thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Which you know is why I knocked it all on the head. Cos yes whilst those instances of discrimination were unpleasant and at times ruined my night, at least I didn't have some liberal nonsense of dance music being liberating shoved down my throat. I could just treat it like any night out. Now I can't even tell bouncers that they are ableist cunts, I have to go through some tortuous safe spaces procedure where the bouncer easily has their pretext for discrimination (health and safety/doesn't look like the right person/is a bloke carries a walking aid which can be dangerous to everyone else etc, etc.)
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
and you know I could extemporise on how Americans are probably the most liberal people on earth on average (the lost/losing culture war notwithstanding) but then people will accuse me of victim blaming or queerbashing or whatever. So I won't.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
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.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
Saw one of the brooklyn culture mafia that spendo enumerated at the start of this thread today, playing drums at pioneer works in Brooklyn. Was a very bcm crowd, a kind of easily penetrated bit of the arty end of things. Nothing much really happened. Pioneer works and public records are the most BCM venues I reckon.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
got to say i do quite like soho now, i used to hate it. especially at this time of year. it's gross that such a thing should exist, it goes without saying, but there is something about the combination of money, youth, clothing and style which is quite a spectacular human thing to be around, if you can somehow avoid feeling alienated by it
 

Leo

Well-known member
it's very boring to always say "it used to be better back in the day", parts of it are largely a glorified luxury shopping mall but still has interesting fringes. enjoy grabbing lunch at Zooba (their koshari is a fav), deitch still has that giant space, and lots of galleries have opened a few blocks away on LES, Chinatown and in Tribeca.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
it's very boring to always say "it used to be better back in the day", parts of it are largely a glorified luxury shopping mall but still has interesting fringes. enjoy grabbing lunch at Zooba (their koshari is a fav), deitch still has that giant space, and lots of galleries have opened a few blocks away on LES, Chinatown and in Tribeca.
It's so far gone that 'back in the day' is pretty much unimaginable to me. i like earth room and dream house a lot, they're holdouts from those days. probably the thing that i get out of earth room is that it's a huge waste of real estate, i like that a lot.

did you ever go to the stone leo? the new location feels a lot less exciting than the idea of the old one. somehow i still haven't been. i've got that, shift in williamsburg, and anthology film archives on my list of stuff to go to when i have time.
 

Leo

Well-known member
Never been to the current one, and only went to the original Stone on C and 2nd a couple of times but should have gone more often. Not sure what the current one is like but the original wasn't a club in the proper sense. In a former Chinese restaurant, bare bones, just a room, no bar, usually a high proportion of The Wire readers in the audience.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
Never been to the current one, and only went to the original Stone on C and 2nd a couple of times but should have gone more often. Not sure what the current one is like but the original wasn't a club in the proper sense. In a former Chinese restaurant, bare bones, just a room, no bar, usually a high proportion of The Wire readers in the audience.
one thing i'm always impressed by is how they never, ever, ever book anyone i've ever heard of. even as a Wire reader of like a decade. i mean look at this for april.

 
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