NYX, Crown Street’s newest club, opened two weeks ago to challenge stalwarts Alchemy and Static for the college crowd. Under the same ownership as the former Tiki bar Hula Hank’s, NYX is named after the ‘Goddess of the Night’ and hopes to provide a more upscale environment than its predecessor.

The 15-foot sign on the street makes the place “kinda look like a strip joint,” one undergrad said. I’m not sure poet Hesiod envisioned his Nyx, who in his Theogony “bore hateful Doom and black Fate and Death” wearing bedazzling Lady Gaga eye shadow, but I like the effort. Greek goddesses sure beat tiki totems for sex appeal.

Two girls traded shirts in line, exposing their lacy black bras to Crown Street onlookers. Another kid dressed up as a sailor. It took half an hour to get into the club at 10:15 p.m. last night, and NYX charged a $5 cover that was waved when we mentioned the Quinnipiac promoter JMac.

Make no mistake, freshmen: this place cards hard. Even an underclassman with ID forged by HEPHAESTUS himself would struggle to get past their scanner.

“Let’s just go to Elevate instead,” one diminutive girl said after being turned away.

The “most radiant servers in the industry” were wearing exposed leopard skin lingerie and providing attentive service. At $4 a shot for well drinks, the club undercuts Toad’s Place’s recent price raise. The 200-foot bar advertised as white marble “sure looks like granite,” said Ryan Nees ’13. Above, two life-size statues of APHRODITE observed the festivities and to the side girls spent $5 a piece in a carnival photo booth.

The bathroom was clean and spacious. The men’s room was just as full as the women’s, with guys constantly wetting their hands and running it through their hair. At one point you could see two pairs of heels standing in one of the stalls. Twenty guys crowded in and began to taunt the pair: “Hey! I like girls, guys, chicks with dicks … whatever the hell you two are,” one said as the two left the men’s room to cheers.

DJ Amadeus played a rotation of late 2000’s and current hip-hop, weaving together “Laffy Taffy,” “Walk it Out,” and “Hot in Herre” with the skill of ARACHNE on the loom. Occasional dubstep mixed up the flow, and every kid in the spot looked like they had just made it out of HADES when Amadeus dropped “Move It Like Bernie.”

The ratio was maybe 60/40, but so many guys were lingering around the bar that it didn’t matter. Every single girl was partying like a VESTAL VIRGIN and dancing like the MUSES inhabited their souls. None were doing the ‘Toad’s wander,’ briskly walking with a concerned face from one side of the club to the other in the hopes of finding their lost friends.

“Like, wow,” one guy downing shots of McCormick noted as one handicapped student had two girls grinding up on either side of his wheelchair. Another simulated giving a boy head on the dance floor for a full three minutes. The god of ecstasy would be proud.