2016.the last loose year.
BASSment in The Studio at Webster Hall, you tried to get a janky video of the DJ with your iPhone 7, spending $20 on a Double Redbull & Vodka was financially optimal.
Just upstairs, past The Marlin Room, you’d find Tommy Trash giving his best “John Snow” in the Grand Ballroom. All this by 11:30pm.
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2016 felt like the last loose year.
A generation raised in the post-9/11 era was still coasting on the pleasures of the previous decade—indie sleaze, Bloghaus, dubstep, EDM, nights built more on word-of-mouth than algorithms. Things still happened because someone texted you.
It was the final year of the Obama presidency. Kanye floated above arenas on the Saint Pablo Tour. Parks filled with adults chasing Pokémon through their phones like it was perfectly normal.
Hollywood was recycling itself into oblivion, while Netflix quietly became the new default. Those kids from Hawkins arrived, and suddenly staying in felt culturally relevant.You could still meet someone interesting on Tinder. You could still find an open bar on a Tuesday. The city still had a little slack.
Record culture was there for sure but it was different. Phones were in pockets so much they had wrist bands reading “Keep Your Phone Out of Your Back Pockets.” or “Watch Your Phone!”
Just outside of Troy Liquor Bar in Meatpacking, Pap from The Bronx pulls up in his classic Ford.
Drum & Bass all night from Webster Hall to Slake.
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Where was I?
Working in New York’s Garment District, during what now feels like the last breath of cubicle-office culture—before every workplace wanted to cosplay as a startup and call fluorescent lighting “collaboration.” Back then, work and life still had edges. You could leave the desk, disappear down a freight elevator, and be at Fashion Week by night—Bryant Park, Pier 59, some borrowed entrance, some side door, some place you weren’t exactly supposed to be.
I was still photographing nightlife then.
2016 was one of the last years club culture felt naturally alive. Not branded alive. Not content alive. Alive alive.
New York Fashion Week further expanded it’s shows and events beyond Bryant Park and Spring Studio. Places like Artbeam in Chelsea and Moynihan Station were used for runway shows.
Meeting someone at the function was still possible, eyes had time to lock in with other of eyes.
The birdcage at Slake NYC was a lowkey-midtown favorite for selfies.
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EDM and drum & bass were already pushing deeper into Brooklyn. Meatpacking’s glossy nightlife ecosystem was beginning its fade. Places that once felt permanent were already becoming memories.
No one announced the ending.
That’s how endings usually work.
Photography, archive, and words by Jay Blum. New York City, 2016.
