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By Gamal Hennessy
The future looks uncertain for the downtown cabaret known as The Box. Once seen as a symbol of a new era in nightlife, it quickly became known for celebrity bottle service and risqué burlesque shows. Now it is under attack from local residents and its own staff. Will it weather the current storm? Do we want it to?
Originally conceived as dinner theater and not a club, The Box opened in offering high priced sexually charged performances like “Twincest” from the Porcelain Twinz and other members of the Hammerstein Beauties. It quickly became a magnet for celebrities and celebrity watchers.
But less than two years after its opening, the club (or if you prefer dinner theater) is under siege. From the outside, community board 3 has made threats against its liquor license, claiming that the traffic problems and noise that the Box generates make it undesirable. From the inside, there are threats of a lawsuit from the Twinz who claim the Box has “…unsafe working conditions, prostitutes on staff, in house drug dealing, open drug use throughout the club, and coerced sex with management as a condition of continued employment…”
The owners of the Box have issued a public defense of what they describe as their creative practices, and they are working with the community board to resolve the outstanding issues before their application goes back before the board in October. While a member of the board has stated that the possible employment suit is brought to the attention of the State Liquor Authority, it is not brought before the board in relation to the license.
Is the Box a victim of disgruntled workers and anti-social residents? Or is it an abusive pit of sex and drugs? Or is it both? The problem with cases like the Box is that the truth is often at the mercy of personal perception and it might be impossible to find out. New York Nights is an advocate of the nightlife industry, but we only support venues that add to the quality of nightlife in the city. Clubs that leave our nightlife open to public attack need to close. Anti-nightlife advocates create their own reasons for wanting clubs closed. We don’t have to help them by playing into their stereotypes.
Have fun.
Gamal
Source: Allen Salkin: New York Times
Give us your opinion on what’s going on. Use the comments space below to tell people what you think.
by Gamal Hennessy
Twenty first century pop music is hip hop music. Eight out of the top ten Billboard Hot 100 for this week are hip hop tracks. If you go most mainstream clubs on the weekend you will hear hip hop. As this music becomes more universal, a new subgenre labeled ‘hipster rap’ attempts to recall hip hop’s golden age. Is the music bubbling up out of this underground a renaissance, a backlash, or minor blip on the cultural radar?
Hipster rap describes a style of music that gets its inspiration from the hip hop that was dominant in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. The themes are less about living the player lifestyle and more about paying tribute to the culture that made up hip hop’s golden age. It has been described as self referential, ironic and less polished than the production values that you find in mainstream rap. The fashion sense of these acts is reminiscent of School Daze with a heavy dose of bright colors and tight pants. While there are rappers at the top of the charts who tap into the hipster rap vibe like Kanye West and Lupe Fiasco it is mostly a genre of underground acts who all seem to use the word “kidz” in their name.
There are two major critiques against this form of music. The first is that the people who are making it don’t have first hand experience with their muse because they weren’t even alive during the golden age of hip hop. They are accused of insincere mimicry as opposed to artistic reverence. There is also a claim that since the music is not designed for mainstream audiences, it isn’t radio or club ready so it won’t last.
The critiques don’t carry much weight if you look at them in relation to other trends in popular music. Several major genres of music have their nostalgia phases. In the 80’s, rock looked back to the 60’s which revived the careers of the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and other acts. The kids who gravitated to this music weren’t alive in the 60’s, but they ate it up. In the 90’s R&B looked back to the 70’s, which is how we got the neo-soul movement. Maybe hip hop has matured enough for this generation to look back at the golden age whether they were there or not.
And if hipster rap isn’t commercially viable, how does that explain an act like Kanye? It could be that he mixes mainstream and hipster sensibilities in a way that is palatable to the clubs. Perhaps if more hipster acts want mainstream success, they need to follow his lead. But I think that would be missing the point. To the extent that hipster rap is a movement it doesn’t want to conform to mainstream concepts. It might be looking for the mainstream to conform instead.
Will hipster rap become the next big movement in hip hop? I doubt it. It will probably remain marginal with a small cult following in the same way Native Tongues and similar bohemian rappers have always had a small loyal following. But I didn’t think gangster rap would take off the either, so I’ve been wrong before. Maybe hip hop has room in it for the drug dealer aspirations of gangster rap, the alpha male posturing of mainstream rap, the fading appreciation of old school rap and the adopted nostalgia of hipster rap.
Have fun.
Gamal
Source: Jon Caramanica: The New York Times
By Gamal Hennessy
There are three categories of people when it comes to drinking. There are those who drink, those who drink too much, and those who don’t drink at all. It has recently come to light that influential people in traditionally liquor soaked industries are avoiding liquor as part of a long term career strategy. But is any kind of extremist stance is a good idea?
