Provocateur Is So Crowded That Nobody Goes There Anymore

Provocateur's Mike Satsky wants the throngs itching to get into his club to know it ain't gonna happen. Responding to an Eater post on the city's toughest doors, he said "you miscalculated our 'chance of civilian entry' to be 18%...it is between .05 and .1% depending on the time of night and the number of 9s or 10s you are with." Who is making the cut?

Well, no one we know personally.

And certainly not any group of would-be revelers being herded like cattle toward the club's entrance that includes a more zaftig member. As Steve Lewis wrote over at Blackbook, even the "very well-known wife of a well-loved [club] owner" who had already arranged a birthday celebration at the Meatpacking District venue was denied entry along with her friends when bouncer Brian "Geffie" Gefter spotted an undesirable in his midst:

"Little Geffie canceled my birthday there while I was standing at the door in front of him b/c he didn’t like the 'short, fat one' in my group.”

Let's not even imagine the response that would greet cast members of fall 2009's hottest pop culture grease fire Jersey Shore.

Minutes after I wrote a jokey post about the soon-to-open Provocateur attracting Sleazeside Heights types back in December, Satsky and a crew of co-owners and investors called our office demanding a retraction. And while we weren't prescient enough to expect such a melodramatic response and record it, we did get an email from Satsky lackey Sasa Nikolic:

"Hey [redacted] – We have an emergency on our hands. I just read Billy’s post about PROVOCATEUR which is extremely negative and insulting. The project is a $5 million dollar upscale venue which has already received great reviews in the Post and BlackBook Magazine...Can you take this down this post? We would love to have you over and show you the space but my clients are furious at the moment…

Please let me know your thoughts…

Thanks,

Sasa Nikolic"

Clearly the Provocateur team's demand for fawning publicity from outside sources is at odds with its own obnoxious and, one would hope, self-defeating self-promotion.

But when ownership includes Lionel "KyKy" Conille, who is allegedly in trouble with the SLA and IRS (to the tune of over 300,000 owed dollars), that cliche about bad publicity starts looking pretty good. In which case, you're welcome.

Photo via Tana Lee Alves/WireImage.com