Nowadays NYC -- magic in the jungle
A club unlike any other. It's a night club. It's a day club. It's indoors. It's outdoors.
//|// Intro
For at least three years now, friends have been insisting that I get myself to Nowadays, the indie Brooklyn hangout that's hard to define. It's a club, a dancefloor, an Izakaya, a wedding venue, a place for ping pong tournaments, a chill spot for day-drinking in hammocks surrounded by lush greenery, for taking a nap while listening to ambient music, for dancing until you're in serious danger of forgetting the outside world.
It's my new favorite dancefloor in all of America.
We (my girlfriend and I) visited Nowadays for one of their increasingly popular weekly "Nonstop" parties, that ran from 10:00 PM Saturday until 4:00 AM Monday, like so:
22:00–01:00: Josh Steers
01:00–03:30: Alírio
03:30–06:00: TAYHANA
06:00–09:00: Maya Margarita
09:00–12:00: DJ SWISHA b2b Kush Jones
12:00–15:00: dBridge
15:00 - 21:00: Justin & Eamon Mister Sundays
21:00 - 04:00: JYOTY
Due to the fact that this is the same weekend we spent ~7.5 hours in Basement, ~4.5 hours at Brooklyn Steel (for Book Club Radio's Tinzo + Jojo tour finale) and ~6 hours at Signal, we only had time between our flight in on Friday evening and our return flight on Sunday night to experience about ~6 hours of Nowadays' magic, but that was enough of a taste to know that it's the real deal, and that I can unequivocally recommend it to fellow chasers of divine dancefloors.
//|// Entry
We danced until Signal NYC (stay tuned for a writeup on this experience) closed its doors at 4 AM Sunday morning. We pulled up in a rideshare, and stepped out of the minivan into a sidewalk in chaos. The Nowadays entry was a roiling mass of bodies where three streams of traffic converged. Drunks stumbled out of the front door after last call (4 AM in NYC), stared into their phones with an intensity designed to make their rideshares arrive faster. Nowadays Members and Patrons (more on them later) joined the short queue to one side of the building, while folks with no tickets huddled in a separate queue. We found our way to a third queue, falling in behind perhaps 40 people, many of them dressed inadequately for the biting chill of spring winds at 4:30 AM.
Bouncers were yelling at people to get out of the streets, cars honked at the drunks stumbling across the road to catch rides, and some folks just stood there smoking, taking it all in.
We were not dressed for this. I wore short sleeves and my girlfriend wore a tank-top. Though the temps were in the low 50s, windchill and evaporating sweat made me sidle up close to the brick house of a man whose wide back seemed to offer shelter from the wind.
He must have noticed us getting real close, and turned to say hi. We introduced ourselves and learned he was from Florida, formerly New Jersey, here for a weekend of fun with friends. Soon, those friends arrived, spilling out of cars and joining him in line -- perhaps six of them -- and then the party started. Small spoons were dipped again and again into small baggies that were passed around amongst his group, all of whom developed the sniffles.
Once Florida Man's friends were feeling properly revived and engaging, he turned his back on us to chainsmoke and chat with his friends. We welcomed his back as a windbreak again and eavesdropped on his conversation, little snippets of which the wind carried to our ears. Nothing salacious or interesting, just friends catching up after some time apart, plus discussion of drug prices, plus whining about the line, which I can't hold against them, because the wait was getting to all of us.
Behind us, an interesting couple on one of their first few dates talked about food, outfits, and their visible tattoos and scars. As they flirted with each other, he frequently giggled in a loud falsetto full of vocal fry, like someone imitating a teenaged girl, and it took willpower for me not to turn my head and verify that he hadn't morphed into a teenage girl every time that giggle clattered around us. His date was close to seven feet tall. Her leather-corseted chest sat well above his impressive, tied-back dreads.
I hope that sketch doesn't sound mean. It's instead meant to convey some of the diversity I saw in line at Nowadays -- this was by far the most diverse crowd we encountered the entire weekend of dancing at four different venues. The folks in line were majority non-white, a wider range of ages, and a wider range of body sizes and shapes, with far more expressive clothing than we'd encountered at Basement, Signal, or the Tinzo + Jojo event.
To put the contrast even more starkly -- there were more people of color in line at Nowadays on this one morning than Berghain sees in an entire year. This is a strength of this venue. The demographics and character of the folx in line suggested good things about the quality of the party inside.
