Wow, I'm jealous. I think the real question is how you can get a job writing about your experience bribing maître d's and eating free meals at some of the best restaurants in New York.
From my experience in new york, you can get into almost any "hot" or sought after club with the same tactics -- ones that have 200 people lines at midnight. Bypassing a 200 person line is pretty exhilarating.
He seems to wrap it up well in his tips -- the most important is that it seems natural, that you dress well and seem meant to be there, and not be awkward about the tip.
Walking straight up to the bouncer at the front of a line, asking to get in, and (after you are denied and told to get to the back of the line) saying "Isn't there some way we can work this out?" while slipping him a twenty works every time.
too bad that the 200 person line clubs are rarely worth going to anyways, unless you derive your utility from the actual act of getting in where they cannot (it seems as though you do)
That's irrelevant to what he's saying. His point is that if you WANT to, you CAN do it.
And frankly, there IS something exhilarating in getting to go where other people can't be. Perhaps it's not the cleanest thrill, but it's stupid to say that you derive no pleasure whatsoever from it.
Usually for food writers/reviewers they can expense everything. Almost always +1 too. Having a restaurant journalist friend is great.
They don't tell the restaurant they are reviewing it until after paying for the meal if at all - only to see the kitchens and such. Exceptions of course for new trendy restaurants - they sometimes have press nights.
This article is as alien to me as a newspaper written in Greenlandic. Perhaps it's something to do with spending too much of my life in Stoke-on-Trent, one of the less salubrious corners of England. It just seems to be taking the bland consumerism that has taken over life in most cities to a new extreme.
