Werewolves that we are, our carnality waxes with the waning of daylight. Banal daytime pleasures — designing a salad on lunch break with a naughty candied nut, going full-out brevé with a cappuccino, sessions of clandestine in-office farting — give way to superior rewards: laughing, loving, fighting, fucking, crying, drinking, kissing. In urban centers, our quest for these forms of nighttime gratification are institutionalized and monetized by things we call “bars” and “clubs,” each providing its own bible of ritualistic flourishes to enable all aforementioned gerunds.
Highlighting the absurd accoutrements of urban hedonistic pursuit, SNL‘s Stefon became a parodic figurehead of the New York nightlife scene. Guiding us to the hottest Halloween parties in abandoned fish factories in Little Israel, Stefon is a veritable New York Moses. However, social butterfly that he is, Stefon doesn’t always have enough time for the masses. With only two public appearances in 2013 and one thus far in 2014, we’ve been left to our own devices — or worse, Yelp — to seek out the next best onomatopoeic orgy. OR SO WE THOUGHT. It seems, in reading between the lines of nightlife reportage in various New York publications, that, much like Love, Stefon Actually is all around us. We’ve gathered some passages about curiously Stefon-y places to facilitate your late-night pursuit — whether he’s possessed these nightlife moguls or simply influenced them, that’s for you (or a more skilled exorcist than I) to decide.
From an NYT review of Williamsburg’s Verboten:
Hit any club along Wythe Street in Williamsburg and you’re sure to see packs of cigarette-slim Continentals who order “water with gas,” stay in AirBnb apartments and dance till sunrise. On a recent Saturday, normcore gays, ghetto gothics and jaunty Euros galloped in place in syncopated harmony. At an art opening the following weekend, a burlesque acrobat dangled above an older, wealthier crowd that looked to have come from a Burning Man fund-raiser.
New York on “gay metal night” at Rainbow in the Dark:
You cast a wide net when you bill your rock-and-roll party as a night for “gay men, Satanists, and metal enthusiasts.”
DNAInfo on a traveling subway tour/silent nightclub:
The headphones are also synced to a tour guide’s mic — so the guide can share interesting subway facts, practical instructions about where to go and fun orders like telling everyone to jump at the same time.
Blouin Artinfo on a party in Ivana Trump’s house:
A red-carpeted staircase with a Fragonardian trompe l’oeil garden mural lead up to the main salon, where Perrone’s oil paintings fought for the eye’s attention amid the resplendent clusterfuck of putti, gilded boiseries, and phallic centerpieces of fruits and flowers. Some of the walls are pimped out in Italianate curlicues. Others are upholstered with gold damask, like the world’s gaudiest insane asylum.
The Daily Beast on speakeasy revivalist/trespassing adventure duo The Wanderlust Projects:
The 19 small teams attempt to blend in with the well-heeled clientele as they race around the hotel for three hours, checking absurd tasks off their lists. Take a picture hugging a guest while wearing his or her bathrobe? Check. Gather the “company” into a maid’s closet? Check. One participant strips down to take a bubble bath in a momentarily empty room. Others deliver room service.
The New York Times on Wanderlust Projects’ water-tower speakeasy:
The only way to get in was to be handed a pocket watch by a prior guest (who had been instructed to offer minimal explanation), report to a street corner at a certain time, and call a number pasted inside the watch. Mysterious helpers led guests through one decrepit building into another and up 12 flights of stairs to the roof.
From an article in Next Magazine on Greenpoint’s Veronica’s People’s Club:
“I think that a new gay venue in Brooklyn has been needed for a while and the gays have been responding well,” [party promoter] Gorman explained all the while being pantless.