For most people who live here, Belltown doesn't quite include First Avenue. Neighborhood residents may live there, may occasionally eat there, but they rarely spend time weaving their way through the throngs of partyers and drunkards who populate the clubs and bars that turn Belltown into a haven for the nouveau riche, young professionals and tarted-up college students that pour in each Friday night from their Eastside apartments.

The reason Belltown doesn't quite like First Avenue is pretty simple-the businesses there make poor neighbors. For one thing, they're not much involved with the rest of the community, eschewing responsible business associations and existing by fealty of ties to rich and powerful patrons. Each Friday night at around 2:00 AM, the streets are flooded with raucous, intoxicated people constituting a serious public nuisance. Fights, vomit and car accidents are not uncommon. And then there are the allegations of drugs and prostitution, a seedy recipe of Babylonian excess topped off by the high-profile police scandal at Club Medusa.

So the question naturally arises: What's really going on behind the shiny glass facades, past the beefy bouncers and cover-stamp girls? A three-weekend-long investigation by Messenger staffers didn't turn up any new allegations of serious criminality, but it did much to confirm the worst suspicions of residents about these businesses' sense of community responsibility: Young women ushered into clubs without proper vetting, drunks leaving to get behind the wheel, and the blind eye turned toward drug use, particularly with regard to the resurgent popularity of cocaine.

Twice, we began the evening at Axis (2212 First Ave.). During the day a well-reviewed restaurant, at night the primary attraction is the window-front first-floor bar. In comparison to many of the other places we visited, Axis was perfectly pleasant. The clientele was mostly middle-aged, although there were certainly enough twenty-something women with plunging necklines to interest the wandering gaze of martini-swilling leches.

Attempting to cash in on First Avenue's nightlife, Axis has opened a pseudo dance club in its upstairs mezzanine. The scene, though, is anything but excited. A DJ spins to a largely apathetic crowd of awkward subarbanites and sorority girls not dressed down enough for the more piquant clubs down the block.

I struck up a conversation with two young women sitting near my table. Both were from Bellevue, and asked what brought them to Belltown, one of them helpfully offered, "We wanted to get out, and this is the place to be, right?" Both were, as it turns out, not entirely unfamiliar with the area. Asked about their previous experiences, one recalled her days as an underage partyer illegally allowed into Club Medusa.

"Back then it was fun, you know, because if you were young and looked good, they didn't care if you were under 21," she said with a self-effacing laugh. "But now that I'm actually old enough to drink, it just doesn't seem as fun there."

A block or so north on First is the Bada Lounge (2230 First Ave.), a more traditional bar and dance club (and one actually charging a cover). Entering through a narrow, windowed doorway, you make your way down a long hallway into what appears, at first glance, to be the milk bar from A Clockwork Orange. One well-lit backroom features all-white upholstered cushions and poofs to both use as seat and table. Across from the bar is a dance floor, dimly lit, and beyond that a cavernous viewing gallery.

The crowd is primarily young professionals from Bellevue and Redmond, as well as university students. Sitting in the back, I engaged a young woman who identified herself only as "Jen," who was accompanied by about a dozen female friends, one of whom was pinned on the dancefloor between two men grinding on her.

"It's her bacherlorette party," her friend said with a grin. "It's like her last night out and we wanted her to have a good time." Asked about the scene, the woman shrugged. "It's easy to score coke, but that's easy everywhere," she said. "We're just out for a good time, and this place isn't that bad." Still, a few minutes later, she went off to deal with a problem. Another guy, a causasian, had begun hitting on her friend, and she subtly mentioned to him that the woman was engaged. The man slunk off to some back corner to scope out his next target, and Jen returned to her table with another drink. Strangely, Jen had chosen to allow the two men who earlier had been hitting on her friend to continue doing so, eventually following her back to the table near me with a round of drinks for all the girls. Coincidentally, these two young men were both Asian.

The Bada Lounge, in short, is more of a young-professionals sort of place, a place that desperately wants to be cooler than it is, but which nevertheless manages to be fairly pleasant. In the time I spent there, it appeared that people actually seemed to be having a good time. Women congregated in groups on the dancefloor, and the men hitting on them were more or less polite. In contrast, Tia Lou's down the block represents all the worst stereotypes of the First Avenue crowd.

When it opened a few years ago, Tia Lou's caused some controversy with its original name, "Mama Lou's." Mama's Mexican Kitchen, a Second Ave. fixture for decades, protested, and the name was quickly changed.