There is no official definition of a wagonista, so I’m going to make one up. A wagonista is a person who frequents parties, clubs, concerts and other social events, but does not drink at those events. A wagonista chooses not to drink primarily because they want to avoid the negative social and professional effects of a hangover.
If you’ve ever worked in fashion, media, advertising or entertainment then you know that going out for drinks after work is part of the work. You may have also experienced a distinct lack of productivity in the hours and days following successful “meetings” over drinks. You might even be the person who has embarrassed themselves in front of clients, subordinates and superiors during a drunken binge. If you are one of these people, then it makes sense to go to the bar, but skip the Cuervo shots. Notable New York players including Anna Wintour, Diane von Furstenberg, Barry Diller and Donald Trump have all come to the conclusion that going to the party is fine, but drinking at the party is bad for business.
People choose to avoid liquor for a variety of reasons besides their careers. Health and cost are important factors too. Recent studies show that U.S. alcohol consumption is down, for reasons tied to physical and mental health. Our current economic woes are reigning in out of control bottle service, so not drinking can be cheaper when you go out, if you happen to be paying for your drinks at all. Liquor is poison and there are many reasons not to drink too much, but the key here is too much.
It’s probably a good idea not to drink yourself into a stupor every time you go networking, but is the opposite extreme any better? If you don’t drink, maybe you won’t get invited to the late night soiree where you can rub shoulders with the big dogs. If you don’t drink, people might mistrust you, freeze you out, or otherwise undercut your image.
The problem here isn’t drinking, its binge drinking. Wagonistas want to avoid being sloppy in front of colleagues and be productive at work the next day. But there is no rule that says you have to get drunk when you go out drinking. You don’t have to get a hangover after every night out. If you chose to drink heavily every night or you chose to reject social drinking entirely, you are taking an extreme position. New Yorkers by and large take a very dim view of extremists, religious or otherwise. Choosing responsible indulgence instead gives you the chance to socialize, sip the champagne and be good for work the next day. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. You can have both.
Have fun.
Gamal
Source: Annie Karni: New York Post
By Gamal Hennessy
The state of the financial markets has a ripple effect on New York nightlife. The most immediate impact will probably be on the pervasive practice of bottle service. Certain clubs are already scaling back their bottle service promotions. While it might not disappear, bottle service won’t be able to survive as a widespread practice. How will the nightlife landscape change if the bottle goes the way of Lehman Brothers?
When you order bottle service, you’re basically paying for temporary prestige in a club. You and a few of your friends get to skip the line and sit at a table instead of standing. Your one (or more) bottles of liquor and mixers are served by an attractive waitress so you don’t have to fight for drinks at the bar. Your area is often defined by a velvet rope so you don’t have to mingle with commoners.
The cost of this prestige has no realistic relationship to the actual cost of the liquor. A $70-$80 bottle of Gray Goose can easily go for $500. When you buy bottle service, you’re sending the social message “I am a VIP. I can afford to be extravagant.” Club owners have profited from people’s need for prestige. One owner said that bottle service accounted for up to 70% of his bottom line revenue.
Bottle service has been a staple in nightlife for more than 10 years. It survived the bursting of the internet bubble and the war on terror. When the housing market began to soften, bottle service was still a widespread practice fueled by hedge fund managers, i-bankers, and corporate sponsored credit cards. The fall of several key financial houses in the past two months will probably dry up money available to FIRE workers (finance, insurance and real estate), who make up 20% of the nightlife patrons, so bottle service might not be able to withstand the current storm. It will be difficult for bottle service to survive if there the only people who can afford it are movie stars, drug kingpins and oil barons.
The backlash has already started taking shape. Prominent clubs like Prime are announcing a retreat from bottle service and a renewed commitment to ‘catering to the customer’. Prominent nightlife insiders are predicting that the overall club market will contract as poorly run clubs die off and well run spots adapt to the new environment. While the economics of bottle service compensate for the realities of operating costs, clubbers like me (who can’t justify the cost of bottle service) see a positive change for the better. The average club customer who couldn’t afford a bottle may no longer be treated like a second hand citizen. Clubs might become more about pleasure and less about posturing and prestige. History has shown that people continue to drink during bad economic times, so even the i-bankers will still belly up to the bar. They just won’t be able to separate themselves from the commoners.
Have fun.
Gamal
By Gamal Hennessy
The New York nightlife landscape has evolved. The former dominance of mega clubs has splintered into specific niche markets where micro communities can party in relative isolation. Many see this as a natural progression in entertainment, similar to what we see happening in music, TV and movies. But some within the industry feel that these niche markets can’t survive on their own and if New York nightlife is going to thrive again, we need more mega clubs.
