New Club Enters Who’s-Trendiest Derby

The son of Orange County’s biggest name in high-fashion, upscale women’s wear is starting a nightclub--and billing it as the next big thing in high-fashion, upscale nightclubs.

Amen Wardy Jr., 21, whose father operates the chic Newport Beach clothing store, is one of the partners in the club dubbed NYC, scheduled to open March 15 at 1670 Newport Blvd. in Costa Mesa.

As Wardy describes it, NYC will have a split personality of sorts: On Fridays and Saturdays it will be a chic dance club where the fashionably dressed can gather to socialize and dance to recorded music in well-appointed surroundings; on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays the club will be open to the hoi polloi, even if not trendily decked out. On those nights, NYC will feature live rock and reggae bands in one of its two rooms. The club’s total capacity is 600, about half in the room equipped with a stage for live bands.

“It’s going to be a semi-selective door” on Fridays and Saturdays, Wardy said. “It will be a kind of dress-to-impress club,” where the doorkeeper will have the right to turn down those who don’t have the right look. But for live music fans on other nights, “it’ll be more casual, come-one, come-all. It won’t be selective at the door,” and the admission price will be $5 instead of the $10 Friday-Saturday cover. (Those who can’t bear the thought of waiting in line or being turned away on the club’s selective nights can buy special membership passes priced at $300 to $650.)

Wardy said Tuesday that he has no confirmed live bookings, but plans call for reggae music on Sundays and rock on Wednesdays and Thursdays. He said he got his start in the music business as a real estate and finance student at Arizona State University, where he promoted club shows by such acts as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, T.S.O.L., Dramarama, the Damned, rapper Schoolly D and Suicidal Tendencies. Wardy said he would consider all of those except the hard-core-punk Suicidals as appropriate acts for his new club.

Wardy said his partners are Bob Ohanian, a Phoenix nightclub owner, and Mike Tuomisto.