The weekend. For thousands of years, man has looked to the weekend as the flickering beacon of hope. The reward. The payoff for a week churning out TPS reports, faxing, punching in and punching out. 
You work during the week, you party on the weekends. It was a simple system. It was a good system. We lived life according to this gentle rhythm of work, work, drunk, hangover. Repeat.
This is changing.
In fact, for the trendsetting crowd of insiders, it already changed. The hottest party in the city might be a hipster party on Tuesday, say, something that flies under the radar of mainstream ads and e-mail blasts.
And here's the thing. For the truly fabulous, it's not just that it's acceptable to go out on a Tuesday or Wednesday. It's preferable. The weekdays are for the elite. The weekends for the commoners.
New York
"A midweek crowd is a much more native New York-type," says Megan Gaver, the promotions director for the New York hotspot Home. "Saturday is the most commercial night everywhere. So a certain type of crowd tries to avoid the weekend."
So who exactly is this carefree, insider crowd that goes boozing until 4 am on Tuesday? Are these people unemployed? Insomniacs? Alcoholics?
Far from it. Think about the lifestyle. The sexy jobs, with some exceptions, are the flexible jobs. Take a catwalk model. Sure, every now and then you go to Fiji and you have a 6 am shoot, but when you don't have a gig, there's plenty of time to nurse a hangover.
Same for photographers, actors, sculptors, and promoters. They don't work in cubes. They're not sweating the morning commute. And they don't own alarm clocks.
"For the truly elite crowd," says Megan, "if they go out on a weekend, it's to a local bar, not a nightclub."
Part of it comes down to comfort. "A lot of the models are from the Midwest," Megan says. "And at first these girls are kind of new to the city, and they feel safer and more comfortable at a party where no one's bugging them."
Quick aside: the one exception to the midweek, of course, is Thursday. When you're in your early twenties, it seems reasonable, even a smart idea, to meet your buddies after work on Thursday "for a drink or two," which inevitably turns into three, four, and five, and then you stumble to a club while making fun of Bob from accounting, and then you're sucking face with some girl who looks sorta like an oompa loompa, and soon your dinnerless liver pukes in the gutter at four in the morning.
It's okay. We've all been there. And Thursday isn't a real workday, as you can usually Red Bull your way through a lazy Friday in the office.
But back to the Midweek Elite… there's another reason they can get away with it. Youth. Or, more specifically, the school factor. Most of the scorching-hot young women you see in clubs are, well, young. And young means college. "A lot of people are in college, so they go to school in the afternoon," Megan says. "They can afford to sleep in and have a hangover before 
class."
In fairness, this is hardly an overnight trend. The elites have always ruled the midweek--it's only now that people are catching on. And there are some who think that the gap is narrowing.
"Midweek is a little more Manhattan and Euro," says Gordon Adams, General Manager of PM, the Haitian themed A-List lounge in the Meatpacking district. "And maybe it's a little more B&T on Saturday. But the differences aren't as pronounced as they used to be."
Ah, yes, B&T. The dreaded B&T, of course, refers to Bridge & Tunnel, that lot of unfortunate souls that has to [gasp!] commute into Manhattan. B&T carries some uncharitable baggage. Heavy gold chains. (Think a toned down version of I'm Gonna Get You, Sucka!) Guido-looking wife beaters. Big poofy hair.
Of course, these are all just stereotypes. And like all stereotypes, there's some truth and some injustice. But it's the perception that counts. And if the fabulous crowd thinks that Saturday is B&T, then whether it's true or not, they're less likely to hit the clubs on Saturday. Perception is reality.
Another reason for the hotness of midweek parties? Variety.
Every night has a unique vibe. "We've got different DJs on different nights," Gordon says of PM. "Our Wednesdays have more of a House crowd. Every night there's something a little different."
Guest House (connected to Home) throws its "Burning Down the House," which draws a rocker crowd and, somewhat bizarrely, a group of models in the Brazilian VIP lounge. "The models get invited out all the time by everybody, but they're more comfortable in a place like the rock party," says Megan. "But you would never see those rock kids on a Saturday." And therefore, by implication, you would never see the models.
Are weekends dead? Hardly. "60% of our revenue still comes from the weekends, and that's not counting Sunday," Megan says of Home. So the traditional nights still draw the big dollars. The buzz factor is another strory.