About an hour after we joined the line, we reached the front of it. Florida Man and his crew had gone in as one group before us, and just as we were about to be let in, a bouncer appeared with Florida Man and one of his buddies.
"Laughing through the speech," he said to the outside bouncers, "These two are not going to be coming back in."
Florida Man's mouth hung open. He was in shock. The friend that was being ejected with him, a tall, good-looking 30-something man with a Vegas clubbing-style collared shirt and a Timothy Chalamet-ish bouffant -- we'll call him Tim -- immediately began to try to talk his way back into the club.
"They didn't take the speech seriously. Laughing and cutting up," the inside bouncer explained to the outside bouncers.
Scissors appeared, and a bouncer cut the bracelets off Florida Man and Tim. Tim kept talking, using pleading and apologetic tones to try to convince the bouncer that they weren't joking about "the talk." They would never joke about such a thing, he said. The bouncer looked at Tim and said, "When one of us makes a decision, we all stand by that decision. I'm not going to let you back in."
It was our turn to enter.
"Go in past the first door, and stop at the second door," we were told, and so we did, finding ourselves in a closet of a room where a nonbinary person with long, straight hair and big eyes waited until a few more people were packed in. You could hear a pin drop -- none of us wanted to be accused of not listening to the talk. Then they began the speech, reading from a clipboard to ensure they hit every important point:
"Hi, Welcome! Welcome everybody. Welcome back to some of you. Has everyone been here before?"
Mostly yesses, some nos.
"Well not everybody. Alright, so I'm just going to go over the rules quickly then I'll let you all go forward. We don't tolerate any harassing behavior here. Racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, unwanted physical touch, aggressive staring, anything creepy. If you experience something like that while you're in our space, look for our safer space operatives who wear these red lights or wrist bands. They'll help you out.
Also if you're on the dancefloor, we ask that you don't stand around and talk or use your cell phone. If you pull out your cell phone for any reason: check the time, Shazam, text, we're going to ask you to put it away and if we have to do that more than once, we're going to have you leave.
When you do leave, you don't leave through here. It's not an exit. Straight through at the bar to the outside gate. We have fentanyl and xylazine test strips, condoms, and masks here for free. Earplugs on the left and right side of the bar.
All that sound good?"
I don't know if this was the "full version" of the talk or the abbreviated version of the talk -- there's a version that's done when the line is backed up, and I suspect our version was the short version, as it was painless and quick -- about 40 seconds. Sometimes, the speech is accompanied by an encouragement such as, "I know most of you are regulars but today there are new people so show them how we party."
I personally loved the speech and wish more dancefloors onboarded people in this way. It set the tone, felt inclusive, and let everyone know how to protect their health and safety.
Once inside, I took a spin through the facilities -- dipping into the dancefloor for a second -- a 162 BPM hard-style techno remix of Jefferson Airplane's "(Don't You Want) Somebody to Love" was the first song I heard on entry, accompanied by excited cheers when the chorus dropped.
I took a quick lap through the outside areas while my girlfriend thawed herself out in the heat of the dancefloor. I saw the rest of Florida Man's crew huddled in a corner, discussing what to do about their split group. Initial survey done, we left for our hotel to take a nap. It was past 6am and we'd been up all night.
The dancefloor looked sexy as hell -- fogged in, ringed by hanging plants, filled with sweaty dancers, and gorgeous in the morning light. We couldn't wait to be back.
//|// dBridge
Caption: dBridge aka Darren White, in his studio. Photo credit: Native Instruments blog post
After a five-hour nap and mandatory NYC deli egg-and-cheese sandwiches, we checked out of the hotel and took our luggage to Nowadays. Re-entry was painless with our wrist bands, and coat check had no problem handling our luggage. The staff at Nowadays were, in all of our interactions, extra polite and friendly. The vibe we got from them is that they love their jobs.
We immediately joined dBridge in the indoors space, which I'm going to call the greenhouse, because that's what it feels like with its hanging plants ringing the dancefloor and its clerestory windows high up along two sides of the dancefloor.
It being daytime, the clerestory windows let in slanting light that sent solid-looking shafts of light through the heavy theatrical fog, giving the room a dreamlike quality.
dBridge's 2009 song "Wonder Where" was my introduction to the Drum & Bass genre, but he'd been going for nearly 20 years at that point, evolving in the early 90s from the jungle scene. In the early 2000s I was into Ratatat, Cansei de Ser Sexy, Aphex Twin, Crystal Castles and the like. I remember when I first heard "Wonder Where.” I put it on repeat for a week and dBridge immediately became one of my new favorites.
