Photo by Jack GouldFridays Nights has a real cool, sophisticated event going on at Windows on the Bay in Newport Beach. Aysia 101 is also pretty cool. It may not be the typical cool urban-style gig, but your readers who are a bit more upscale and are looking for a classier place to hang without all the crazy youth may appreciate it. I read the Weekly every week, and my friends and I have yet to find any good reviews for more upscale, classier places like we frequent when we travel to LA, New York, Miami, San Francisco, etc. Check these places out. My friend Robert runs Windows on the Bay, and my other friend James runs Aysia 101. Just a suggestion from an old 31-year-old stock broker who thinks he's still barely post-college. Seriously, there are a lot of us who read your reviews, but most of us are 28 to 34 years old, and we need more young-adult places to go.
Thanks,
Brian S.
No, Brian, thank you! Since you wrote us this e-mail months ago, we've been really, really busy washing our hair and were unable to check out Windows on the Bay-that is, until this past weekend! If there's one thing we just adore, it's cool, sophisticated, upscale, classy events in Newport Beach.
Gotcha! Now, Brian, if there's one thing you should have learned at PR school, it's this: know your target. Do you think Commie Girl is going to have nice things to say about a club in Newport Beach for classy upscale young adults? Time's up! Now, where could your press release have gone for optimum results? Perhaps the shiny new Daily Pilot: The Magazine!
But maybe, Brian, you knew this all along, and your flackery was a sophisticated attempt at sabotage. . . . Since you wrote, your friends (and mine!) at Elite Productions, from whence your e-mail came, are no longer promoting the place on Friday nights; it's back in the hands of the owner. We're going to leave the politics aside-trust me, they're brutish, nasty and incomprehensible, just like the much-missed Gloria Matta Tuchman-and just give you what you asked for: a “review.”
A Review of Windows on the Bay in Newport Beach
By Rebecca Schoenkopf
Windows on the Bay in Newport Beach is a classy, upscale, sophisticated and cool restaurant and bar in Newport Beach. Are you looking for a classy, upscale place that's sophisticated and cool, where you can dance and eat and have drinks all at the same time? Do you wear a fat gold watch? Then Windows on the Bay in Newport Beach is the place for you! Huge windows look out onto the bay of Newport Beach, so you can relax with a Coors Light or a commendably strong mixed drink as you look out the windows onto the bay and meet new friends who are classy and upscale like yourself at the same time! Want to smoke? Smokers are “always welcome” here, out on a patio that's specially tented with clear plastic so even the smokers can see the beautiful bay of Newport Beach. There is even a second bar on the tented patio, so you can smoke and drink! At the same time! And that's where you can hang out with all the security guys and managers and chefs because the “uncrowded” ambiance has left them with little to do, and they're pretty bored, truth be told!
Perhaps you'd like to sit by yourself in a booth that says “reserved,” even though you're not the one it was reserved for! Go right ahead, and feel what it's like to be one of the chosen ones while you watch Robocop on a bar TV, of which there are two! Of which there are also two are “people” making out in the booth next to you, one of whom looks like Ted Turner and the other of whom is a woman. Perhaps if your dad's girlfriend looks like ourdad's girlfriend, then perhaps the woman looks like your dad's girlfriend, too.
In the mood not to sit? Then get up on the small (yet incredibly roomy!) dance floor and shake your booty to the sounds of the '80s, like Yaz. You will almost always have the floor to yourself, except when you are dancing with a group of Newport Beach wives you met when their husbands were chatting you up, and the wives are friendly to you, a lot friendlier than you'd be, probably, if your husband was chatting up some stunningly beautiful young woman, but you're pretty sure they must just be really friendly guys, I mean, they're there with their wives, they can't exactly be messing around, unless they're swingers-ew!-but I don't think so because they probably would have commented on your breasts, oh, wait, they did comment on your breasts, but only in passing, and the wives are pretty fun and borderline trashy, like you get to be when you are a certain age if you're rich, then no one minds, and you can pretend to do little stripteases with your jackets on the dance floor: no worries, it's cool!
Rating: SUCC (1)
But that wasn't all! Oh, no! Since almost everyone was gone by 11:30 p.m., we braved the Tap House in Huntington Beach. (And if we had gotten into the whole politics of Windows on the Bay, you would have read that DJ Priestis an Elitist, and yet he's not at Windows on the Bay; he's playing the Tap House! Who fired whom, and who quit, and whose money count was off? Well, whatever. The Tap House is where DJ Priest is, and that's where you'll find him, and that's where you'll find people, although we hear that Saturdays at Windows on the Bay are jumping, but you know what? It's not a very big place, so we don't think we'd like it too crowded.)
And if there was ever a Spring Breakier kind of place, we haven't been there! Oh, no! Just about everyone was piled up on the little bandstand-you know, so they could be taller and blonder than everybody else. And the Tap House locals know the inside scoop: wear a white shirt so your breasts will show up better in the black light! You know, Orange County has an awful lot of strippers. We wonder why that is.
But where Windows on the Bay is classy and upscale, the Tap House is really, really young and super-superpacked. Everyone looks about 19, though we're assured it's a 21-and-over club. Also, everyone looks Greek (not gay Greek, but rather frat-and-sorority Greek; sorry for the confusion), which is attractive in an off-putting, sleazy kind of way. We didn't see any beer bongs or that thing where they hold you upside-down and pour tequila in your mouth and shake you, but we did see two blond girls grinding together, not because they're bisexual or lesbian, but because it turns the boys on. How do we know? We just do, okay?
Rating: NUBBY (2)
Ratings footnote:
(1) Sophisticated, Upscale, Classy and Cool
(2) Nubile, Underage?, Blonde, Bi-acting, and Y? because we like you.
