New York’s Return to The Night

Current circumstances aside, the city that never sleeps has been dormant for nearly thirty years. For decades, outsiders have clung to the idea that New York is the place to be, that Wall Street is still the epicenter of capitalism, and that SoHo is still a thriving community of starving artists. So they flock to the city and prepare for their immediate success in lofts riddled with cocaine residue and other trappings of a chic fantasy lifestyle. In reality, though, most banks vacated the no longer aptly-named financial district ages ago, and those starving artists have fled the soaring rental rates of a once affordable SoHo neighborhood for Bushwick and upstate New York. Vibrant communities and cultures getting squeezed out by invasive forces is the story of New York, even the persistently thriving nightlife scene. New York’s club kids are still innovators of trends, trailblazers of culture and originators of styles that would make your grandmother gasp and which your small hometown won’t see for another decade or so. But this, even still, is an antiquated picture of New York nightlife. Clubs have never been less exciting and, unless you’re Roddy Rich’s biggest fan, you’ll be hard pressed to find a DJ spinning much of anything worth dancing to. The scene these days is more high school dance than Saturday Night Fever. And though east coast media socialites continue to drum up business for trendy spots for instagramable cocktails, the nightlife scene lacks the leadership and community that once made it so important. The blame for this state of affairs can be placed on none other than “America’s Mayor,” Rudy Giuliani.

Before he was delivering coke-fueled MAGA rants on television and even before receiving the most undeserved nickname since Damon “The Best Shooter in the World” Jones, Giuliani was spearheading a witch hunt that would later be referred to as the “Giuliani Clean Up.” With the benefit of hindsight, it would surprise no one that the “clean up” was actually a straw man crusade to dismantle New York’s smallest issues with the biggest splash. His first step would be to stop the “Squeegee Men” terrorizing traffic locked commuters by cleaning their windshields. What was signaled as a great success for the no-lipped mayor turned out to be a takedown of a “crime organization” boasting approximately fifty members. Having removed New York’s least impressive nuisance from the city's streets, Giuliani happened upon a story line that would make an even bigger scene, featuring a villain so good Hollywood couldn’t have written it better: the eye patching-wearing king of the New York club scene, Peter Gatien.

Gatien’s empire was a nightlife revolution. His clubs were exciting, his style was versatile and he was— much as it might detract from his mysterious persona— on the tamer end of New York’s great club owners. While Steve Rubell and Eric Goode were inserting themselves into the universes of their respective clubs, Gatien was developing a business acumen that would allow him to largely avoid the fate of his contemporaries. The man was obsessed with staying ahead of the fashion curve and was, in turn, a master of reinvention. When he originally moved the first Limelight from Miami to Atlanta, he hired an art director in charge of art installations that changed weekly. If anyone requires testament to the party throwing prowess of Peter Gatien, all that needs to be said is Andy Warhol was one of Gatien’s most loyal patrons. Unlike most club owners, he had no trouble juggling multiple clubs with completely different clientele. At one point he estimated that at the height of his empire in New York, he was throwing twenty to thirty themed parties a week. Members of the SoHo art community mingled with celebrities at Limelight, meanwhile, club goers at Tunnel were witnessing the rise of New York legends like Biggie Smalls. Tupac was notorious for showing up to the club strapped. “This your nine, ‘Pac?” was a question once posited to the rapper after he attempted to enter Tunnel with a 9mm handgun.  

His unfathomable success made him the perfect target for the Giuliani syndicate. By linking New York clubs to distribution and abuse of drugs, Giuliani could claim to have dismantled the whole system by all but shutting down New York’s greatest nightlife locales. Gatien was painted as the head of some organized drop circle, using his clubs as a pseudo distribution center and at one point dubbing Limelight a “Drug Supermarket.” Though Giuliani’s crusade against Gatien ultimately fell short of conviction, the safe space that New York clubs provided had been violated. Giuliani, bitter in defeat, continued to rail against New York’s most abundant subculture.

Years of distance have not led to any visible healing. No impressive rebirth occurred once Giuliani moved onto to bigger and somehow more pervasive evil schemes. It would take, it seems, a significant upheaval to inspire change. It would take something so significant as to completely atomize the culture around New York’s nightlife. Looking around, it feels as though we might have stumbled upon that thing. It would not be the first time a disease has completely change the landscape of nighttime recreation in New York.

The decimation the LGBTQ community in the 1980s by the AIDs epidemic began a nearly decade-long energy jam that ultimately manifested the 1990s club explosion. The pent-up energy and subsequent release lead to an atmospheric euphoria that only a decrepit republican could hate. While the coronavirus will hopefully not keep us inside for the better half of the decade, this time it is not just the gay community that will be looking for a release, it will be everyone. As it stands, circumstance and good timing have coupled to set the perfect stage for our great return to night.

Last October, the world was introduced to a sound that would both reinvigorate and transform the dance-pop airwaves. Dua Lipa released the smash hit “Don’t Start Now,” a song so rhythmically powerful it has the power to drag even the most unwilling club goer onto the dance floor. But one song cannot spark a revolution and unwilling to let the ‘80s revival die, The Weeknd graced the world with After Hours. An album literally named for the atmosphere in which it was intended to exist. These albums are not meant to be enjoyed in solitude, they are sonic expressions of euphoric, if not erotic, togetherness. This communal enjoyment of music is not limited only to the rebirth of one genre but the explosion of another: the hyper-regional sub-genre Brooklyn Drill. Its viral groundswell, spearheaded by the late Pop Smoke, has led to the genre’s increasing prevalence on the setlist of even the most unimaginative DJ. The genre’s explosively sinister beats skirt the aggressive outer limits of what the general populous consider listenable. It is acceptably taboo and impossibly intoxicating. Brooklyn Drill’s unapologetic attitude is perfect for the neutered raging nightclubs tolerate.

It is not just new music that is garnering increasing respect but those spinning it as well. Forced to stay inside, audiences are looking for doppelgängers of their club-going experience. Though not nearly a perfect replacement, countless DJs have turned to Instagram live to offer audiences a surrogate party experience. Programs like Swizz Beat’s “Verzuz” can attract audiences in the hundreds of thousands, who don’t seem deterred by the digital hiccups of a virtual DJ battle (in one matchup featuring Teddy Riley and Babyface, over 200,000 viewers waited over 20 minutes for Babyface to figure out how to join the stream). This new appreciation for the craft will undoubtedly usher in a new appreciation for DJs that have most recently been resented by personalities that seem to value the party over the music (Diplo). These DJs, while compelling in their own right, do not possess the ability to generate the same societal discourse as the likes of Babyface who came up at a time where music had a deeper connection to the culture than simply creating admittedly danceable beats. The rising tide, however, is known to lift all boats and a newly invigorated interest and discussion around the disc jockey is no doubt bound to create a new excitement for any iteration of the craft.

It was only a matter of time before the greatest city in the world decided to pick herself up and brush herself off. Once this is all over it is only a matter of time before society, sound tracked by synth-pop glory and the return to form of east coast rap, rebuilds the night life to proportions unseen in the last three decades. Giuliani’s presence has shifted from haunting to comical, no longer casting fear into the hearts of party goers. Even the dreaded squeegee man has returned to the city’s streets. The city is healing and so are we.