Finally stepping into a room with him at the decks was, for me, a dream come true.
And what a room! Immediately, I loved the look of the place -- the jungle-like plants, the sexy haze, the understated lighting, the beat-up disco ball. The sound system, initially built by Craig Bernabeu (aka Shorty) -- the same man who built the legendary Stereo Montreal soundsystem -- has over the years since Shorty's involvement, evolved somewhat, but still bears his marks. I saw a cabinet marked SBS behind the DJ decks, and I heard with my ears and body a system that sounded perfect for the room. The plants and bodies in the room surely helped reduce echo and reflections, as did the acoustically treated ceiling and the floating wood floor, plus other tricks I couldn't see or perceive.
After I'd picked my jaw back up and started moving, I noticed how nicely spaced everyone in the room was. I saw abundant evidence of great dancefloor etiquette: not a soul on their phone, everyone dancing expressively, and the density of dancers at the front of the room, near the decks, was no greater than the density of dancers at the back of the room. There were perhaps 40 people in the room, and it felt perfect, though I'd heard that it can get uncomfortably crowded on Friday and Saturday nights, when the normies pack the house.
Because the greenhouse wasn't packed, people gave each other space to dance, and I easily threaded my way between all of those gorgeously moving bodies as I surveyed the room, getting a feel for how it sounded in the middle, on the sides, in front of each stack, and on the benches in the back of the room. I found myself marveling at the skill with which everyone moved -- it seemed that every one of dBridge's dancers were dancefloor veterans. It reminded me of Berghain's Panorama Bar on Monday morning near the end of Klubnacht -- everyone blissfully expressing their connection to the music.
However, despite the excellent dancefloor etiquette, there was a strong forward orientation to the room. Most everyone faced the DJ during the two-hour period we danced there, and interaction between dancers was largely absent. This might be normal for the tail-end of Nowadays Nonstop, given that the party had started at 10 PM -- 16 hours earlier -- the prior night. Folks might've been spent and just looking to be in their own bubble at this point in the day.
Edit: Actually, Zinka noted in the first comment on this post that, “Most of the amazing morning crowd was away at a warehouse rave [ed: Earth Dog] thrown by some staff and other scene people that day, which is why the dance floor was a bit flat for dBridge. Sunday mornings are usually much more of a vibe.”
dBridge deejayed with a fervor that caused sweat to bead and drip off of his bald head. He whipped out a towel frequently and mopped his head before the sweat could land on the mixer or CDJs. He looked hot, so I gave him a few tentative blasts of air from the fan. He immediately smiled and stood taller, so I did it some more. When his hands were free for a moment, he pressed his palms together in thanks, so for the rest of the set I made sure to stop by the front occasionally and give him some air.
Next to him, on an empty concrete plinth where a turntable sometimes sits, potting soil lay scattered. It looked like one of the plants on top of the monitors might have been shaken from its perch by bass rumbles and had fallen onto the plinth, but there was no plant in sight. I trust that the fallen plant was repotted swiftly and returned to the dancefloor.
Fun fact I learned in writing this piece: "Low-frequency sounds, such as those produced by bass-heavy music, mimic thunderstorms, which have been found to promote root growth and overall plant health," according to Garden Culture Magazine. I've now made up the head canon that the Nowadays plants develop super strong roots that burst out of their pots when a heater of a set is played on this soundsystem that thunders so beautifully.
I'm here to factually report, then, that dBridge's set rolled through the room like a storm, causing at least one plant's root system to break through its terracotta walls in imitation of dancers' hearts pounding against their ribcages. Maybe it didn't happen exactly like that, but the dirt on the decks was real.
Question: we're all ultimately made of dirt, and to dirt we return. If the smell of soil after rain is called petrichor, what's the smell of dancers after thundering rhythms makes it rain from our insides?
It's not just sweat -- it's the byproduct of bodies animated by music played out by a DJ and made by an artist. This chain -- digital, physical, analog -- from an artist full of emotion to dancers full of emotion is a miracle, isn't it? Someone feels a certain way, then, many steps later, across vast literal and figurative distances, salt water beads on our skin or leaks from our eyes. Music is a technology for transmitting emotion across space and time. Music is a goddamned miracle.
