Hollywood club attendance monitor TMZ.com has boldly supplemented its exclusive video coverage of Hyde's velvet rope-protected front door with the groundbreaking monitoring of its tragically underwatched rear egress, a secret exit so "ultra-exclusive" that only the town's biggest names are allowed to partake of its paparazzi-bypassing luxury. This increased effort to cover all access points to the establishment paid immediate dividends last night, as TMZ's cameraman caught a visibly ashamed Warren Beatty (those intermittent flashbulbs truly capture his embarassment) trying to discreetly flee the B-lister-infested glory-hole with which he'd rather not be associated. Now that Hyde's Passage of Shame has been compromised, its owners will be forced to come up with new ways to smuggle out its publicity-averse clientele, perhaps by constructing a series of underground tunnels that allow patrons to emerge from more respectable nearby venues, like the Sunset 5 arthouse theater, allowing slumming stars to avoid such humiliating incidents in the future.

MEGAN MCCARTHY — Once again, it's back to Slide for yet another meet and greet, though at least this time no one is (overtly) fishing for funding. It's a different order of fishing tonight, as this is "Girls in Tech," an evening created by three female consultants who hope to build buzz via a connected hen party of (ideally) successful and attractive women. No one would admit to riding the slide tonight. The organizers — PR vixen Laurie Anne Lassek, marketing guru Julia French, and Vlog Hot contestant Adriana Gascoigne — held court over a gaggle of Y chromosomes, for the first hour at least. Which I missed. (Thank you, traffic on Sand Hill Road.) Still, I managed to meet up with Natali Del Conte (yet another Vlog Hot contestant) and Kevin Burton of Tailrank. As is often the case, the formal party concept, hardly formal though it was, rapidly evolved/devolved into a night on the town, with all the attendant morning-after consequences. Despite escorting a visiting reporter from Der Spiegel, journalistic precepts were tossed to the wind, leaving us with little more of a party report than you're presently reading. Lane Hartwell did the usual stellar work on the photo gallery though, and you can enjoy a few samples after the jump.

MEGAN MCCARTHY — Last night marked a soiree at Slide for Revision3, the net TV net brought to you by the fine folks at Digg. Indie mag XLR8R has joined the outfit with XLR8R TV; mag founder Andrew Smith says the show covers "cutting-edge music and culture." (Also, the host of the show is named — no joke and completely coincidentally — Vivian Host.) Slide is a newish club partially owned by Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams (he was there, but left before I could be introduced). Slide's speakeasy theme perplexingly includes an actual slide patrons can use to enter the club; is this how it was done back in Prohibition? At least two people copped to using the slide last night. "It's a lot better in a speedo," said one. As are so many things. Full gallery of fotographic fun may be found here, courtesy of lenswoman Lane Hartwell. After the jump, our report and a sample of the visual entertainment.

MEGAN MCCARTHY — It's once more into the breach at 111 Minna, the same damn art gallery/bar that's hosted any number of Web 2.0 parties, for the latest incarnation of the SF Beta demo-drinkiefest. The same old crowd of gadflies mixed with a few new faces and marched right by the superfluous jazz trio in the front room, homing in on the back room with the demos and instantly-devoured hors d'ouvere platters. One surprise was the presence of an actual Pastafarian pirate, but he left before I had a chance to interrogate him. When SF Beta began in October, it was yet another startup-meets-investor snoregasm, with the detached hipsteresque twist of making the startups pitch their ideas in haiku. Thankfully, this practice has been discontinued, leaving the demos for those who want to play with them, while the rest of us remained more bar-focused. Enjoy the photo gallery crafted by the collar-throttling mastery of Lane Hartwell. Notes and select pics after the jump.

MEGAN MCCARTHY — The CommunityNext conference opening night open bar at Blue Chalk Cafe was far more entertaining than most of the dry, posh networking events held in the Valley. Noah Kagan of Entrepreneur27 put together the conference to focus on "successful online communities and social networks" and, with conference topics including "How to monetize with ads and not piss off your audience" and "The Patent-Pending skinnyCorp Method for Creating Online Awesomeness and Other Cool Stuff", one would expect a fun-filled opening night. Photographer Lane Hartwell accompanied me to the event last Friday night in Palo Alto. Check our full gallery, and hit the jump for more details and a few select snaps.

So, who was there? Unfortunately, Fark's Drew Curtis, a speaker at the conference and the one guy I wanted to meet, wasn't flying in until the next day. So I missed my chance to have a beer with the king of the Farkers. Boo. I spied Techcrunch guru and Valleywag fan Mike Arrington, who politely asked Lane to refrain from taking his picture. He was much kinder to me, shelling out for tequila shots when we both ran out of drink tickets. (For the record: Patron, no salt, no lime.)

As the night went on, the venue opened up to the general public. Suddenly, there were girls! And dancing! And then, commotion. It's a barfight! Two of the infiltrating inebriates started shoving each other by the stairs, while a group of peaceful conference attendees surrounded them and gawked. Among the venue's biggest hits were the LEDs imprisoned in ice cubes, which even now may be making their way through the intestinal tracts of recently inebriated youngsters.

Sad news from Curbed:

Being the fiends for misery that we are, an event called "Icons of the Meatpacking District" suggested too much loathing for us to resist. Imagining a grotesque orgy of models, bottles, striped shirts, pointy cowboy boots, doormen and cocaine, BWE's Alex Blagg and his camera-wielding pal Nina Westervelt steeled their souls and ventured deep into the dark waters of Theory hoping to capture this spectacle and claim it for science. Unfortunately, all they managed to find was a who's who of who cares. Take a gander through our gallery and enjoy the meatiness of it all.

