If No One Is Dancing, You’re at the Wrong Club
How the mainstreaming of dance music is driving New York’s best nightlife even more underground
On a balmy July evening at Good Room in Brooklyn, bodies are packed wall to wall, but no limbs are moving. It’s the New York edition of Kelela’s touring RAVE:N club night, in which the R&B experimentalist performs behind the decks alongside world-class DJs. Devotees in all black who waited outside for hours are now clustered around the DJ booth taking videos. Others stand in the back on their phones, barely swaying along to a deep house remix of the Weeknd. “This is the club, why isn’t anyone dancing?” I exclaim to a friend, as we attempt to catch a vibe. The only thing I could grasp was the palpable sense that people were waiting for something more interesting to happen.
Scenes like this—in which people go to the club with no clear purpose other than to document they were there—have led to a crisis: “Is clubbing dead?” people in global metropolises have seriously questioned online. A viral TikTok asking whether Boiler Room has “ruined” DJing argues that the mass documentation of DJ sets online has led to an epidemic of vibelessness. A Chicago crowd at a Kaytranada set got chewed out in real time for recording on their phones. The New York City mainstay Eli Escobar took to Instagram to ask attendees to stop yapping in front of the booth. The Toronto bass stalwart Bambii put it best in her own post: “Toronto, I looked in my archives and can confirm we [are] not raving like we were raving in 2022. The passion, rage and sexual tension is gone. Y’all taking shit for granted again.”
Aside from the sunglass-wearing crowds bouncing tepidly through their K-holes and G doses, the sustainability of New York City’s scene has been put in question by a spate of small and midsize clubs closing this spring: Paragon, a Myrtle-Broadway simulacrum of Studio 54 that opened in 2022 and once was host to an Eric Adams presser; Black Flamingo, a small Williamsburg waterhole established in 2015; and TBA, a beloved Williamsburg warehouse-like space that had been running for 12 years. There are still outliers, like Nowadays, which has survived through its 24-hour “Nonstop” parties and a Patreon; the space on the edge of Bushwick and Ridgewood recently renewed its 10-year lease.
Besides the obvious issue of rising rents, the problem boils down to dance music culture reaching maximum exposure. Boiler Room, business techno, and Gen Z “wearing Shein and taking photos with flash on”—they’re all symptoms of nightlife being squeezed by late capitalism. Parties meant to celebrate music and community have essentially become influencer events, with corporate sponsors and full-on filming. Themed nights based on pop stars, indie sleaze, or the Tumblr era have proliferated at indie venues like Market Hotel and 3 Dollar Bill due to their built-in marketing. DJs themselves feel forced to become their own brand.