It’s easy to make an analogy between the fragmentation of modern entertainment and nightlife. It used to be that we only had a handful of television stations to watch. Now we have 500 channels of cable television and sites like YouTube and Hulu. We once listened to radio or watched MTV to get our music. Now we can bypass radio completely with digital music, internet radio, and ipods. We used to have mega clubs like Palladium, Limelight and Crobar. Isn’t it natural for lounges and smaller clubs to develop in an attempt to cater to smaller markets?
Steven Lewis, an established authority on nightlife for the past several decades, disputed this line of thinking in one of his latest articles. According to Mr. Lewis, a mega club that caters to different crowds on different nights has the ability to fill the room every single night and by extension make more money. A smaller venue that only caters to a specific demographic group has a harder time during off nights. If it can only make money two or three nights out of the week, it might not be able to survive.
Mr. Lewis is clearly working from an informed perspective, but even if we need more mega clubs to enhance the quality of nightlife there are substantial hurdles in getting them. Real estate costs and the current financial turmoil might make it hard for developers to open profitable mega clubs in the short term. Anti nightlife community boards might also attempt to block larger clubs from opening by rejecting liquor license applications. Can clubs service diverse crowds on different nights without being large? Some spots like Sin Sin or Bar 13 try to do that now. Can large clubs emerge in New York’s financial and climate? Mansion and Marquee are still fixtures in the industry, in spite of what’s going on in the market. Are the niche venues the best alternative under the circumstances? Maybe the new Limelight will be the next evolutionary step in nightlife.
Have fun.
Gamal
Source: Good Night Mr. Lewis
by Gamal Hennessy
New York is already a haven for models and its exclusive parties. Fashion week gives both of them center stage. Some promoters and clubs make a point of inviting women to come and drink for free, knowing that these ladies will draw the type of man who will spend $400 on a bottle of Gray Goose. When you take women struggling with their weight trying to stay in this world and combine it with alcohol abuse, you get two disorders for the price of one.
Drunkorexia is not a medical term. The word is a combination of drunk and anorexia. It is supposed to describe a person who has a more traditional eating disorder like bulimia or anorexia and uses alcohol to either reduce their body image stress and/or as their major source of calories. Like most eating disorders, it hits women more than men. Unlike other eating disorders there isn’t an established treatment program available because the condition is seen as a fairly new phenomenon. It does have its poster children though. You might know them by their first names…Lindsay…Paris…Britney…
Whether drunkorexia is a by product of cultural pressure and the publicity that Lindsay and Paris get every time they wind up with their head in a toilet is a matter for social scientists. We know that liquor is poison. It is soothing and refreshing and delicious poison, but like fire, it is dangerous if not handled correctly. Drinking without eating isn’t the right way to play the game. Responsible indulgence is the key. The classic phrase is ‘eat, drink and be merry’. If you skip a step, you run the risk of sitting next to Lindsay in rehab…and that is not a good thing.
Source: Sarah Kershaw: The New York Times
By Gamal Hennessy
Dating in New York is a contact sport. The ones who succeed have confidence, determination, charm, wits and the ability to improvise. We need to find a way to pay for the costs of dating. We need a way to live in the city on one income. Forbes has released its annual list of best cities for singles and New York has barely cracked the top ten. Has the high cost of living made New York an inhospitable dating environment?
The Forbes Best List for Singles compares U.S. cities across seven different categories including culture, nightlife, number of singles and cost of living. While New York City is ranked #1 for nightlife, beating out L.A., Las Vegas and Miami for the top spot, it ranked dead last when cost of living alone was taken into account. So the person dating in New York is cut by a double edge sword. We can do anything we want at night, but we have to find a way to pay for our days and our nights.
The basic problem with lists of this type is that they measure quantity as opposed to quality. It’s fine to count the number of single people or the number of bars in certain cities and rank them based on density, but it doesn’t really take quality or variety into account. Does each city have the same range of nationalities, education levels and backgrounds? Is a bar in Charlotte and a bar in Vegas the same just because they both serve beer? Is the experience the same when you can walk to a bar in one city instead of driving for 20 minutes in another? If you think about single life by only tracking the numbers, you might be missing something.
Even taking that potential flaw into account, these findings are in line with personal experience. New Yorkers have always had to find coping strategies to balance high prices with opportunity and we have specific tactics when it comes to nightlife. But in the current market, even the most resourceful among us might be tested. In addition to job conditions in some sectors and higher prices across the board, now we have to compete with an influx of foreign clubbers who have a lot more disposable cash. For some, the burden of New York prices and the emotional impact it can have on dating lead them to the conclusion that dating is easier and more natural in other cities.
But when New York throws us a curve (which is almost every day) New Yorkers don’t leave the city. We turn the challenge into an advantage. We’ve always used roommates, and commuting to our nightlife from outside the city to offset the cost of New York rent. Almost all of us have some kind of hustle to get more money or at least get more of the things we want. And instead of losing the ability to date, we can find new dating ideas that are less dependent on our income. Dating in New York is a contact sport that requires wits and improvisation, but just living in New York proves that you have those qualities.
