After the Met Gala in 2008, attendees headed down to Bungalow 8 for Clooney\u2019s birthday party. For many, this was the best night in the club\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
DISCO I remember one party\u2014I don\u2019t know who it was for, but I walked in, and I don\u2019t know how she did it, but she had a baby grand piano inside Bungalow. And I sat there like, \u201cWhat the fuck?\u201d And if I\u2019m not mistaken, John Mayer and Fergie were singing happy birthday.<\/p>\n
SACCO John Mayer sang, that I know. I don\u2019t think we had a baby grand piano. Everybody was famous, super famous. I was the one who got the FDNY to come and bring in the cake [with 47 candles] as a joke.<\/p>\n
WANDA McDANIEL, FORMER ENTERTAINMENT PR CHIEF, GIORGIO ARMANI Best line of the night was when the reluctant birthday boy George Clooney leaned over to me and wryly asked, \u201cHey, Wanda. Why is Mick Jagger<\/a> at my birthday party?\u201d<\/p>\n MOONVES It felt like something that could only happen there. Again, God knows how we got in\u2014a few of the assistants, after working at the Met in our Met outfits, went and crashed the Bungalow 8 after-party.<\/p>\n Sacco\u2019s success inspired a number of competitors in the nightlife scene. BED opened on the very same block in 2004, followed by more, including Pink Elephant. Marquee opened on the corner of 10th Avenue and 27th Street. A growing police presence made the area difficult to manage and unpleasant to navigate. It was in this climate of chaos and oversaturation that the onetime hot spot began to cool.<\/p>\n SACCO They found a dead girl in a trash bin who had been partying [around there]. 27th Street started to become a zoo. It was like all these animals out of control, walking on top of cars because the streets were too busy, urinating, garbage, fights, stealing. It was a horrible, horrible time.<\/p>\n DISCO You had, like, 12 clubs, and it\u2019s like a three- or four-block radius. They had the metal gates on each side of the street. You couldn\u2019t cross.<\/p>\n SACCO Everybody wanted a piece of that area, which brings me to the regret that I was never able to buy from those people, that space, because if I\u2019d bought it, we\u2019d probably still be…. Who knows? Maybe we\u2019d still have it, or I would have developed it differently.<\/p>\n MOONVES It\u2019s so funny googling Bungalow 8 now, and you only see it with the lights on, and it\u2019s like, that wasn\u2019t it. That wasn\u2019t it at all.<\/p>\n TABACH-BANK It looked fabulous in the evening, and sometimes by the late, late hours, as it cleared up, you\u2019re like, Oh, it\u2019s really just a room.<\/p>\n