Crave

Please don't wear five-inch heels on these stairs.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET Networks)

A friend of mine once told me that one of the most striking characteristics of the Manhattan mini-neighborhood known as the Meatpacking District was the proliferation of "baby giraffes."

Basically, what he meant were the hordes of impossibly skinny young women in mile-high stiletto heels, teetering through the cobblestone streets of the party-heavy neighborhood as though they were juvenile specimens of Giraffa camelopardalis who couldn't quite control their pole-like legs. (In case you couldn't tell, the Meatpacking District's warehouses have largely given way to pricey designer boutiques and the nightclubs that keep Us Weekly's readership happy).

But those Giraffe Girls had better watch out, because the nerds are invading their watering hole.

On Friday night at 6 p.m., the doors will formally open to the third and largest Apple retail store in Manhattan, at the northernmost end of the Meatpacking District (it's on the corner of West 14th Street and 9th Avenue, to be more specific). Unlike its Fifth Avenue sibling, the West 14th Street Apple store won't be open 24/7--it closes at midnight, which might as well be the Meatpacking District equivalent of three o'clock in the afternoon. It's probably for the better. Steve Jobs has enough on his hands; he doesn't need to have to deal with dubious lawsuits from drunk girls in stilettos who've tumbled down that three-story glass staircase while trying to go hit on the guys behind the Genius Bar (they get way cuter after four cosmopolitans!)

The geeks have already taken roost at the old Port Authority building two blocks north, now home to New York's sprawling Google headquarters. Now they've staked a second claim with the Apple Store. Don't hold your breath, fellow techies, but if Tenjune gets replaced by a late-night arcade or something, we'll know the transformation is complete.

Click here for the rest of CNET News.com's fanboy-friendly photo gallery.

(Credit: twentyfour)

The coolest after-dark attractions just have to be across the pond, don't they? I'm drooling over screenshots of Twentyfour, which looks pretty darn awesome (though who knows what the crowd's like). With over a thousand LED color combinations available, this is one place where the decor won't get boring--and did I mention the walls are actually projection screens?

The video walls kind of remind me of the Nokia flagship store in Manhattan, but from what it sounds like, they're a lot more functional. Bar patrons can control, or even contribute their own scenery somehow--I should point out that this could get bad if alcohol's involved, you know, "You bloody wanker, why did you put the rainforest scene up there again?" Some of the projections are even interactive, responding in one way or another if you touch them or hold your drink up to them ("Ooh, the fish swim toward my martini!")

(Credit: twentyfour)

Here's the part I like the most--lay a hand on the bar, and it'll alert the bartender that you need another drink. Those of us used to crowded urban nightspots where it can take a full ten minutes for the bartender to even notice your existence can attest to the gravity of this breakthrough.

More photos at Geeksugar.

(Credit: Beautiful Vending)

The concept of a hair-straightening vending machine didn't make a whole lot of sense to me off the bat, but perhaps that's because my hair is naturally arrow-straight and I'm always drowning it in goo in ill-fated attempts to give it a little bit of life. But my curly-haired friends assure me that--especially in these humid summer months--hair straighteners installed in the bathrooms of bars and clubs would be a godsend.

And, yes, they'd be willing to pay a bit of cash to use them.

A company called Beautiful Vending is doing just that: manufacturing hair straighteners "for those occasions when sleek and sexy turns to shock and horror," and have installed over 500 in bars, gyms, shopping centers, and nightclubs across the U.K. (Why, again, do the Brits get all the cool after-hours gadgets?) For the equivalent of $2.00, you are treated to two minutes of frizz-busting heat that'll

It doesn't look like there are any installed in the U.S. just yet. But since blown-out and straightened hair is more or less the uniform in such enclaves of excess as Manhattan's Meatpacking District, it shouldn't take too long before club managers realize they can capitalize off female (and male, if Jared Leto is any indicator) patrons' life-or-death need to keep their tresses tamed.

(Via The Cool Hunter)

(Credit: Londonist)

Generally, when we hear about London nightclubs stateside, it's because Prince Harry was spotted dancing on a table in a sarong or because some flashy playboy racked up a ridiculous tab. This time, however, it's a little bit different. The Camden Town boite Koko has introduced a new high-tech system to keep tabs on partygoers who leave the club for smoke breaks. Upon leaving the establishment, their fingerprints are scanned; they're then allowed seven minutes to enjoy their cigs, and then afterward must re-enter by re-scanning. Makes the bouncer's job a whole lot easier, I'm sure.

Those Brits sure do come up with some innovative nightlife tech.

I'm not a smoker, but I'm familiar with the need to briefly leave a noisy nightclub in order to make a cell phone call and then attempt to regain access without waiting in line all over again, and I think fingerprint scanners show promise. Londonist thinks it's a tad "unnecessarily draconian," but if it replaces those impossible-to-wash-off hand stamps, I'll take it.

Nothing like walking into a Friday morning meeting with the remnants of a "21+ OPEN BAR THURSDAYS" streak on your hand. Let's just say it's not exactly the best way to express to your boss that you might be a little bit out of it that day.

(Londonist via PSFK)

Spotted in an East Village cocktail den! The iPhone!

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET Networks)

When all the iPhone hype ended on Friday night, many of us bloggers covering the hullabaloo had only one thought in our heads: let's party. I, however, was unable to wrest the dreaded handset from my head, and made a conscious decision to turn the evening into an iPhone-spotting safari. After all, I'd spent the whole week mingling with the geeks, fanboys, and ubernerds in the iPhone waiting line (which ultimately turned out to be futile, as there was a major shortage of shortages) so my objective for the night was to see if I actually saw any "real people" with them.

