Bklyn Sounds 12/13/2023—12/19/2023 + A Non-stop ‘Nowadays Nonstop’ and NYC’s Club Culture, circa 2024

Are the city's music and nightlife regulations catching up to its cultural reputation? + Shows: Black Eyes / Mendoza-Hoff Revels / Russell E.L. Butler / Ahmed Abdullah + Isaiah Collier / and more

Last week, the Ridgewood dance-club Nowadays announced that, starting in January 2024, their previously once-a-month Nowadays Nonstop events — when a Saturday night party lasts for 24 hours, or longer — will become an every-weekend occurrence. To the best of my research, this marks the first time in the contemporary history of New York City that a licensed nightclub will regularly stage continuous multi-day dance parties. The frictionless, uninterrupted experience of dancing at Berlin’s Berghain, at DIY (I will never use the term “illegal”) raves, or at invite-only house parties (some of which have become dance-music institutions) will now be available to everyday New Yorkers and visitors to fair Gotham for the price of a door ticket. 

Which is a helluva long way from the century-long discriminatory fiascos of the Cabaret License (repealed in 2017), and the Giuliani/Bloomberg administrations’ puritanical crackdowns on the city’s dancing life. What’s happening at Nowadays may be at the bleeding edge of a conversation happening between the city and the social-dancing community, but it is not out of step. Look around: the climate around clubs in New York is better than it’s been in over a generation. The current Mayor (a disaster in so many other regards) goes nightclubbing. New dance-clubs keep opening. New civic policies and personal standards are being implemented (even if the disasters around Avant-Gardner keep piling up) . Favorable zoning regulations may even be getting rolled out. All continue to strengthen the quality of musical and rhythmic nightlife in the city. After decades of falling hopelessly behind other global capitals in terms of options and availability of club culture, the City That Never Sleeps™ seem to be getting its schwag back. In a way.  

Nowadays Outdoors dance-floor (photo: Guarionex Rodriguez Jr.)

Nowadays feels like a good lens through which to chart the changes. It was opened as a beer garden in 2015 by two DJs/producers, Eamon Harkin and Justin Carter, who’d been seeking a permanent home for their long-running Mister Saturday Night and Mister Sunday parties. After nearly a decade hopping around city night-spots and outdoor spaces — from Gowanus and Sunset Park, to Chinatown and East Williamsburg — they found an ex-industrial site adjacent to Evergreens Cemetery which they could call their own. They spent the next two years rehabbing it, creating an indoor-outdoor compound mindful of contemporary Bklyn interests (leisurely comforts, food stands, yadda-yadda), but also intentionally zero-ing in on the multicultural dance-club experience that once made NYC a mecca. 

You can tell the decision-making at Nowadays, while keeping economic sustainability in mind, maximized what artists (including its owners) and musickers (its regular audience) wanted from a club. Not designed for the biggest crowds, but ones who recognize a gem and keep coming back. This meant a high-quality sound system and the best musical talent playing on it, mixing great global DJs with a deep roster of local residents. This meant being demanding of patron etiquette — everyone who enters Nowadays receives a lecture about both dance-floor behavior and zero-tolerance social conduct. This meant humane amenities and attitudes, affordable food and liquor, free easy-access potable water, safe discreet drug-testing, gender-neutral bathrooms, a heavy queer presence, and on and on. The space’s character mixes classic dance-club needs with contemporary mores. Mister Sunday debuted in the Nowadays outdoor space, during Summer of 2016; indoor parties began in December of 2017; and pretty much from the get-go, Nowadays stood out from the city’s other establishments, as a place where you were free to dance, and could ignore the BS. 

Partly because Nowadays opened during the DeBlasio truce, following a civic culture war Carter and Harkin experienced first-hand, both have also been deeply conscious of neighborhood relations, whether with the actual neighbors, the community board or the local NYPD precinct (and by engaging NYPD Nightlife Meetings with Patrol Borough Queens North). Anecdotally, all have been supportive: During its non-club-operation weekdays, Nowadays regularly hosts neighborhood group meetings, film screenings and other community activities unrelated to music. (It also recently opened an independently operated Mexican restaurant, The Zumbador, on premises.) Carter acknowledges that the club’s amiable community relationships — rooted in the venue’s values, and reflective of the humanist ideals behind the city’s age-old social-dance community — may have helped gift Nowadays the opportunity to expand ‘Nonstop,’ which the club began throwing occasional in 2018, and monthly in 2021, post-lockdown. In addition to Carter and Harkin, the Nowadays booking and operations team (including Gareth Solan, Jada “Jadalareign” Haitoff and Kristin “DJ Voices” Malossi) deserve credit for keeping it a beacon for how a dancing space participates in the city. 

Nowadays indoors (photo: Guarionex Rodriguez Jr.)

