By ALLEN SALKIN


NEW YORK - Superdive is pretty much nothing. And nothing is as hot as anything these days.

Superdive, which opened in late June, is a much blogged-about bar in the East Village that has deconstructed nearly every imaginable pillar of the over-the-top New York night life scene. The bathrooms have plywood stalls, a doorman checks IDs but little else, and instead of bottle service, Superdive offers keg service - tableside.

“Since everything else is so chichi,” the manager, Keith Okada, said, “we thought, ‘Why not offer keg service?’”

At a table, a group of men in their 20s and 30s shared a 5-liter keg of EKU Pils beer to celebrate what they call “Manday,” a semiregular male-bonding night out.

Superdive suited them more than a noisy club with menacing velvet ropes and $400 bottles of vodka, said David Sitt, 32, a Manday regular. “We’re in a period where a snotty attitude is not helping people feel better about themselves,” he said.

Super fancy is out. Revenues are down 20 to 40 percent in the last year at those throbbing nightclubs that flourished by catering to Wall Street guys who casually swiped their credit cards for four figures, club owners said. Many once-popular clubs, like Lotus, Mansion and Room Service, have closed or are being remodeled.

“Three or four years ago it seemed like every bar in New York had a rope and some imposing-looking guy,” said David Rabin, an owner of Lotus.

Now, he said, haughtiness is as stylish as a overly expensive mortgage payment. Club owners are searching for a new night life formula that jibes with the culture’s low-key mood, yet attracts whatever is left of the city’s disposable income. “People are still looking for what is the right approach here going forward,” Mr. Rabin said. “There is a lot of uncertainty.”

Ideas differ, but the owners agree on one thing: the word “club” has about as much cultural relevance as the Maca rena. Noah Tepperberg, one of the owners of Marquee, for instance, is calling Avenue, his newest endeavor that opened in June, a “gastro- lounge.”

For most of the last decade, club owners loved to describe their clubs as exclusive. Now, some want to be friendly and inclusive.

In Chinatown, Santos Party House, a dance club that opened last year, has few tables, $10 cocktails and a nonexclusionary door policy. The point of the dance club seems to be dancing.

At Avenue, it’s not only the word club that’s forbidden. Don’t use the term “bottle service,” either - even though bottles, starting around $350, are served in silver buckets, a practice that has been known for years as bottle service. Mr. Tepperberg said: “We call it ‘table service.’”





In a quieter era, exclusivity is out as night life impresarios look for a way to attract low-key crowds.