I thought it'd be easy. On Friday night I had plans to go to an unspeakable little boite in the Meatpacking District, which is the neighborhood just northwest of Greenwich Village that's known for its cobblestone streets, overpriced drinks, and regular Us Weekly nods. Locals typically don't set foot in those places unless 1) it's a private party, or 2) they have a six-degrees-of-separation thing going on with the DJ, and in my case it was #2. And I thought I was more or less guaranteed to see an iPhone in such a "see and be seen" sort of neighborhood. Status symbol, y'know?

But I didn't see any. My plans to surreptitiously snap a photo of a gussied-up Meatpacking clubber flashing an iPhone for all to see, and promptly blog it here on Crave, was shot down. I figured that maybe the real world still hadn't caught on to the phenomenon, and wondered if I, in all my iPhone-coverage frenzy, had been existing inside an Ajax-enhanced "blogobubble" in which gadget launches seemed far more important than they actually were.

But that all changed on Saturday night, when a friend of mine who happens to blog for another gadget-related outlet happened to suggest that we actually leave our computers and socialize on a Saturday night. The iPhone launch had hit us hard; as bloggers, you know, we're always running a serious risk of gradually morphing into mousy little beings who consider our weekly half-hour with our buddy Dwight from Scranton to be human interaction. I was thoroughly out of iPhone mode, especially since we were going to be in the lower-key East Village, but apparently he wasn't, because as we were sipping on lychee-infused beverages at a below-ground sake bar on East 9th Street, my esteemed companion said to me, "The guy next to us? He's got an iPhone. He just had it out."

Naturally, I looked directly to the next table, without actually trying to look like i was staring (but I probably looked totally awkward and obvious). The guy at the next table no longer had his iPhone in hand, but we could see that whipping out the cell phone du jour was likely at his advantage, since he was seated across from not one but two young women. Buddy, if you've got it, flaunt it.

But the story doesn't end there. Afterwards, we headed to the nearby Prohibition-themed ubercocktail lounge known as Death & Co. (go there if you ever liked chemistry class) for a change of scenery. Once again, the people next to us were sporting iPhones--it was a couple, and they both had them. They'd been waiting in line at a midtown AT&T store for them on Friday, and now were getting acquainted with using the devices as part of their everyday life. We struck up a conversation with them, learned about what they thought was cool (the photo application, the maps), and what they thought wasn't cool (AT&T itself). I also realized my complete and utter inability to use the touch-screen keypad. No, really, I'm clumsy; I think there's no getting used to it for me.

I said that I'd been out the previous night, trying to spot iPhones in the flashy Meatpacking District, but hadn't seen a single one. The woman said, "That's because none of us were out last night! We spent the whole time trying to activate them!"

So it goes.

Attention Seattle-based readers: you now have access to the alpha test version of Down2Night, a text-messaging service that keeps you up-to-date on what's happening after dark. Seattle's the first city that this just-launched service covers, but it's hoping to expand soon.

It actually sounds like a pretty cool idea. "Subscribe" to your favorite bars, clubs, and the like, and you'll get an SMS alert in the "early evening" that details the goings-on at your hotspots of choice that night. Down2Night also hopes to add incentive features so that businesses can use it to offer discounts and promotions. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like you can use the service to discover new nightlife spots--unless the website expands its non-mobile features to include that sort of feature. But I guess Yelp already has that base covered.

(Credit: Popgadget)

Move over, Mr. Softee. There's a new ice cream truck in the 'hood, and it probably doesn't play that annoying jingle, either. According to Popgadget, a UK-based company called Scoop is unleashing these flashy little vehicles, which look like the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine with a new-rave makeover, throughout London. They feature "hot lights, funky beats, and high end ice cream served in slick Chinese take out boxes." The blinged-out vans sure do look cool, and I bet they serve some pretty neat flavors (You think they'd have Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream?) On the other hand, I can see childhood-ish elation ("Yay! It's the ice cream truck!) and adult party-heartiness ("Dude, I'm soooo drunk!") to be a potentially dangerous mix. Y'know, mob scenes.

But I'd still be pretty pumped if we saw these stateside at some point in the near future.

P.S.: Today is unofficially a Party Friday here at Crave. In case you couldn't tell.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy)

As any regular partygoer can tell you, mobile phones are an essential part of the nightlife experience. You can use them to text-message from noisy dance floors, quickly grab the digits of cool new people you meet, and even find out where all your friends are thanks to social networking services like Dodgeball. But with a new service called PartyStrands, you can use your cell phone to actually shape the party.

Last Thursday night, I had the opportunity to hang out at the TechCrunch 8 Meetup party at BED (see photo), a pretty cool nightclub in NYC's Chelsea neighborhood. There were a ton of Web 2.0 start-ups that were using the event to get their names out there, but my personal favorite was PartyStrands. It's a creation of the music ratings site MyStrands. Basically, PartyStrands is a mobile service that lets you send text messages to be displayed on a screen at the venue (i.e. "Try the mojitos") or pick songs that you'd like to hear on the playlist. PartyStrands' Web site has a list of the venues that currently use its service--in cities like New York, San Diego, Dallas, and Seattle--and will likely have more to add when word starts to spread. Personally, I was impressed by how well the software worked, but I'm sure it'll lead to plenty of annoyances once people start requesting Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack" over and over.