Being that Nowadays regularly plays host to community get-togethers, and is cognizant of its civic responsibilities, it comes as no surprise that on Tuesday, December 12th, its main room welcomed an information session about the culture ityit pushes. Lauren Goshinski (aka DJ Boo Lean) and Tara Duvivier (a senior planner for Pratt Center for Community Development, but better known to Dada Strain readers as DJ Tara) organized a meet-and-greet with folks from New York City’s Office of Nightlife and from the Department of City Planning, to discuss the nightlife ramifications of a new Adams administration proposal called City of Yes. Essentially a massive city-wide rezoning initiative meant to tackle hot-button issues of the day — carbon neutrality, economic opportunities and housing development — City of Yes is currently being pitched to local community boards in order to influence the votes of city council-persons. A significant part of the plan’s “economic opportunity” section is how to ease the restrictions on social dancing in simple, easy-to-implement ways, to build on the 2017 repeal the Cabaret Laws by changing the rules baked into age-old zoning restrictions.   

For some of us of a certain age, the very idea that a city proposal is trying to make it easier for people to dance is an unexpected change. Among the things discussed were simple ways to enable dancing in residentially zoned neighborhoods, like lifting all pre-conditions at any establishment with a capacity of less than 200 people, or the ability to naturally allow unlicensed dancing at a mixed-use establishment (a flower-shop or a cafe that wanted to double-up as a small after-hours, was one example used at the meeting). Another was making it easier to allow for live music/dance music spaces into commercially zoned neighborhoods. The whole conversation felt like an engagement with the reality of how social dancing happens, without the pre-existing biases that it had previously brought into the conversation. That the panel discussing the matter had two active DJs fluent in civic policy, sitting next to people helping write zoning proposal who also participate in dance-culture, next to city-appointed champions of nightlife as small businesses *and* as cultural attractions, felt like a step towards possibility.

This idea of artists/creatives shaping the city policy as well as the business climate — helping shape not just the music, but musicking — is another aspect where the Mister Sunday guys and Nowadays were out-front. Now they’re part of a healthy pack. Josh Houghton (aka JDH) at Good Room, Francis Harris at Public Records, soon to be joined by Eli Escobar at Gabriela. In many ways, they’re all updating Larry Levan’s gameplan in opening the Paradise Garage, creating their own space, one they want to present their own music in, parameters built to their, and their audiences’ standards. Controlling their own dancing future. In this day and age, that feels like an incredibly unlikely thing to be able to do.        

This Week’s Shows:

Mendoza-Hoff Revels is an all-star quartet powered by the very-much electric playing of guitarist Ava Mendoza and bassist Devin Hoff, extra propulsion by drummer Ches Smith, and a more-than-occasional appearance of James Brandon Lewis’ tenor saxophone. The debut album this group just released, Echolocation, is a prog-metal-jazz monster, wisely being recognized as one of the year’s best albums. It also grooves like a MF. Also: the solo cello+electronics of Janel Leppin. (Wed 12/13, 8p @ Union Pool, Williamsburg - $18)

A mighty bill from Dada Strain Faves I. Ahmed Abdullah is the former Arkestra trumpeter who’s been the musical director at Bed-Stuy’s Sista’s Place for the last few decades (and recently authored a memoir). Ahmed Abdullah Diaspora, the free-floating ensemble he co-leads with his wife Monique Ngozi Nri, travels the lo-fi celestial roads of his one-time mentor. Chicago tenor saxophonist Isaiah Collier (playing with an always-mutating Chosen Few) is among the best young instrumentalists working in the jazz tradition, always pushing it onward and outward. Highest Recommendation! (Thurs 12/14, 7:30p @ Church of St. Luke & St. Matthew, Clinton Hill - FREE w/RSVP)

History Dog is a new band featuring four of the finest in NYC’s improv community (and Bklyn Sounds regulars): vocalist Shara Lunon, trumpeter Chris Williams, bassist Luke Stewart, and drummer Lesley Mok. Who knows what they’re up to, but guaranteed it won’t be boring. Also: a solo set from Amirtha Kidambi, and the week’s first show from MAQ, a visitor from Buenos Aires fluent in electronic imporvisation. (Thurs 12/14, 8p @ unannounced Bklyn location -$15 w/RSVP)

If there is such a thing as “experimental music stars,” William Basinski and claire rousay currently embody the tag. Basinski’s durational and tape-manipulation pieces are already part of the canon — in NYC, he's best known for “Disintegration Loops,” his quasi-symphonic sonic 9/11 memorial — and he continues to poke at the idea of lo-fi ambient electronic music. rousay’s work is more diverse and, at times, accessible — self-described as “challenging conventions in experimental and ambient music forms,” but increasingly messing with indie song-forms as well. Also: LEYA (Thurs 12/14, 8p @ Pioneer Works, Red Hook - $30adv-$40)