//|// Wot dDridge played out
In a 2019 interview, dBridge talked about his desire not to be buttonholed into DnB: "I could quite easily roll out DnB bookings for however long and then become a nostalgia DJ or something. But that’s not something that inspires or excites me." Turns out, as he disclosed in an October 2023 interview, he was trying to get out of a stifling relationship with an agency that wouldn't let him play anything else that spoke to him: "I'm known—and will always be known for—drum & bass, but I've always felt like I'm more than that and haven't been able to express that for many reasons, either because I chose to or because of the agency I was with."
As far as I can tell from the track IDs I gathered (see below), he definitely didn't stick to just the tried-and-true DnB formula, but branched out, playing a wide variety of genres that, for me as a dancer, were fun and expressive tunes to dance to. Under dBridge's spell, I moved in ways I've never moved, and found myself just falling into whatever he played next -- I felt open, receptive, and entranced. It was a magical dancefloor, because everything about it was just right.
In the RA interview, dBridge said, "Literally, people come up to me and ask, 'What are you going to play?' and I say, 'I don't know until I get on, mate.' I feel lucky that I'm in that position now where people are still coming out to see me not having any idea what I'm going to play, but they're still willing to give me that hour of their time."
With great DJs, you can sit down at the counter and order the Omakase. In the world of sushi, the word "omakase" (お任せ) means "I'll leave it up to you." I don't need a great DJ to stick to a single genre or a single cluster of genres -- I want them to feel free to dig through their magical USB sticks and take me to places I never knew existed.
For example, dBridge played Oh No (Extended Mix) by Itoa from his label, Exit Records, home to some of the most creative dance music being produced today. The Spotify database describes it as "uk funky, j-rap, uk bass, jungle, japanese juke, footwork, drumstep, breaks, breakbeat," but I find the Bandcamp description tags more accurate: "160 drum & bass electronic footwork juke juke footwork jungle footwork juke jungle London."
Says the Bandcamp copy, "‘Oh No’ takes jacking acid to new levels, unleashing an infectious 303 workout not just for the feet, but the shoulders too. Go ahead and whip your hair to this one."
Regarding his influences, dBridge told RA, "I''m a Gemini and I do have that duality, that yin and yang side to me. It allows me to be open to all of that music: reggae, pop, punk, shoegaze, hip-hop, the lot, and I've got something from all of it."
We unfortunately missed the first hour of dBridge's set, but here are the songs I could identify using autoshazam (didn't have to touch my phone to do this work):
Song Dur. Artist Year
Nnnn 4:19 TRAKA & COIDO 2025
Magma 5:29 Noodles142 2024
G Jabbar Is Dead 3:39 Muadeep 2021
Ruminate 4:43 Fixate 2022
Brutal Meditation 2:14 Panoram 2024
Reflections 4:49 Fixate 2024
Scatterbrain 3:39 Fixate 2024
Lil Booties Matter 2:22 DJ Kill 2018
Work 4:37 DJ Rashad 2007
Oh No (Ext. Mix) 5:04 Itoa 2022
Eddies 5:04 carin kelly 2024
ESSENCE I 4:42 SNKLS 2024
Syzygy 5:30 Greetje 2024
Final Reason 3:48 COIDO 2025
And, for fun, here's a histogram of the genre tags for above tracks. It demonstrates not just the range of sounds going on in that room, but also their complementarity -- these are flavors that went well together, as confirmed by my sweat-soaked shirt without a dry patch on it.
//|// Things you might, might not, and definitely won't see at Nowadays
Unlike Basement, Nowadays has no dark rooms where people can cruise each other. I saw nobody dancing fully nude. I'm not even sure the club would allow it if someone were to try it. New York's surrounded by former Puritan colonies and I think that shows up somewhat in the relative lack of sexual freedom on display in New York City vs., say, Berlin. I'm not a fan of America's Puritanical element, and as a onetime stripper for a bachelorette party, and occasional nudist, I think we as a country need to loosen up, a lot.
On the other hand, in many ways, Nowadays feels like a safer space than its neighbor Basement or the Wonder of the Clubbing World, Berghain. Floor monitors watch the space, and the team truly gives their "safer space" policies more than lip service. This is rare in a world of party spaces that do just enough to stay out of trouble,
Folks who go frequently have promised me it gets decently (or indecently) debauched in the wee hours of the morning. I'll have to go back, I guess, to verify the veracity of those claims.