Miami
Miami is a different beast. The college crowds, for instance, are seen by the megaclubs are more annoying than hot.
Dan Vidal, a photographer of Miami nightlife, says, "The inevitable 'college nights' are during the week. No club worth its salt wants those kids around on the weekends when the main crowds show up. But during the week, they tend to be more amicable to college promotions and promoters."
Part of that is due to the very fabric of Miami nightlife, which differs dramatically from Manhattan. Late-night animals like Dan don't leave their apartment until 2 am, rolling up to uberclubs like Space Miami and Nikki Beach around 3, and then partying there until breakfast.
That kind of high-octane debauchery doesn't happen on a Monday. "Mid-week parties tend to be more oriented to the local crowds here in the Miami area," says Dan. "It's the time where you just want to have a few drinks with your friends, and maybe still go to bed at a reasonable hour."
Still, even Miami retains an element of "insider status" for the midweek nights. "They are very different crowds," Miami promoter Biz Martinez says. "The midweek or off-night crowds are predominantly locals or industry bartenders, waitresses, promoters, etc. The majority of them know what parties to attend on any given night, and they usually frequent the more popular parties around town. I guess you can label them 'professional party people.'”
Like any business, costs matter. So for the stadium-sized clubs like Space, supply and demand dictates that you do things differently on a Wednesday. "The mega-clubs tend to either stay out the midweek entirely, or only open up a section of the 
club to keep their costs under control. During the week, it's all about the venues that hold 300 people or less."
So if the New York midweek crowds are the "elites," what characterizes the Miami Mondays? "I feel it’s almost like they don’t try so hard," Biz says. "They go out with a good time in mind first. Rather than the 'Who am I going to hook up with tonight?' mentality. They also tend to be a little older and more experienced."
Los Angeles
It happens everywhere you look. Every page of Page Six. Every day on Defamer or PerezHilton On an almost hourly basis, celebrities are spotted making out, cat-fighting, spilling their drinks and spilling out of their clothes. Our society had to invent the phrase "nip-slip" to keep up.
So maybe it's no surprise that the celebrities, models, and insiders of LA prefer to hit the hotspots on the relative calm of the weekdays, not the tourist-mayhem of the weekends.
Actresses such as Terah Gisolo, who appears in the Sundance-hit Quinceañera. She laughs and says, "It's a joke that the '818' -- Behind the Orange Curtain -- storm the LA during the weekend. When they show to the club, you can tell that they don't know the door people; they're putting too much effort into getting into the club."
It's all about who you know. And in LA, much as in New York, the true insiders know which night has the hot party, who to talk to at the door, and, most likely, they even know everyone inside.
"During the week, everybody knows each other," Terah says. "Great groups of people that all want to be at the same place at the same time."
Terah's favorite night to go out? Thursday. "Because of the parties that they've been throwing on Thursdays. Also Mondays. But when Saturday rolls around, it's a party in the hills or something low-key with my friends."
At the end of the day, of course, what matters are the promoters. A sizzling-hot promoter like Brent Bolthouse has the branding muscle to make anything a destination--any club, any night. Tuesday or Thursday, LAX or Concorde, with the right promoter, the Mischa Bartons and the Lindsay Lohans will come flocking. The buzz follows.
What's Next?
In essence, nothing has really changed since third grade. If the "cool" kids decide to sit in the middle of the cafeteria, then it's cool to sit in the middle of the cafeteria. If, on a whim, they decide that the back of the cafeteria is cool and the middle is for dorks, well, then the middle of the cafeteria is for dorks.
Who knows what's next. Just as Tuesday has become the new Saturday, perhaps morning will become the new evening.
Picture it. The model/actor crowd is soooo jaded about having drinks at night, so the hot new thing is to get up at 6 am, meet your friends for coffee and mimosas, snack on cantaloupe, and then go to bed at noon.
Mark my words. It will happen. And at hotspots like BED's brunch party in New York, it already has.
The moral of the story? If it's Saturday night and you want to go out, then go out. There will still be a good crowd. You'll still have a good time. You'll still find someone to hook up with.
But if it's Saturday night and you're longing to meet models, ogle celebrities, and flirt with the hottest of the hot… visit the laundromat. Or the grocery store. Save the club for Tuesday.