We recently noted the closing of a super-exclusive nightclub called the Door, said to be a favorite playpen for super-market billionaire Ron Burkle. Though Burkle's people deny his reputed investment in the Door — just as his reps deny any involvement with the resurrection of Radar — we hear the reason the Door was shut had to do with a tiff between Burkle and club management. Supposedly, Burkle desired admission for personal media cronies, but his nightlife partners wanted to keep the venue safe as a celeb preserve. If true, this has interesting implications for Burkle's ability (or lack thereof) to allow his media properties to cover his pals, positively or otherwise, without special treatment. Developing.

We don't believe in self-help, or help in any form really, but something about the release of a diet book set at Marquee seemed too good to resist. Fortunate for you, not so for fortunate for the Team Party Crashers forced to endure this travesty. Gridskipper's Joshua Stein dragooned Laurel Ptak into photo duty, and off they went, never suspecting what lay in store. If you don't believe, just look at the evidence in our gallery, which contains a very small but potent incidence of NSFW. Full writeup after the jump.

Last night, treading dangerously close to territory we swore never to revisit, Team Party Crash invaded Room Service to pay respects to one Michael Musto. His Village Voice column, "La Dolce Musto," has been Carrie-Bradshawed into a book of the same name, and all manner of gleeful vermin emerged to celebrate. Immersed in a sea of gays, trannies, and highly plasticized women, our editorial assistant Heather and shutterfly Kate endured a two-hour photo op hosted by Perez Hilton and Rosie Perez. Attempts to assuage Musto's Gawker dread were inconclusive. Join H&K in attempting to calculate the combined plastic surgery bill of Amanda Lepore, Joan Rivers, and Ivana Trump. Alternatively, you can try to count Mickey Boardman's sequins, experience the retina-searing horror of Bridget Everett's bare pooper, or check out a little man-love action between Perez Hilton and Gatecrasher's Ben Widdicombe. Proceed at your own risk to the gallery, or engulf Kate's engorged version. A few NSFW traps scattered here and there, so consider yourself warned.

The source said he'd partied in the exclusive club five or six times, and had seen a millionaire break a bottle and "throw it in a girl's face."

The "new" year of 2007 already feels a little old and tired, or maybe that's just our liver talking. Such is the life we live, and the same is true with Gawker photographer Nikola Tamindzic, who made the nightlife rounds while 2006 expired messily in hundreds of filthy bathroom stalls all over town. Nikola braved the fleshy mobs of two events, presented for sober reflection. First up is the Motherfucker party at Rebel (Nikola's gallery here), an establishment deemed "popular with the rivethead subcrowd" of the goth species. If that's not enough to sate your implacable lust for questionable body parts and inevitable nipple-licking, turn your jaundiced eye to Trash at Rififi (Nikola's gallery here). The go-go dance contest comes with bonus "passed out in rainy gutter at dawn" action. Photos from both parties can be viewed here. Enjoy, though note that several pics are NSFW.

Walk into any electronics store in New York and they'll take your picture, type a phony birthdate and social security number on a card, laminate the whole works together, then hand it to you no questions asked. Marianne Garvey of the New York Post thinks this is the sort of ID underaged patrons are using to gain admission to city bars and clubs. If Marianne Garvey really believes this, she may be one of the most naive human beings on the planet. She also thinks you are just as stupid as she is.

We still haven't figured out whether A.J. has a blog or not, but if he did, it'd look a lot like this one. Then again, this could also conceivably be the work of one of these guys. Either way, this is what you're dealing with when you're competing for VIP table space these days.

Forget second chances. If The Donald really wanted to show Tara Conner exactly what becomes of "hot pieces of ass" after they spend several years doing the club circuit - combined with the requisite botched plastic surgeries one needs when one no longer cares about one's diet or nutrition - all he had to do was flash her a few pictures of Tara Reid, circa 2006. That'd be enough to scare anyone out of the VIP.

We've often found ourselves scanning Craigslist following a series of blatantly illegal driving maneuvers on that breezy little Long Island thoroughfare known as Hempstead Turnpike, hoping against hope that someone - anyone - with two breasts and a vagina bore witness to our courage. Sometimes in this crazy world, things just seem to work out the way we need them to.

Commit a crime in the nightclub business, and it's your victim who'll be looking at a laundry list of consequences if you're successful. In any criminal endeavor, there's an element of risk involved. In the ID-checking game, however, this risk is borne solely by the bar and club employees who'll find themselves sitting in the back of a squad car when some nineteen year-old manages to procure that first precious sex-on-the-beach.

We've discussed language here quite a bit over the years - primarily in an effort to figure out what the hell people are saying in New York. Most sentences these days both begin and end with "yo," forming a "yo" sandwich whose ingredients aren't readily discernable to anyone over the age of sixteen. Guides are good, guides are helpful, and blogs, on occasion provide just the guides we need.

Sometimes, when we're making our rounds in West Chelsea or the Meatpacking, we stop and wonder if there's some scientific explanation for why all the women we see are so perfect and all the men are dicks. We know their failings have a great deal to do with their breeding, but we've often surmised that there has to be something else to it - something in the water perhaps, or some genetic mutation that takes place when one is born in New Jersey. Researchers in Australia seem to have found an answer.

For most guys it happens in the shower: the conversation where you tell yourself tonight's your night. That when you see that piece of ass you'd like to "slip it to," nothing short of an even hotter piece of ass could possibly stop you from walking right up to her breasts and declaring your intentions right there and then. In reality, however, you pretty much know you'll be slumped in a chair around four in the morning wondering where the fuck your night went and hoping you've enough cash left for the diner.