Have fun.
Gamal
By Gamal Hennessy
Most of the iconic New York clubs are gone. Studio 54 is a theater now. Palladium was torn down and replaced with an NYU dorm. CBGB became a John Varvatos boutique. There were recent rumors that Limelight would be turned into a shopping mall. Just before the specter of mediocrity fell upon us again, a new deal was announced to turn Limelight into a corporate event space. Will other clubs turn to corporate sponsorship to deal with rising costs and outside pressure? If they do, what happens to our nightlife?
Limelight was a staple in New York club scene. Housed in a historic church, it drew the biggest names in house and techno music. It was the playground for the Club Kids of the 80’s and 90’s and became one of the most prominent clubs in the country. It was also infamous as a criminal haven. The venue was closed several times on drug related charges and was connected to Michael Alig’s murder of Angel Melendez. The venue reopened as Avalon in 2003 and closed again a few years later. In January of this year, there were reports of the whole space being torn down and turned in to a shopping mall. New York was set to lose another influential club in an era of shrinking nightlife.
A group of investors has offered another option. Instead of leeching the heart out of Chelsea with a huge JC Penney, the new plans for Limelight include a space for film, TV, corporate and special events. With 30,000 square feet, it’s easy to see the club used during the Tribeca Film Festival, or parties for the Grammy’s and other events. It could have concerts, fashion shows and launch parties of every type. Would it go back to being a focal point for dance music? Probably not. Would it be little more than a glorified crack house? Probably not. Corporate sponsorship may not be the ideal legacy for Limelight, but it’s better than being a Spencer’s Gifts…
You might not like the idea of a corporation taking over a club space, but this isn’t a new phenomenon. Corporations already wield huge influence over sporting events, stadiums and live concert venues. Most of the clubs and lounges in the city are taken over by corporate parties during the holidays. You even see a corporate presence during non holiday periods. I was at 230 Fifth over the summer and there were sections for Citibank and Goldman Sachs and several other banks, complete with easel signs. I thought I took a wrong turn and went to the Javits Center by mistake. Big companies already have their hands in nightlife. The question now is how it will affect us.
Corporations have money and manpower to control, alter and maintain a space. While most of them don’t want to be in the club business, they might see the traditional club spaces as good investments for marketing, promotion and as pure real estate plays. If New York continues to turn its back on nightlife, more owners might see the logic in making money in corporate entertainment as opposed to nightlife. If that happens, how will that affect the economic and cultural impact on the city as a whole? Where will our underground music, dance, fashion and art come from? Where will the 65 million club entries go if they don’t work for a corporation? Will we be shut out of the party?
Have fun.
Gamal
Source: Good Night Mr. Lewis
By Gamal Hennessy
Conventional economic wisdom suggests that people will cut back on non essential purchases when money gets tight. Conventional bar wisdom suggests that people drink just as much, if not more, when times are hard. Does mean that wine and beer are as essential to modern living as a place to live and gasoline or are we just delusional? What do our choices about nightlife and money say about what we consider important?
We know that the housing slump, gas prices and stagflation have tag teamed on the economy. We’ve talked about how these conditions have impacted the dating scene. You know that when you have a limited amount of money, you sometimes have to make hard choices on what to spend money on. You have to choose between paying rent and going on vacation. Under normal conditions, the more essential the item or service to your life, the more likely you’ll keep paying for it instead of something else. You pay rent instead of going on vacation because you don’t want to come back from the beach and be homeless.
Recreational drinking doesn’t seem like an essential purchase at first glance. But Nielsen estimates state that liquor sales are increasing in the midst of the economic downturn. This might be because people turn to liquor in times of stress. It could be that although drinking is an indulgence, we’re not willing to give it up as easily to other extravagances. It might be because it’s not an all or nothing proposition. When people are thinking about the price of gas, their options are buying gas, not buying gas or buying less gas. But people have a wide range of choices to alter what they drink based on their income. Now you might not be drinking Johnnie Walker Blue every night, but you can still buy a Budweiser and not be homeless.
Nightlife is a way to connect, relieve stress and counter balance other areas of life. Some of us might feel we need that release more than we need gym memberships, vacations or Fresh Direct. Drinking and nightlife are part of the reason we are in New York in the first place. Quite a few people I know have cut back on the amount of drinking they do at bars, but these same people were going out several nights a week and their monthly bar tab could have paid for an apartment in the Village. Like other New Yorkers struggling with the economy, their behavior has changed but the integral role that nightlife plays in it has not. In some respects, its more important than ever before.
Source: Associated Press/ MSNBC
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