Once upon a time I worked for Pseudo.com, the We Live in Public guy. He was apparently having crazy parties with mountains of coke, NY glitterati attending, all while cosplaying as a sad clown. I wasn't invited to those parties so I had no idea. Anyway now I hear he owns an orchard in Vegas or something. Crazy stuff.
Damn that must be frustrating. Tangentially similar experience - I flew from Ireland to the US in 2007, and at the end of my trip spent 11 days walking around Manhattan with little to do. Do to the lack of online banking at the time I couldn't readily check my bank balance, and thought (wrongly) I'd run out of money. Anyway - I had absolutely no idea that there were 'things afoot' in Brooklyn, nor how easy it would have been to hop a train to Williamsburg, or Bushwick. I didn't come back again till 2013, and caught a mere hint of the tail end of what seems to have been an extremely fun era.