I just don't get it

I don't understand half of this Village Voice article about a party in New York. For example:

• "Complicating the Friday night fiasco was the abrupt absence of Steven Lewis, the club impresario who recently got out of prison..." The abrupt absence. That's a good trick any day.
• "Lewis quit his consulting position when Plaid owner David Marvisi refused to honor the guest list." There is such a thing as a consultant to night clubs, and the person filling that position was a former nightclub promoter.
• "'We didn't have a bottle crowd,' allows McDaris, a photographer, who moonlights as a promoter at Plaid and Park. 'But that's not what we presented to them.'" What is a bottle crowd? And what does it mean if you say "We were not x, but that's not what we presented to them"? What does "presented" mean in that sentence?
• The guest of honor wrote: "I would urge anyone to avoid that horrid place for f*cking something that a lot of people worked hard on for months setting up..." When he says "for fucking something," I get that he meant "for fucking up something." Maybe they just forgot the "up." But is he saying someone worked for months to put on a book-launch party? What the hell does it take to put on a party in New York, anyway -- do you have to go through the permitting process, or work your way through law school first?