Few people in the city knew that Gray wasn’t his real name. He threw away the shy boyish Rick like old news the moment he saw how suavely his new name fit his nightlife profession. Wednesday’s at Sky became such a success, such a self-fulfilling prophecy. At first, Gray wasn’t sure if his parties were good, even though a lot of people told him they were. He finally became persuaded of his success when Time Out New York and Nylon Magazine raved about how trendy and chic his Wednesday’s had become. At the same time, he learned what it meant to have a good party in a New York City. It meant having velvet ropes at the door, and a lot of really beautiful, young, tall and skinny people inside, speaking about how good the party was. If you could keep the models in your party for over an hour before they began leaving in cab loads to the next happening scene, you were guaranteed to have the model wannabees and wealthy “model hunters” consistently come to your club and spend money at the bar all night. That was Gray’s belief. He must have gotten something right, because his Wednesday’s at Sky remained the happening scene for roughly one year, a record time for the quickly changing nightlife of the attention-deficit disorder capital of the world.

In any case (I think I’m getting way off the subject), after all the great magazine reviews and the subsequent lengthening of lines behind the Wednesday night velvet ropes at Sky, Gray was on his way to nightlife king status. He started promoting Tuesdays at Salon (a special artsy party night catered to downtown Bohemians he called “Performance”), Thursdays at Lounge 431, and Fridays and Saturdays at Liquid Planet (a rave scene with pierced and tattooed emaciated bodies jumping up and down on Ecstasy to