ANYTHING-GOES ATTITUDE GONE FROM N.Y. CLUBS

NEW YORK -- It was 3 a.m. on a Saturday night and Samantha Gregorio was all
dressed up with no place to go.

Wearing glitter eyeshadow and absurdly tall platform shoes, she huddled in
a doorway outside the Sound Factory on West 46th Street, a relentless
downpour making a mockery of her painstakingly crafted face.

Most of her friends, along with 1,000 or so other young people, were inside
the cavernous club on Manhattan's far West Side, but the 17-year-old high
school senior from Whitestone, N.Y., in the borough of Queens, had failed
the identification check at the door. "I tried to use my older sister's
license and I got snagged," she said.

Crammed beside her in the doorway were a dozen other sad and soggy
clubbers, a gallery of Sound Factory rejects who had broken one or another
of the stringent rules that have come to govern New York City night life in
the late 1990s.

There was a young man tossed out for fighting, a purple ring quickly
enveloping his right eye. Nearby, a girl with Pippi Longstocking braids was
so intoxicated she had thrown up on her shoes. And next to her were a pair
of Brooklyn men who said they had been ejected for selling Ecstasy, a
designer drug that many consider an essential part of the clubbing experience.

"New York isn't the fun town it used to be," Gregorio said, sounding more
like 27 than 17. "It feels more like Cleveland than Sin City."

Long a mecca for anything-goes night life, New York and its big-box dance
clubs have become heavily regulated places where drugs, underage drinking
and unseemly behavior are zealously discouraged. Chastened by increased
police scrutiny, powerful neighborhood opposition and the government's
highly public war against the night-life magnate Peter Gatien, New York's
clubs have become increasingly intolerant of activity that might draw
unwanted attention from the authorities or the neighbors.

Since 1998, when prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to convict Gatien on
charges that he turned two of his clubs into drug bazaars, the city's
largest dance establishments have adopted security measures to rival those
of El Al, the hypervigilant Israeli airline.

Not that New York's night life scene has become puritanical. Many of those
16 to 25 who make a habit of club-hopping said they could always find a way
to sneak in their drugs, and on recent weekends, many club patrons admitted
to being high on Ecstasy. When all else fails, they said, they simply
swallow their pills before entering.

But gone is the era when clubs like Studio 54 and Regine's practically
encouraged their patrons to snort cocaine at the bar. These days, metal
detectors and full body searches have become de rigueur. Most clubs employ
battalions of security guards, some of whom work undercover and solicit the
crowd for illegal drugs.

Many clubs maintain a photo gallery of ejected patrons behind the velvet
rope. And in an attempt to rein in drug use, almost every establishment has
bathroom attendants who peer under stalls and stop more than one person
from entering at a time.

On a recent evening at the Limelight in the Chelsea neighborhood, Jacques
Stephens, 25, said he was told he couldn't roll his own cigarettes because
it might send the wrong signal to would-be marijuana smokers. "Things have
gotten so tight that if someone causes the least bit of trouble, they'll
get whisked out onto the street so fast and quietly no one notices," said
Stephens, a party promoter who goes by the name Ju Dred. "Even if you're
the host, they'll just toss you out and there's nothing you can do about it."

The increased security, said club patrons, disc jockeys and promoters, has
put a chill in New York's famously free-wheeling night life. Colin Strange,
31, a producer of techno music who travels extensively, said Mayor Rudolph
W. Giuliani had succeeded in criminalizing night life to the point that
almost every large American city's offerings were considered superior to
those in New York.

"When you get patted down just to enter a club or you can get thrown out
for dancing in the wrong spot, it really destroys the fun of going out," he
said. "Dance clubs and raves are about freedom and escapism, and it's hard
to feel relaxed when you get manhandled and treated rudely."

Club owners acknowledged that security and surveillance had become more
rigorous, but they said they were adapting to higher standards set by the
city. "We likely violate people's civil rights, but it's a situation that
this administration has put us into," said Gatien, whose clubs have been
subject to many police raids, closures and investigations over the last few
years. "Of course we are concerned about offending people or being too
intrusive, but it's a reality we have to deal with."

City officials couldn't be more pleased, saying the harsher climate is
proof their efforts are paying off.

Deputy Mayor Rudy Washington, who oversees the administration's club
campaign, said complaints of New York's becoming duller than Kansas were
reasons to celebrate. "If the criticism is that people can't get drugs and
weapons into clubs, then I'll accept it," he said. "If a parent doesn't
have to worry if their kid will come home from a club alive, then I think
we're doing our job."