"

"It's as clear as the waters of magnificent Lake Zero. It's Halloween."

"Okay, but hold on. Um, I was on another call. Just a second.... Oh, I guess they hung up."

"You can always call them back. Ah, Halloween. It's really my favorite soujorniday. All of the—"

"Soujorniday? You mean holiday?"

"That's right. Language desecularization hasn't occurred yet. So yes, holiday. What are your plans? Have you selected a costume?"

"Um, well, I've been working my ass off, so I honestly haven't thought about it."

"Putting all your effort into the last minute, huh? I've made that mistake before, but you simply must go to the Halloween Parade."

"That's something I tend to avoid. That crowd in the West Village is sort of rough with all the people coming in on the PATH train. A guy could get shot or stabbed or bleach-gunned."

"Well, the parade hasn't been in the Village for years. There was the brief time it changed course to follow the migration of the gays up Ninth Avenue from Chelsea up to Hell's Kitchen, but once the construction of the Moynihan Mediaplex was done, it had to go. Something to do with the outrage when Anna Wintour's mobility scooter was dragged into the parade route."

"So wait. Where exactly is it then?"

"It followed the gays of course. To Governor's Island."

"Gover—but that's so remote."

"Exactly. The gays were tired of having to leave a neighborhood once the fertilizers would move in. After stints all over Manhattan, most of them were at a loss, because a move to a borough would have been too stigmatizing. Instead they moved on to Governor's Island. It's perfect really. They've built up the water taxis, creating a vast system of piers all around, which is an added plus."

"So you're going out there in your costume?"

"Actually, no. This year I've been invited to the Mayor's residence for a very swank affair. For the first time in decades, I'm going to break out the drag and go as the First Lady. Everyone thinks I'll make a great Hillary."

"Wait. Hillary Clinton?"

"Yes, Hillar—wait. Clinton? No one's heard from her since she moved to Lesotho. No, the current First Lady. I think her maiden name was Duff. Anyway, this party is going to be simply jayed!"

"And it's up at Gracie Mansion."

"No, quadri-cooze, that burned down after former Mayor Quinn tried to get all butch and fix some electrical problem on her own. But Tinsley Manor has been a stunning replacement."

"Tinsley?"

"Yeah, naming the mansion after his wife was controversial at first, but Mayor Mortimer paid for the entire construction with his personal prophets."

"Profits from what?"

"Oh, um, no. After the last non-millionaire moved out of Manhattan, there was a dearth of certain businesses. Along with Simon Hammerstein, the Mortimers opened a high-end fortune telling boutique called The Prophet Box. It did so well they created a chain of them, taking over all the empty Starbucks after the caffeine prohibition. Everybody adores the Mortimers now here in Tinsley Town. But they are sticklers for punctuality, so I should get going. I have to get to the Cover Girl shop and find the right labia-pink shade of lipstick if I'm going to be the First Lady."

"But you've told me so much, I...."

"Don't worry, kilo-cock. I'll call you again and explain everything. Asavakit!"

Theater degenerate Simon Hammerstein had this to say:

"We're interested in what people do when they leave the Box." You mean, like, eat? "No, not a fucking dinner," he said with a chuckle, but refused to elaborate."They're going to open a bathhouse," said a floor manager at the Box later that night. And then: "I'm not sure if anyone's supposed to know that." Oops! Another Box insider confirmed that some sort of bathhouse or sauna is being planned.

Should this whole bathhouse thing come to pass, it may change our opinion of Hammerstein (gadabout, arriviste, silly queen) to more like "awesome."

Oh Shvitz! Simon Hammerstein, Our Favorite Scion, Is Thinking Out of the Box With Bathhouse Spin-Off [NYObserver]