What's Next for New York City Nightlife?

Title: What's Next for New York City Nightlife?

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Janae Pierre: New York City really is the city that never sleeps. From the birth of hip hop in the Bronx to jazz clubs in Harlem and warehouse parties in Brooklyn, nightlife has shaped New York's music culture and politics for generations. That's why the city has an Office of Nightlife and a person whose job it is to look out for the city after dark. The office was created under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, with its first director appointed in 2018. That first Nightlife Mayor was Ariel Palitz. She served as the city's senior executive director of nightlife from 2018 to 2023.

As the city enters a new political era, we wanted to check in with her about what's happening in New York nightlife right now, and what the next chapter could look like for the city that never sleeps. Ariel, welcome to the show.

Ariel: Thanks so much for having me.

Janae Pierre: I have my own ideas of what a Nightlife Mayor is supposed to be out there doing. Can you explain exactly what your job was?

Ariel: Sure. Creating an Office of Nightlife was really essential for New York City. It was already a movement, a global movement that was happening in places like Amsterdam, and Berlin, and London, where there was a dedicated representative for this critical hospitality industry that was not only being misrepresented, but many could say historically criminalized. A lot of people thought, "Oh, do you go out every night? Is it just models and bottles?" We like to say the Nightlife Mayor job is a day job-

Janae Pierre: Oh. [chuckles]

Ariel: -which surprises a lot of people. Actually, owning a nightclub is a day job too. A lot of what you do that happens at night first has to happen during the day. The Office of Nightlife itself is a full running office. When I had it, it was only me plus two. Now it's been expanded. There's four to represent this huge industry in this big city. It really is about identifying systemic issues, coming up with creative non-enforcement solutions, developing policies about the nuts and bolts, about what it means to operate a venue, as well as what it means to interface with the city.

Janae Pierre: You first came on during the de Blasio administration. I'm curious, why do you think that the city needed its own nightlife department during that time?

Ariel: We've always needed one. Many people, when seeing all these offices of nightlife opening up around the world, the main question is not, "Why is there an Office of Nightlife?" but, "Why not?" We are the city that never sleeps.

Janae Pierre: More like, "What took so long?"

Ariel: Exactly.

Janae Pierre: Let's go back to 2018. When you first took on this job, you briefly talked about some of the systemic issues. Can you give us an idea of what they were during that time?

Ariel: Sure. We could go back all the way to the Prohibition era, but if we want to stay modern, the Giuliani era as well, where this industry and the people were overly enforced, unsupported, targeted within even the LGBTQ community. Within the '70s, it was illegal to sell alcohol to gay people in a gay bar. Most venues were underground. There was a very swift and excessive enforcement through a program called MARCH, Multi-Agency Support for Hospitality. There was no representation or respect for how hard this industry is and the safe havens for the creative communities that it was creating.

It was time to reframe a framed industry, to reframe the people that go out in those venues and to highlight how essential it is, again, not just nightlife, but life at night, where people and the city comes to life and where people can find their chosen families and find safe haven. Just creating the Office of Nightlife in and of itself was a signal to the industry, without me creating one policy or one initiative, that a change was coming.

Janae Pierre: A change came two years after the Office of Nightlife was developed. We were hit with the pandemic, and it changed everything about the world. Tell me how the pandemic changed nightlife in New York City.

Ariel: If anyone had questioned, "Why is there an Office of Nightlife?" the pandemic answered it pretty quickly. COVID literally directly hit social spaces where people gathered. We were sheltering in place. What other industry is more focused on the intention of gathering people? The impact, economically as well as just operationally, had to cease.

Janae Pierre: Are there parts of the nightlife ecosystem that you feel the pandemic changed for the better?

Ariel: I think gratitude for our nightlife spaces. A lot of talk before the pandemic: "New York is dead. Nightlife isn't what it used to be. There's no place to go." The universe was like, "Let me show you what it really means to have nowhere to go and no place to be."

Janae Pierre: That was hard.

Ariel: I think there was a lot more gratitude for the industry, for New York nightlife in general, and also for how incredibly complicated and difficult it is to operate. It's a tough industry, pre-pandemic, post-pandemic.

