The Dance Floor Gets Better

Newly opened venues in New York City are offering phoneless spaces and a sense of inclusion.

Clubs like H0l0 are bringing partiers who were previously deemed "outsiders" to the forefront.Illustrations by Derek Abella

Clubs that offer departures from the conventional grooviness of New York City's night life are becoming increasingly popular and difficult to get into. As a single, queer, Latinx person cautiously wading through his late twenties, my relationship with night life has been budding and changing. For me and many of my friends, Brooklyn and Queens have eclipsed Manhattan on the weekends, and even weekdays.

In many clubs, being present and being safe have taken priority, with venues restricting phones and employing aides to protect patrons from harassment of any sort. The club Nowadays, in Ridgewood, exemplifies this stance, offering a vast transportive dance floor with an expansive range of music programming that champions inclusivity. Also offering phoneless spaces is Basement, which brandishes the hard techno and underground subcultures of places like Berlin that New Yorkers have been itching for in recent years, but in a subterranean network of rooms in Maspeth.

A recent favorite spot of mine is H0l0, which features a d.j. in the center of the dance floor and an earthshaking sound system. Hosting cheekily named parties like Nocturnal Emissions and Mercury in Reggaeton, the venue brings d.j.s and partiers who were previously and unfairly deemed "outsiders" to the forefront, week after week.

For some, going out has become less about drinking, dancing, and dressing up and more about achieving a distilled disconnection from the outside world. Planetarium, a no-talking listening party thrown in loft locations, encourages attendees to bring pillows and sleeping bags in order to lie down and bathe in sound. My go-to night-life colleague, Miles Barretto, described the feeling of being in control while attending one of these events: "Everything was at my pace, and I found some peace in that."

Whether you choose to rage until the first pink streaks of dawn appear, or close your eyes to absorb the waves of synthesizer, any day of the week can offer a blank canvas to lose yourself, find yourself, or both. ♦

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