Your First Ten Minutes Inside: Pick a Spot, Then Read the Room

Nobody asks how to read a room because they want a floor plan. They ask because they do not want to be the man standing just inside the door, coat still on, visibly deciding.

So do not decide there. Walk to the bar.

That is the short answer. The rest of this is what to do with the nine minutes after it. Starlets is in Woodside, Queens, open daily 11 PM to 4 AM, and every first visit opens the same way: a doorway, a dark room, and four seconds of not knowing where to point yourself.

Minute one: keep moving

The entrance is traffic. People come in through it, people step out through it, staff need to get past you in it. Standing there scanning is uncomfortable for exactly as long as you keep doing it.

Pick a direction and go. Walking ten feet commits you to nothing.

Minute two: pick an anchor

An anchor is a specific place you have decided to be, so you stop being a person in transit. There are two good ones.

The bar, if you did not book anything
Your table, if you did

The bar is the default and it works for nearly everyone. It hands you a seat, a surface, a direction to face and an obvious reason to be exactly where you are. If you booked, give your name at the host stand and let someone walk you over.

Minute three: order something

Order a drink. That sounds too simple to matter, and it does three things at once: it settles the hands problem, it gives you a purpose at the bar, and it turns you from a man hovering into a man who is here.

The people behind the bar are Startenders, which is Starlets' own word and carries a specific meaning — Startender Sundays tells that story.

Keep the first order simple. You can get adventurous at 1 AM.

A Starlets performer photographed inside the Woodside room this guide walks through

Minutes four to eight: read the room

Now you look. There are only four things worth finding:

Where the main floor is, and which way the seating faces it
Where the VIP sections and tables sit
Where the restrooms are
Where the way out is

Four answers and you have a working map. That is enough to stop thinking about geography for the rest of the night, which is the entire reason to do it early.

Do the looking from your seat rather than the middle of the floor. Sitting and taking in a room is ordinary. Standing still in the open and taking in a room is what a lost person does.

Take the seat that faces out

If you have a choice of stool or chair, take the one pointed at the room. Facing a wall or a bottle shelf makes everything feel like it is happening behind you, and you end up spending the night half-turned in your seat.

It is a small choice. It does more for how a first visit feels than anything else here.

Minutes nine and ten: decide nothing

Do not form a verdict yet. Not about moving seats, not about a table, not about whether this is your kind of place.

The first four minutes are mostly adrenaline. The fortieth minute is the actual room, once your nerves have gone quiet and you have stopped narrating yourself. Give it one full drink before you judge it.

If you have a table waiting

Your first ten minutes get shorter and easier. Give your name, sit down, and let the service come to you instead of going to find it.

Then run the same read of the room from a chair. Deciding a table in advance is one of the three things worth settling before you leave the house, which planning a first visit lays out. Reserved seating with table service is on the service list, and the VIP booking page is where you set one up.

If you came alone

Everything above holds, and the bar does even more of the work for you. Going alone covers what the rest of that night actually looks like.

If you cannot find something, ask

Give it a minute of looking, then ask somebody who works there. Nobody on that floor thinks less of a guest for asking where the restroom is, and asking without feeling like the new guy covers who to ask for what.

There is also a full kitchen, which is worth knowing at 1 AM when the plan changes and nobody wants to leave to find food.

Where the room is, and when

Starlets is at 49-09 25th Ave, Woodside, NY 11377, open daily 11 PM to 4 AM. If you would rather ask a person something before you come, call (646) 301-6606.

Ten minutes of that, and the geography stops costing you any attention for the rest of the night.