I'm curious - do they lecture everyone in what should be common sense, or is it just certain people they pull aside and have a word with before they let them in?
they let about eight people at a time in from the queue, and then you all stand there for probably about two minutes in a kind of antechamber bit before you go into the club. one of the staff asks who hasn't been there before, and then regardless of if you have or not, they (in a pleasant way, it's not like some random bouncer, they've got this stuff figured out) tell you all of this information. 'so remember no transphobia no touching without consent no homophobia' , 'we need to look out for each other so if this happens to you or you see it happening, the staff are wearing this glowing red wristbands, come and get us', that kind of thing.
like a lot of this stuff i couldn't really believe it when i first saw it. but i'd been out of the west for a long time and i assumed a lot of stuff had changed. even having signs up about 'safe spaces' was a really big surprise when i first saw it here. it doesn't feel weird though. this segment of the NYC population is all about this kind of thing (
@thirdform is totally right, these are culture mafia places). It's in the air. and everyday conversation. so it didn't feel jarring.
I guess on reflection, since it's Monday night and it's pissing it down I might as well write it, the clubs I've seen here feel like quite a different thing to what it's like in the UK. in NYC at least. It feels a lot more clean cut. One big difference is that I don't think I saw one person at nowadays who looked pissed. There was one girl who looked like she'd taken too much of something but it was a remarkably unboozy crowd. Which is what I see in most clubs when I go to them, which isn't that often, there's a lot of emphasis on clothes and a lot less emphasis on getting fucked up.