Things I saw, or might've seen:
Aristotle's Poetics poking out of a shoulder bag sitting on a ledge next to the dancefloor. This tableau felt too-perfectly arranged, like the person who had been doing the reading wanted people to know they'd been doing the reading, like a proud college frosh. Then again, New York is the one city I've lived in where I could read serious books every day during my subway commute to and from work and not feel like a nerd.
A person in a hammock sketching on their sketchbook. Apparently, drawing is a somewhat popular activity at Nowadays, and artists can even be found drawing at the back of the indoor dancefloor once the rising sun gives them enough light.
A woman delivering a lecture on Foucault's History of Sexuality. I didn't see this, because it happened prior to my visit, and definitely not on a Sunday, when there's neither room nor sonic space for heady lectures, but I'm including it as an example of how Nowadays has figured out a variety of uses for its space so that they can sustain the business.
Filthy casuals leaving after last call. New York's last call, at 4 AM, causes uncomfortable drought in the throats those who rely on the drug to keep themselves in a party mood. I tend to think of these folks as dancefloor casuals, because alcohol simply doesn't give one the stamina necessary to go all night, and also requires too many trips to the bar and then to the bathroom to really experience the art a DJ spins out. To me, it's a crime against art to spend 10 minutes every half hour refilling a drink and waiting in line for a toilet.
Alcoholics' alarms going off at 9:59 AM. The bar taps are turned back on at 10:00 AM, and those who bridged the 4 AM to 10 AM gap with backup substances often beeline for the bar at this time of morning. A Nowadays regular wrote, "[The DJ] started slow cuz everyone stormed the bar at 10 for booze. Bar line clears out and people migrate to the floor, sound tech turns up the system and the music picks up. 9am-1015 is literally just the DJ waiting for people to start drinking again."
Electrostatic clerestory windows. One of Nowadays neatest tricks -- in a venue packed with delightful flourishes -- is the electrostatic glass in the clerestory windows surrounding the indoor dancefloor. Typically, the windowframes of the small exterior factory windows are legible as a grid through these windows. Occasionally, the person at the lighting controls flips a switch (on phrase, naturally) that makes these windows more opaque, and the grid disappears. It's trippy as hell when it happens, because you believe you're hallucinating, or did hallucinate the grid. Classy theatricals.
Young folks bringing their parents to Nowadays. I saw more than one 20-something giving their Birthday Mimosa-sousled parents the grand tour of Nowadays. The parents, clearly visiting New York from out of state, looked suitably impressed, their expressions giving "we're not in Kansas anymore."
Grown men doing drugs near infants. After Nonstop ends and the indoor dancefloor is closed up, the party moves outdoors to Mister Sundays (3 PM to 9 PM). The all-ages nature of the outdoors party was wonderful on that warm day on the first of June, and multiple generations enjoyed the 16,000-foot outdoor space, lounging in hammocks, lining up for food trucks, dancing, or, as one person witnessed and shared in an online forum, "ripping a fat line in front of a toddler lmao."
A disco ball turning slowly. I timed it, for science. The disco ball that hangs over Nowadays' indoor dancefloor turns one revolution every 90 seconds. Maybe every 91 seconds. That’s a proper speed, unlike the outdoors disco ball.
People looking at their watches when a really great song comes on. Due to the policy that no phones are allowed at any time, for any reason on the dancefloor, some regulars have found a clever workaround, activating Shazam on their watches whenever a track comes on that they really need an ID for.
A man in salmon-colored shorts coat-checking a cooler full of picnic supplies. We checked our airport luggage on Sunday so that we could maximize our time spent in Nowadays. I thought this was the pinnacle pro move, until I observed a local coat-checking his cooler full of supplies for picnic later that evening in "The Rockaways" (Rockaway Beach, a half-hour drive south).
A woman with a green LV clutch standing on the outdoor dancefloor looking supremely bored and uncomfortable while her frumpy boyfriend sporting a spreadsheet tan (that is, none), in his oxford, slightly swayed behind her. Neither of them looked or acted comfortable or like they were enjoying themselves, and I really wondered what had brought them there that afternoon. This couple stood out because most of the rest of the Mister Sundays crowd on the dancefloor were actively enjoying themselves.
A couple snuggling on one of the sturdy backyard hammocks, legs intertwined, faces looking up at a perfect blue sky through light-green foliage of spring, swinging gently to the early chill tracks played by residents (and co-owners of Nowadays), Eamon Harkin and Justin Carter.
