Review: The Ritz

If you're going to spend your Friday or Saturday night in Hell's Kitchen then a stop at The Ritz is pretty much unavoidable. The Ritz is a force of pure, calculating evil that beckons to us, calls out to us, until we have no choice but to heed its call. If life were a horror movie (and it sometimes is), we would discover that The Ritz was alive, haunted by an ancient evil that preys on the life-force of the queermos contained within it. We would have no choice but to burn it down and then douse the ground with holy water so that it could never return to trouble us once again. Somebody cue that devil music from "The Omen."

Sadly, that's not an option. Well... at least not yet, anyway.

So we come. We come in droves. Night after night, week after week, like pilgrims to Mecca... if Mecca were a soul-crushing, nihilistic force of unspeakable power.

I fought the good fight. For a long time I resisted. When my friends said, "hey, let's go out in Hell's Kitchen tonight!" I would reply, "sure, as long as we don't end up at the Ritz!" Yet sure enough, it would happen. Come 1am or so I'd find myself waiting in line to get in. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I've been defeated. You've won, Ritz, you've won. Take what you will from me, my life is forfeit. Everything I have is now yours.

Why do I speak this way about The Ritz? It's just another bar, isn't it?

No. No it's not. You see, The Ritz is the only place in Hell's Kitchen with a decently sized dance floor. When you add to this the fact that their DJ plays a great combination of pop/hip-hop hits, classic gay pop and 80's hits, you increase it's power ten-fold. Then throw in the fact that it's populated by the hottest, cruisiest guys in the neighborhood, and perhaps you'll begin to understand what I'm talking about. The Ritz is a grab bag of Hell's Kitchen that incorporates elements of every bar, which makes sense since most of them empty out into The Ritz eventually anyway. There's the snobbery of Vlada (this is the epicenter of keffiyeh acivity), the young-professionals of Therapy, the quasi-trashy cruisiness of Posh, etc, etc.

It's the Captain Planet of Hell's Kitchen. With the combined powers of Therapy, Vlada, Posh and Barrage, it becomes something much more than the sum of its parts.

The greatest irony here is the fact that I actually wait in a line to get into this place. There's a great number of bars and clubs in this city that I like a hell of a lot more that I never have to wait in line for, and yet there I stand on 46'th St. waiting for those Abbott and Costello-esque bouncers to let me into that sardine can.

Oh yes. It's a sardine-can. If by sardines you mean overly-coiffed gay men. Upon entering it you'll be hard-pressed to move in any direction at all. Add to this the fact that there's an employee standing right inside the door yelling at you to pick a direction pronto (your choices are bar/dance floor and upstairs bar). I swear, that guy would give a concentration camp commandant a run for his money. "Picken ze direction! Now! Now! Achtung! Schnell, schnell!"

Yeah. Thats just the beginning.

Ok, if you're smart you'll head upstairs where it's slightly less busy and take a bit of time to acclimate yourself before taking the plunge onto the dance floor. The Ritz suffers from the same problem as most HK bars, namely the long-narrow corridor that separates you from where you want to be. Moreso in The Ritz than in any other place, the people here are downright rude. The thing is that it's really not their fault, it's the unyielding malevolence of the space itself. See, after being in there for a while, everyone gets so fed up of getting stuck behind a wall of people that refuse to let them pass that the worst parts of their personality start to emerge. After about an hour or so of this it dawns on me that yes, I am in fact capable of taking the life of another human being. In all likelihood it will be the next jackass that puts his hand on my shoulder as he shoves his way past me.

In the twisted halls of my imagination I picture The Ritz personified, cackling like old Emperor Palpatine, saying, "Gooooood, gooooooooooood! Release your anger! Only then will your journey towards the Dark Side be complete!" Come to think of it, I don't think that requires a large stretch of the imagination.The Ritz personified.

See, if you're a big strapping lad of 6'3" and about 200lbs, you probably won't have this same problem. You can look out over the crowd and plan your route, using your size (and possibly good looks) to reach your destination. Sadly, I come from poor European peasant stock, so I've only managed to reach a meager 5'7". My height/weight ratio is not very conducive to aggressively maneuvering a crowd. I recently read somewhere that apparently The Ritz has a nautical theme. I didn't know this because I've never been there during anything resembling daylight. It's very appropriate though because the Ritz is an ocean, an ocean of gayness. I, like a sailor lost at sea, get tossed around and around until finally I am dashed against the rocks until I can take it no longer. In this case "the rocks" would be those risers on the side topped with the queeny would-be go-go sirens.

As the night progresses a funny thing starts to happen that becomes both a blessing and a curse. People start to pair up and leave. This isn't unusual for any gay bar, but it has a special significance here. As they leave, spaces open up, slowly, until finally you realize that you have room to navigate! At first you won't be sure what to do because the feeling is so unusual. Then, you'll hear a bit of a tune. Slowly it gets louder and louder until you realize that it's a song you really like! It's time to dance! Once that song is over it will be another one that you love, and another and another, until you find that you're actually having fun!

The problem, of course, is that by this time it's probably at least 2:30 in the morning. If you're looking to meet someone you'll also notice that the relationship between the amount of fun you start to have and the amount of hot guys left is inverse. Obviously, the hottest people pair up first, and things slowly progress down the line until the Sloth-from-Goonies-esque dregs of society are all that remain. This is why you don't want to stay at The Ritz until it closes, even if you're having a blast with friends. The closer it gets to closing, the braver the mutants become, until you're likely to get a proposition from each and every one of them. *shudder*

Herein lies the sublimity of The Ritz's evil. It's a pain in the ass for hours, but at a certain point you will start to enjoy yourself, even if that enjoyment is littered with downsides. This means that the next time someone proposes you go there, you're likely to forget the hours of misery you spent lost in a crowd and remember only the hour of fun you had dancing instead. You will return. The Ritz will make sure of that.

There are only two ways that you can get to The Ritz early and circumvent all of this. Firstly, you need to come with an army. No, not an entourage. An army. You need a crack squad of your best homos that are familiar with the way this place works. Working together, You can carve out a niche on the dance floor that enables you to give each other significant space and ward off any unwanted lanes of traffic. The second way presumes that you are looking for a hook-up of some sort. In this case, you come alone or with few friends. You sneak your way in, guerilla-style, find someone you like, grab them, do your thing, and get out as quickly as possible. If these tactics haven't yet made my point clear, then I'll say it plainly. The Ritz isn't a club. It's a war. Your goals for the night determine how you fight that war. If you need more strategy advice, then I recommend you check out my friend Sun Tzu's bestselling self-help book, The Art of War.

To top it all off, drinks at The Ritz are tiny and overpriced and the bar is practically inaccessible unless you want to wait for a good half-hour. This means that you must arrive well prepared, for you will receive no aid from the vodka cavalry. A cruel twist of fate indeed. On the upside, some of the bartenders are pretty damn hot. I recognized one Anton Antipov, a small-time model who I've stumbled upon several times on the internet. He's fun to look at. Here's some eye-candy:Yeah. He's a bartender.

My conclusion is that The Ritz has potential to be a lot of fun, but you must be prepared and be vigilant. One who ventures down to 46'th street not knowing what he's in for can expect disaster. I recommend they add a subtitle to the place. Y'know, just to spice things up a bit.

"Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here," springs to mind off-hand.

This city deserves a better class of homosexual.