Janae Pierre: It's still hard.

Ariel: It's hard to do. If it was easy, everybody would do it, as they say. Some people stress out just trying to get people to their own birthday party. Imagine having to do that seven nights a week.

Janae Pierre: Stay tuned for more after the break. [silence] Before we started taping, we said the "A" word: affordability.

Ariel: Oh, yes.

Janae Pierre: A lot of people would say that that's the word that got Mamdani elected, even. It's something that DJs, artists, venue workers, and even people buying tickets are really feeling right now. I'm wondering from your perspective, how is the affordability crisis reshaping New York City's nightlife?

Ariel: Those fixed costs for operators are only getting higher: rent, insurance, labor costs, for workers as well. I think Mamdani is certainly onto something to focus on that and to make it a priority. He's spoken a lot about childcare and affordable housing. These are things that also deeply affect and would impact and improve nightlife as well. These are not just daytime issues and struggles. I think that's why when he says a different type of Nightlife Mayor, I think what he's saying is that this is, again, not just about nightlife, but life at night, and how do we support those, whether it's people who work in nightclubs and restaurants, but in hospitals, as well as the overnight diners and taxi drivers.

What can we do to minimize those expenses so that we can protect our diversity, protect our workers who work at night, who are having those jobs in order to be able to maybe become a doctor later in life or to become an artist?

Janae Pierre: Where does City Hall actually have the most power when it comes to affordability in nightlife?

Ariel: In nightlife and in hospitality, we have what is called the tip credit that allows for hospitality venues to be able to pay a lower minimum wage if they are making that money back in tips. In New York, we know, especially in all types of venues, being able to make that tip money can far exceed the existing minimum wage. There has been talk about raising the minimum wage to $30 and doing away with the tip credit, but this could be really one of the fatal blows to the hospitality industry because it is a high-touch industry. We need service. This is not something that could be automated.

Janae Pierre: I don't want a drink from AI. [chuckles]

Ariel: Exactly.

Janae Pierre: Do you miss being Nightlife Mayor?

Ariel: I don't, in the sense that people ask me, "Do I miss owning a nightclub?" and "Would I do it again?" I have been there, done that. Number one, I really enjoyed owning a club, but there's only so many ways to fill a Wednesday. I did it. I did it to the best of my ability. I'm so proud of what we accomplished. My job as the first director of the Office of Nightlife was to create an infrastructure and a foundation for an office that can go on for many generations to come. After five years under two mayors through a pandemic, I felt like I had truly accomplished what my job in that ecosystem or in that lineage was meant to be.

Janae Pierre: A year from now, when you and I are following the Mamdani administration, and he has a year under his belt, what would you hope was accomplished by the Office of Nightlife?

Ariel: I think it's really important. I'm very encouraged and optimistic about the Mamdani administration's understanding of the importance of maintaining the Office of Nightlife, but also growing the Office of Nightlife. What I would like to see is for this office to grow, in order to be able to really do the outreach that I think would be beneficial. I think Mamdani understands that nightlife is not a luxury. It's a necessity.

I would love to see the administration explore all the creative and fun ways that we can expand our nightlife footprint, our life at night footprint, create more affordability by having less regulation, less fines, more cure periods, easier streamlined processes of navigating through the industry, and respecting what it brings to the table. Social justice is at the forefront of what this office also deems as a responsibility and a priority. Nightlife is a social justice movement. We have had so much of the evolution in our culture, whether it be Stonewall or the Harlem Renaissance, and understanding that in our spaces, bringing Black and white people together to dance in one place was a political movement, a political statement.

We are also in deep danger, as we know in this country, of all of those rights that we all fought so hard for to slip backward. I think that we really do need to continue to see nightlife spaces as places where we stand up for our rights, not only to party, but to simply exist.

Janae Pierre: That's Ariel Palitz. She was the city's first Nightlife Mayor. Thanks so much for joining us.

Ariel: Thank you for having me.

Janae Pierre: Thank you for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. This is where we go beyond the headlines. If you have any thoughts on nightlife, or as Ariel puts it, "life at night," send us an email at NYCNow@wnyc.org. I'm Janae Pierre. See you next time.

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