A man lighting and carrying incense through the dancefloor. I'm not sure if the overpowering BO of one dancer prompted the lighting of the joss stick, but soon after I noticed the BO, a man appeared from nowhere and banished the smell with a stick that smelled of sandalwood. Later, I spotted the wooden box that held the incense, and realized that this wasn't just some random punter doing a kind deed, but a staff member executing on one of the many thoughtful little touches that make up Nowadays' operations.
An impish little girl outrunning her father. She was maybe four or five, and she weaved through the moving legs on the busy dancefloor with the agility of a fox darting through canebrake. Her dear old dad had no chance of keeping up, and I marvelled at how this girl was able to move through the dancefloor over and over without colliding with or tripping the dancers. The whole backyard was her playground; I spied her hiding behind the couple on the hammock to avoid her dad earlier that same afternoon.
A tarot card reading. The woman doing the reading, a red-haired witch (the good kind) who oozed charisma, held her audience in thrall as she laid cards out on the sun-dappled picnic table. It took every fiber of my willpower to not eavesdrop.
Someone ignoring the posted signs. If you're really lucky, you'll get to witness first-hand some knob getting booted for not respecting the house rules. If you're not that lucky, Nowadays' Google reviews offer a glutton's buffet of schadenfreude, with entries like these:
//|// The business of Nowadays
One of the most fascinating elements of Nowadays to me, is the hustle and vision and grit of the team that transformed this wreck of a lot -- located next to a polluted federal superfund site called "The Most Radioactive Place in New York City," -- into an oasis and what might be the best club in the United States for lovers of dance music.
In 2015, with the backing of a 30-person investment group, the pair opened Nowadays in an industrial section of Ridgewood, next to a federal superfund site once dubbed “The Most Radioactive Place in New York City.”
Fast forward 10 years, and the backyard has grown up quite a bit. The trees are still young and will need another decade or two to reach the point where they form an unbroken canopy over the backyard, but the greenery has filled out considerably:
The outdoor space was actually Nowadays' first dancefloor. Open only during the warmer months from late Spring through early Fall, the outdoors space is put to a variety of uses to make ends meet. It's an event space that hosts lectures, for example, the above-mentioned lecture on Foucault, and this lecture on psychedelics:
In short, Nowadays seems to be trying everything out to stay in business. They've hosted trivia nights, movie nights, ping pong tournaments, board game nights, and have even rented the facilities out to other promoters for parties.
Nowadays is listed as a wedding venue on Zola, as a site for corporate events on The Vendry, and more. They've got a fairly decent merch program ($40 for ball cap? Girl, I did it).
One of the more interesting hustles involves Patreon Membership. For a minimum of $60 per year ($5 per month), folks can sign up to be a Nowadays Patreon supporter. Contribute more to get deeper discounts and access to exclusives, including exclusive events for members only, exclusive merch drops, and exclusive access to hot event ticket sales.
As of June 20, 2025, Nowadays had accumulated 1,627 paying patrons (a minimum of $98k gross revenue, but more likely well north of that, perhaps 200k to 400k). This doesn't cover operating expenses, but it certainly provides ballast that steadies the ship in times of turbulence.
Back in 2017, Nowadays ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of a year-round indoor dancefloor. Some 900 backers contributed just over $100k to help Nowadays build out their indoor space, and, specifically, an SBS Slammer soundsystem built by Shorty that would "be spoken about in the same breath as Zanzibar, the Paradise Garage, Vinyl and Twilo."
The kickstarter campaign was a success, the space was built, the soundsystem installed, and the results are, as I can personally attest, spectacular.
I find it all fascinating.
In a world where UK clubs are reported to be closing at the rate of 2-3 per week, where Berlin clubs are experiencing Clubsterben (or Club Death), and where everyone seems to be gnashing their teeth and rending their garments in grief at the declining night-life scene, clubs like Nowadays are experimenting with alternate ways to pay the rent, all while preserving a dancefloor at the heart of the club experience.
In 2024, Nowadays was near death. The team hadn't reached a lease deal with their landlord, and rumors were circulating that they were going to lose their lease. They reached a deal for another 10 years, but the lease shot up 50%, according to reports.
For now, Nowadays' future seems secure, thanks to all the multiple revenue streams and hustle of the team.
//|// Perfection?
Is it perfect? No. Here are some of the challenges:
The indoor space is tiny -- with room for maybe 150 - 220 dancers, or 269 folks just standing around. Certain artists that once played Nowadays (e.g., Four Tet) have gotten too big for the space. The dancefloor is often too empty or too full, and finding it at "just right" density can be difficult. It's a tough ticketing challenge to sell the right number of tickets without knowing how many folks will show up early, how many will stay late, or how many might arrive somewhere in between. They're still figuring this out.
The crowd can be a little uneven. Despite adamant signage that the dancefloor is for dancing, sometimes the crowd might stand and yap, and the floor monitors seem powerless to deal with the mass disobedience situation, on the rare occasions when it does happen. I didn't witness this issue happening, but have spent only about six hours total at the venue.
The very porous door (the polar opposite of Berghain's tight door) means that tourists and casuals and all manner of folks who aren't quite right for the party make their way into the space (the Google and Yelp reviews provide ample evidence of this phenomenon). The vibes at the start of a Nonstop party are said to be far inferior to the vibes at the tail-end of that same party. The variability can be unsettling.
Nowadays doesn't own its space, and though it has just secured another 10-year lease, tenants are more limited in what they can do, or are willing to do, vs. owners. I think this is a club whose legacy is secured, regardless of what happens at the end of its current lease. But it'd be great if they and their investors could manage to buy their landlord out and secure the space for decades to come, and make the sorts of improvements they would make if they owned the joint.
The entry experience at 5am on Sunday morning was unnecessarily rough. We weren't expecting an hour-long wait in the cold and hadn't dressed for it. Once we got inside, it was clear capacity wasn't the constraint, but instead some sort of operational bottleneck kept folks waiting outside longer than necessary. Some of this is the complexity that the door must face -- there are at least four levels in the entry pecking order: friends and family are let in first, followed by card-holding members, followed by patreon members, followed by the ticketed masses (we were in this group) followed by the unticketed and unwashed masses.
Bagels where? Though this is a very petty complaint, it must be noted that Nowadays would be more perfect if it brought back the crowd-pleasing "bagel hours" featuring bagels from bagel masters Utopia bagels. This perk, typically rolled out on Sunday morning of a Nonstop party, was ended when a food vendor started making breakfast. I think it was a miss that the vendor doesn't simply stock and sell Utopia bagels with enough chive cream cheese to drown the ravenous appetites of all-night dancers.
//|// Mister Sundays (3pm - 9pm) - dance away the Sunday scaries
Once dBridge had finished with us, we had three more hours to enjoy Nowadays before we made our dash to the airport. We needed a taste of the Mister Sundays party because this party is the one that Nowadays started with, and I thought would give me a deeper sense of Nowadays' identity and ideals.
Though some complain the Mister Sundays events are just an excuse to daydrink for most of the crowd, I found it to be a wonderful mix of ages and life stages. There was drinking, yes, but there was eating dancing, chatting, smiling, and an overall vibe of great party in someone's backyard.
The disco ball hung over the springy playground turf between the four perfectly tuned (if a bit quiet) outdoor stacks was tiny, chintzy, and spun too fast. I gave it a kiss anyway (kissed my fingers, planted the kiss on the ball), and danced for nearly three hours under shade canopy. The dancefloor started so empty that I was the only one dancing on it at first, but by the time we left at 6pm, it was nicely packed with folks sweating and bouncing to the excellent tunes of Misters Harkin and Carter. This is the first time I've ever danced on playground foam, and it was even better for my tired feet than a sprung wood floor, though it provided too much friction for foot-dragging moves.
This floor was far more omnidirectional than the indoor floor had been. Perhaps because the DJs aren't big name stars, perhaps because folks were in a chatty mood, but there was very little of that "face the DJ" disease that is so common on other dancefloors (even, it must be admitted, the dBridge dancefloor just an hour prior). Folks danced and smiled with and at their friends, and with and at total strangers. I caught a lot of stray smiles, and found the vibe to be absolute perfection, even down to the somewhat DIY nature of the canopy over the dancefloor.
//|// The DPARTII Scorecard - DBridge @ Nowadays
//|// The DPARTI Scorecard - Mister Sundays with Eamon Harkin & Justin Carter @ Nowadays
This is great. Was literally on my way to Nowadays when this hit my inbox.
I’m sold! Will be sure to make a stop here before I head back West 💙