Making the scene upstairs at Movida.   (Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux)

• Monday

• Cielo

  18 Little W. 12th St., 212-645-5700

  Mondays are for real clubbers, not the weekend Red Bull crowd. Here, house-music fanatics come out for François K’s dubby house at the “Deep Space” party. Thump, thump, thump . . .

• Tuesday

• Happy Valley

  14 E. 27th St., 212-481-2628

  This trashy, off-the-beaten path club was an anti-destination before nightlife doyenne Susanne Bartsch’s flamboyant free-for-all arrived for former club kids and their followers. Now the line stretches down the block.

• Wednesday

• The Delancey

  168 Delancey St., 212-254-9920

  London import “Death Disco” is a triple threat: It’s free, it’s got an impeccable mix of rock from the New York Dolls to Arctic Monkeys, and it has an Anglophile, unusually music-savvy crowd to lap it all up.

• Thursday

• Boudoir

  127 Eighth Ave., 212-463-7406

  Ludlow meets 27th Street in a fragile experiment at the “Life Is Beautiful” party. Tastemaking downtowners, classic rockers, models, and bottle buyers alike dance and mingle.

• Friday

• Element

  225 E. Houston St., 212-254-2200

  When the raunchy “Filthy” party takes over this former bank’s subterranean vaults, half-naked clubbers are quite likely going home with each other after getting down to a mashed-up soundtrack of new wave, punk, and disco.

• Saturday

• Movida

  28 Seventh Ave. S., 212-206-9600

  At the “Robot Rock” party, everyone knows the latest rock, new-wave, or electro tune that’s playing overhead—and they knew it before you did. Ask them what it is during the 10-to-11 p.m. open bar or 2-to-3 a.m. happy hour.

• Sunday

• Sway

  305 Spring St., 212-620-5220

  Hordes of Morrissey fans stretch around the block outside this sexy lounge for the weekly Smiths party, a celebration of pre-rave Manchester miserablism D.J.’d by Ben Cho and Brian DeGraw.

From the 2006 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine