Party time
A new wave of bars and clubs are revitalising New York City’s social scene, finds
New York’s new clubs, plus wild swimming in Wales
At the tail end of summer, a subterranean lounge named Mailroom began luring downtown types to the financial district with the siren call of free drinks, food from Momofuku, and DJS including James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, Mark Ronson and Clara 3000.
But there’s a twist: Mailroom is wedged beneath a Wall Street highrise that includes Wework, which offers shared office spaces, and Welive, which rents dorm-style residences. Though open to the public, Mailroom is essentially a membership perk.
“I didn’t know what to think about it,” says Jayma Cardoso, an owner of the Surf Lodge in Montauk, New York, who was recruited by Wework to handle Mailroom’s events. “I don’t love Wall Street and it’s in a basement.”
Then she learned that an outpost of Mailroom will be installed in every Welive location. “This isn’t just doing one bar,” she says. “It’s about being part of an incredible project that can be in all 21 cities in America and potentially all over the world.” Cardoso signed on.
This autumn, Mailroom is in good company: many of New York’s latest night life offerings are components of more goliath endeavours. Ian Schrager’s Public hotel on the Lower East Side includes a roof deck lounge, a basement club and a hotlist restaurant. The Magic Hour Rooftop Lounge is atop the Moxy hotel in Times Square. The 1 Hotel in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn has a rooftop bar. And a Playboy Club, which is being resurrected in New York after three decades, will burrow below the Cachet hotel in Midtown West.
In Manhattan, real estate prices and competition from Brooklyn have led clubland operators to exchange autonomy for the streams of builtin patrons, scalability and financial safety provided by larger hospitality companies.
“When I first started, night life was a very raw, spontaneous, young business,” says Schrager, who was a founder of Studio 54 and the Palladium, before becoming a hotelier. “You didn’t have to have a lot of capital. Everything culminated in owning your own nightclub. Now it’s
“I’ve always wanted to make people talk to each other instead of looking at their phones”
dominated by people who go around doing their thing at other people’s facilities.”
Having a corporate overlord does not, of course, translate into being cool or exclusive. At the Moxy, a Marriott spinoff geared toward millennials, the target demographic is not a Hydra-bronzed, Vetementsclad jet-setter, but a budget traveller who Instagrams the rooftop’s topiaries of fornicating animals. “This is not a bottle service kind of place,” says Noah Tepperberg of the Tao Group, which will oversee the bars and restaurants at the Moxy. “It’s fairly relaxed.”
Here are some of the notable bar and club openings in New York this autumn.
Mailroom
The financial district is tough turf for night life, but Mailroom has a home advantage: The bar and lounge are in the basement of a building that includes Wework, Welive and its creative clientele. Introduced with weekly parties that drew a cool-kid cohort, Mailroom reveals un-edgy intentions with midcentury-inspired furniture, Warhol prints and a bocce court. “It’s just a fun bar,” Cardoso says. “It’s built for anyone who wants to have a drink.” 110 Wall St (between Front and South streets), mailroomnyc.com
Public
Since opening in June, this 367room Lower East Side leviathan by Schrager has hosted a stream of parties, corporate events, screenings and live shows (Patti Smith, Grizzly Bear). On the roof, there’s an enormous terrace and an icy discothèque with lighting that conjures a scene from the movie Belly. Public Arts is in the basement in a large performance space with a separate entrance. At the helm are Carlos Quirarte and Matt Kliegman, the partners behind the Smile cafes and the club Westway. “We can adjust the vibe,” Kliegman says, praising the basement’s versatility. “A DJ goes on and all of a sudden, there’s a party.” 215 Chrystie St (between Houston and Stanton streets), publichotels.com
Club Cumming
What started as an impromptu party in the Broadway dressing room of Alan Cumming is going brick and mortar with the opening of Club Cumming. The East Village storefront, previously home to the popular gay haunt Eastern Bloc, has been transformed into a Weimar-inspired cabaret bar (Eastern Bloc’s owners are still involved). The modest space has illustrated murals of New York night life personalities including Joey Arias, mismatched chandeliers and a small curtained stage with a piano. Beyond debauchery, events will include book releases, “stitch and bitch” knitting classes and tantric sex workshops. “To have a local bar that is home for artists and those who love them, that’s important to me,” Cumming says. “I’ve always wanted to make people talk to each other instead of looking at their phones.” 505 E Sixth St (between avenues A and B), clubcummingnyc.com
Magic Hour Rooftop Bar & Lounge
The rooftop lounge of the Moxy NYC Times Square, a new brand by the Marriott marketed to millennials, will be booby-trapped with social media bait: adult-themed minigolf, topiaries of amorous critters and unobstructed views of the Empire State Building. “You can expect this to blow up Instagram feeds,” Tepperberg says. A handful of $99 hotel rooms are available only on the Magic Hour menu. Other highlights include a second-floor bar with a pool table, a subway-tiled seafood brasserie and an egg-centric sandwich shop for those seeking other selfie backdrops. Opens this month. 485 Seventh Ave (at West 36th Street), moxytimessquare.com
Oscar Wilde
The Irish owners of Lillie’s Victorian Establishment, a pair of Manhattan bars devoted to actress Lillie Langtry, have opened a cheerfully opulent bar honouring her friend Oscar Wilde. The cosy space, which could be mistaken for an antiques shop, has a curvaceous 118-foot bar, walls teeming with literary paraphernalia, chandeliers with peacock feathers and wainscoting said to be from Hope Castle in Castleblayney, Ireland, the hometown of Frank Mccole, one of the owners. “My father acquired some of the stuff, but I never asked him why and how,” he says. “Some things you don’t need to know.” The bar’s 26 clocks are set to 1:50, said to be the moment of Wilde’s death, and an appropriate last call for the 2am closing time. 45 W 27th St (between Avenue of the Americas and Broadway), oscarwildenyc.com
Elsewhere
The disappearance of Williamsburg’s indie music hub prompted handwringing about North Brooklyn’s cultural soul, but alternatives are sprouting up deeper down the L line. The owners of Glasslands, a Kent Avenue sweatbox that closed in 2014, will make an encore with Elsewhere, a 24,000-square-foot performance space in Bushwick. The industrial compound includes a concert hall of torched wood and stainless steel, a more intimate club with a DJ booth, a second-floor coffee shop, and an art gallery nested in an elevated walkway. Acts including No Age and Parquet Courts are booked for Elsewhere’s opening this month. 599 Johnson Ave (between Gardner and Scott avenues), Brooklyn, elsewherebrooklyn.com
Playboy Club NYC
After taking over the space occupied by the Lgbt-friendly Out Hotel, the Cachet Boutique hotel is converting the cavernous ground-floor lounge into a paean to heterosexuality. The Playboy Club, which last operated in New York some 30 years ago, returns with a muscular brass-and-wood bar, a “spirit library” and, of course, waitresses with rabbit ears and pom pom tails. The proprietors insist the focus is more about showmanship than sex. “Not saying it’s Sleep No More, but there really is an element of performance,” says Nicole Levinson of the Cachet Hospitality Group. “It’s like walking into a moment.” Opens late this month. 508 W 42nd St. (between 10th and 11th avenues), cachetboutiquenyc.com
© NYT 2017