Astoria or LIC: The Three Things Your Group Should Decide Instead
The neighborhood is not what this argument is about. What ends it is knowing what time the night actually finishes, whether you want one room or a crawl, and who is doing the booking.
Astoria and LIC are both fine answers to a question your group has not asked yet. Settle those three and the map sorts itself out, usually in about four messages.
Decide what time the night ends
This is the one that quietly decides everything else, and almost nobody puts it in the chat.
A group that wants to be home by one is planning dinner with a drink after it. A group that wants to be out until close is planning something with a different shape, a different budget of energy, and a different last train. Those two nights do not live in the same neighborhood by accident. They live in different rooms.
So ask the blunt question first. What time are we actually going home? If the honest answer is late, then a room that runs to four in the morning belongs on the shortlist regardless of which stop anyone had in mind.
Starlets is open daily 11 PM to 4 AM, at 49-09 25th Ave in Woodside, Queens.
Decide whether you want one room or a crawl
A crawl and an anchor are different nights, and a group has to pick one out loud.
A crawl means movement. Three or four stops, coats on and off, and a genuine chance of losing two people somewhere between the second and the third. An anchor means one room, one table, everyone in the same place, and a conversation that survives past midnight.
The bigger the group, the more an anchor earns its keep. Every extra person multiplies the cost of moving, and a crawl with eleven people is mostly a logistics exercise conducted on sidewalks. Bringing a large group to a club door covers what an anchor looks like in practice, head count included.
Decide who is booking
Whichever way the vote lands, one person books something. A group that turns up somewhere at midnight with nothing arranged has not picked a neighborhood. It has picked standing up.
If the anchor is the plan, the service list shows what reserved seating with table service actually involves, and you can start a VIP booking once the head count is real rather than aspirational.
Why the neighborhood fight keeps happening
Because each name is standing in for something nobody has said plainly.
When somebody in the chat says Astoria, they often mean they want a slower evening with food in it. When somebody says LIC, they often mean they want a shorter night and an easy way home. Neither person is arguing about geography. They are arguing about length and pace, using place names because those are easier to type.
Say the underlying thing and the argument gets short. Two people wanting different lengths of night is a solvable problem. Two people defending neighborhoods is not.
Where Woodside comes into it
Woodside is the third answer nobody proposed, and it is worth putting on the table for one practical reason. It sits on the Woodside 7-train and LIRR hub, which matters when eleven people are coming from four directions and two of them are coming in from further out.
Getting there and getting home is a subject of its own, and planning an all-Queens night start to finish handles it properly.
Put a deadline on the vote
Give the argument a cutoff, and make it earlier than feels necessary. A group still deciding at nine has already lost the good version of the night, because nobody can book anything and everybody is getting dressed with one eye on a phone.
Decide by the afternoon. Book by the evening. The only question left is then what train anyone is taking, which is a far smaller argument than the one you started with.
If you still cannot agree
Vote on the end time first. Not the place.
Once your group knows whether this is a midnight night or a four in the morning night, half the options fall away without anybody having to lose an argument. Then vote on anchor or crawl. Then give the booking to one person and let them get on with it.
If part of the disagreement is really about the borough, weekend nights in Queens versus Manhattan is the honest version of that conversation. Have it once, then let it go.
Before anybody leaves
Whatever the group settles on, everyone brings a valid government-issued photo ID. This is a 21+ night out and that part does not bend for a booking.
Put the address in the chat so nobody has to ask twice. Starlets is at 49-09 25th Ave, Woodside, NY 11377, open daily 11 PM to 4 AM. If your group has something unusual about it, call (646) 301-6606 and describe it before you plan around a guess.