Visit Tia Lou's on a Friday night, and it's hard to mistake it for a cozy restaurant. No sooner than we approached the door than the problems began. The hefty bouncer refused entry to Messenger food writer Ron Holden on the grounds that he was wearing a hat (specifically, a fedora). The justification given was that clubs simply didn't allow people wearing hats as an anti-gang tactic. Not only was the rule unsurprisingly unenfored within the club, but a gaggle of young women wearing hats passed us at the door.

After paying a fairly steep cover, we made our way down a long dark hallway and through a curtained passage onto the dancefloor.

Security was well in evidence inside, as bouncers wielding heavy Maglites force their way through the crowd and keep the stairwell clear of loiterers. On the first floor, scantily clad young women dance atop tables and platforms, while the second-floor balcony abounds with gawkers. A patio with a partial bar opens off the second-floor, offering patrons the unappealing opportunity to watch films like Charlie's Angels projected onto the adjacent wall while standing in the rain.

Also, Tia Lou's offers an exclusive VIP area along part of the balcony. Tiny tables seating about four overlook the main dancefloor and, apparently, a VIP bar is open in the back.

"One-hundred-dollar tab," the bouncer at the entrance informs me while barring my way. It seemed painfully unnecessary, as the VIP area was completely empty.

Outside, dancers gleaming with sweat gasp a few precious breaths of fresh air. Another bacherlorette party stands around surrounded by male hangers-on. A woman in the relative privacy of the back corner appears to be giving a man a lapdance. Unable to engage anyone in serious conversation, I buy a beer: $5.00 for a bottle of Pacifica.

The final stop on my First Avenue journeys was The Apartment (2226 First Ave.). Opened summer, 2004, The Apartment sits at the intersection of power and money that makes the First Ave. scene the unavoidable phenomenon it is. The co-owners are David Leong and David Selig, son of none other than Seattle's Donald Trump-esque real estate tycoon, Martin Selig, who recently produced the muscle and money behind the last monorail recall attempt.

The Apartment is a tiny, cramped space. The first time I went there, Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs was playing projected on a screen over the bar. Pretension is the bar's overwhelming design conceit. In the bathrooms, the sink bowl sits atop the counter. My overpriced beer is served in a 12-inch tall Bavarian style flute. Looking around at the subtle track-lighting, brushed stainless stell ornamentation and black-lacquered table-tops, I half expect to see one of Michael J. Fox's movie characters, lost amidst the excess of '80s business culture, snorting coke in the corner.

A bistro by day, at night the tiny space is filled to the limit with the wannabe creme-de-la-creme of Seattle's nightlife: Aging yuppies sporting their arm-candy girlfriends, 20-something up-and-comers milling about the narrow walkways while the svelte waitresses -- all of whom no doubt have a modelling portfolio behind the counter -- zig and zag through the throng.

Inside it's loud, so I retreat to the little patio where each of the patrons in turn retreats to felch a cigarette from the few smokers who brought a pack (The Apartment is a non-smoking establishment). Eventually, I strike up a conversation with a junior Ernst and Young analyst from Trinidad. Asked about the scene, he puffs at his smoke and cast a downtrodden look at me. "There's plenty of women," he says, "but all they care about is that." He points at a Mercedes parked along the curb. After asking me what I do for a living, he launches into what stands as one of the few genuine moments I experienced on First Avenue.

"I have a friend in Trinidad," he said, "who's a journalist. He tried to talk about the corruption in the poor neighborhoods - not taking on the government, you know, just talking about basic problems. The government banned him."

No sooner had an authentic comment been made than one of his friends, with a stiffly pressed button-down shirt and chiseled abs suggesting a serious commitment to the gym, slipped out and grabbed the analyst's arm. "Dude, we're headed next door to the Bada...this place is a sausage fest."

Later, I retreated with my party to the relative comfort of familiar Second Avenue. Sitting at a table at the Rendezvous, we finished the night over a dismal beer, mulling over the world we'd just dallied in. The world of First Avenue was both a shock and a disappointment; shock because it seemed like a movie-trope - a world where people flashed the accoutrements of wealth in a desperate attempt to impress one another, a disappointment because I hadn't actually found a coke dealer inside one of the clubs.

As we left, a car came careening towards Second from First and turned, across three lanes of traffic, north on Second Avenue. At only the last minute the driver realize he was going to wrong way down a one-way street, and sharply if stutteringly corrected his course, tires screeching towards Third.

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