I look forward to Thursday nights every week. It’s the night when West Chelsea comes alive, and throngs of people flock there. They are not there for the oh-so-hot club scene that keeps it bumpin’ during the weekend, but to join the ranks of the culturally elite in appreciating what New York’s art community has to offer. Or at least that’s what some of them are there for. Others have caught on to what art dealers have known for some time—opening night means free booze and no cover price.

On one such Thursday night right after work, my friend Nora and I were making our way past the multitude of auto part dealers and clubs named after pieces of furniture to the five city blocks that would allow us to get drunk without ever paying a dime—all before 8 p.m.

“Weren’t they mostly on 26th last time?” Nora asked.

“I don’t know. Let’s just follow the people who look like they would be going to an art gallery; the snooty self-important types.”

“Look. There’s one.”

She pointed to the lit up space with throngs of those self-important people pouring out, and our faces light up just as brightly.

Now inside, a lukewarm Rolling Rock in each hand, we are standing in judgment in front of “art.”

“What is this shit? They look like aluminum foil paper dolls.”

“I could totally do that. Why do they get their own show in an art gallery?” Nora asked rhetorically.

The rest of the night follows suit—gallery after gallery, beer after beer, and sometimes wine, until we stumble off, pleasantly buzzed to find the party that is NYC after dark.

The art world is a great place. Every Thursday night they have a party, and sometimes they have them on other nights of the week, too. It’s like college for older, sophisticated adults—minus the kegs and funnels. Gallery openings, like most frat parties, consist of small circles of people discussing everyone else in the room and occasionally more relevant things. Everyone is invited to these events, and you don’t have to pay a price to get in, but you do check your dignity at the door. If you are there to get drunk for free, you can’t be worried about what the judgmental artsy types will think when you walk in and head straight for the counter where the mean-looking goth chick is fishing beers out of a bucket of ice.

If you have more sense than Nora and I, you would check the Gallery Guide before you head out so that you don’t have to follow any randoms and look like a stalker-in-training. This nifty key to the art world gives us party-hopping, beer-guzzling, uncreative types a heads up as to where the hotspots will be each night. The Gallery Guide can be picked up at most of the galleries for free, or you can drop $3 at galleryguide.com or most bookstores if you want to really think ahead.

While Nora and I thought we had stumbled upon this huge secret that the rest of New York didn’t know about, we were wrong. There is a whole sub-culture of people that  goes to art openings, not for the art but for the free drinks.

“They are usually men who are inappropriate with women,” says Scott Zieher, co-owner of ZieherSmith gallery on West 25th Street. “I can see those people coming from a mile away; some carrying duffle bags to fill with beer and then leave. There’s the little old lady, the guy with the hair, the guy with the skin. There are characters like that that every dealer in Chelsea knows.”

I have not yet become a usual suspect—who is recognizable by all of the dealers, even if the dealers don’t know his or her name.

“There is this old man who wanders around at every opening, drinking beer and wearing his sculptures around his neck and on his head,” says Will Richmond-Watson, a self-proclaimed jack-of-all-trades from Bortolami Dayan. “I’ve never spoken to him. I guess maybe he just likes art.”

One art dealer speculated that the opening receptions serve as an entire social life for some of the older folks who have become staples on the scene. I find this somewhat cute and depressing all at the same time.

Nora and I refer to one such regular as Picasso. Picasso is a man whom my friend and I each encountered separately at different openings. He has long, stringy, white hair and a thick accent of unknown origin. He always wears a gaudy three-piece suit that seems to barely contain his robust middle. He likes to engage twentysomething girls in conversation, telling them all about how he used to sit with the real Picasso in a café discussing art and offers his opinion on the piece of work they happen to be standing in front of to anyone who will listen. Our night is not complete if we have not managed to rack up one more Picasso sighting.

The opening night of an art show is not necessarily an expensive event for the art dealers either. The bulk of the cash is spent before the doors even open, mostly on mailings to people who are actually interested in knowing when a new artist emerges and on promoting the show through advertisements. The alcohol is a small portion of the cost. For a gallery on the first floor (the kind that sells paintings for more than I make in a year) the cost of alcohol is about $300, mostly because it is bought in bulk and because it’s not exactly top shelf stuff. (But don’t worry; it will still get you drunk.) According to one sixth floor gallery owner, she spends about $8 per bottle of wine and never uses a whole case on an opening night.

“The beer they take costs me maybe a dollar,” says Zieher of the people who just come to drink.

For most art dealers, it’s not a matter of money but a personal pet peeve that makes them despise the characters that come to every opening to grab a beer and then leave or stand in the hall rather than actually look at the art.

“People put three beers in their pocket and walk out. The least they could do is fake it, walk around and look at the work. Just fake it,” Zieher adds with some disgust as he swivels in his chair behind a large desk cluttered with invoices.

While an opening only sets a gallery back by a small margin and doesn’t cost an artist anything, not a lot of buying and selling is going on either. For smaller galleries, most of the art is sold before or after the show, and bigger dealers generally know where the art is going regardless of who shows up to the reception.

“If you are really interested in seeing and buying art, the best time to go is during the week. Thursdays are a zoo around here,” says Kristen Copham, a former businesswoman and ski instructor-turned portrait artist and NY Studio Gallery owner. She says her 6th floor studio-turned-art gallery sees a lot of walk-in traffic and she manages to sell her face paintings for enough money to leave her unworried about paying the rent. At the same time, she echoes the same sentiments that many of the first floor art gallery dealers expressed: “If you go to a reception, that’s just going to a party.”