gaypartyblog.com gay nightlife scene

We recently have learned that John Blair will be closing down his party at Avalon in the next month. Apparently, New York nightlife is undergoing serious changes due to pressures from Mayor Bloomberg. Just this last week we reported that Bloomberg’s office denied the license needed for the NYC gay pride festival.

New York City was once the hottest, high energy cities to visit for a good time at the clubs. The social scene in New York for gays and clubgoers has now taken an even lower level. Money spent in New York from gays and sophisticated tourists may soon drop once they realize how horrible a wreck Mayor Bloomberg is making out of the city.

What is there to do in NYC if there are no good clubs? NYC is taking steps backwards in the world while other cities are progressing ahead.

Peter Rauhofer has a party at Stereo for now but that will also come to and end soon. The building where Stereo Saturday’s is held will be torn down soon. The tourists and residents of New York City will soon find themselves in smaller, more humble clubs. There has got to be something done to save the scene in one of the largest cities in the world or this could eventually spread.

Just when New York City nightlife is going more downhill because of Mayor Bloomberg it just gets worse.PrideFest was given an ultimatum by the NYC Mayor’s Office where they would only be given a permit for Sunday, June 24th for Washington Street in the West Village.  June 24th is the same day as the pride march so there would be fewer volunteers available.

The most shocking part of this is that the NYC Mayor’s office expected the gays and lesbians to be stuffed into a dark, narrow street in the West Village.  Is that a way to treat people coming into town to spend money?

Here is where you can print and mail a letter to the mayor’s office in New York City.  This will not help this years’ NYC Pride but it may get much needed action for a license for 2008.  This may also draw more awareness to this issue.

NYC Pride Events

Dance 21 will be held on the Pier 54 (13th St. @ the Hudson River) in Hudson River Park on Sunday, June 24th, 2007, 4:00pm-10:30pm.  I did not see any age restrictions on the website so you may want to verify if its 18 or 21 to enter.  Also, no tickets will be sold at the Pier which may be inconvenient to some who were not able to buy a ticket beforehand.

Find out more about NYC pride at NYCPride.org.

The Roxy Nightclub in New York City will be shut down after sixteen years of performances, headline DJ’s, and surprises. Madonna has played a few times at the Roxy and not just made appearances but actually performed several songs. Roxy is one of the last major gay clubs to be shut down or town down because of regulations or underage drinking. Maybe it’s high time to make drinking 18+ but that’s another subject we should get some attitude on. Then again there are other well known clubs that were shut down to build such tragic things as ballparks including one of the largest gay spots in America known as Nation D.C and the stripper bar “Wet”.

I am not familiar with the State Liquor Authority but I am sure they are as communist as the TABC in Texas. Station 4 in Dallas is not even allowed to have contests anymore because they feel they promote drinking. Clubs around the state of Texas are having problems running contests because groups like the TABC say contests that include hot dancing shirtless or in boxers could promote more drinking. Dallas nightlife was also hit hard when Club Eden, a strip club during the day, was the afterhours dance scene for the hottest people in Dallas their dance permit is taken away. You now cannot dance in Club Eden afterhours you have to sit at tables and stare at each other.

The teens, queens, and party scenes today just do not seem to have the balls to go up against the communist government of ours. We need to do something to stand up to all of our famous night clubs shutting down including Avalon NYC, Roxy NYC, etc. Think about all of the raves that disappeared because of the laws that were passed to stop dancing at these happy events.

New York club life will suffer again from another club closing down. The tourists from foreign countries and other states will goto NYC looking for clubs like Roxy, Avalon, or bars like CBGB and they will be no where to be found. It will be emptiness like the Studio 54 day ending but hopefully we can get some new things and learn from our mistakes. You would think the mayor or elected officials would finally realize the nightlife scene is a major reason some people visit NYC. The only problem is they cannot own stock in most nightclubs so if they do not see any money in it then lets just make it so people need permits to dance, permits to drink, and soon you will have to display permits to piss.

After almost two decades Roxy is closing its doors for good on Saturday, March 10, 2007. The building that held the Roxy will be demolished just like our buddies over in D.C. at Nation. This Saturday will be the last dance at Roxy and will definitely be a party that you should not miss if you are in the Manhattan area.

Saturday Nights in NYC
What will become out of the closing of the Roxy in NYC? You can expect lots of new parties popping up. I am sure John Blair will not waste any time starting up some events but there are a few others you may want to check out besides the usual suspects.

Saturdays @ Rebel
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www.zailen.com/vlad.shtml
Ride Saturdays @ Rebel Saturday
Cover: $8 Reduced Admission 10-12pm $10 After & General Admission $15
Location: Rebel Nightclub 251 West 30th Street @ 8th Ave 21+

The New York club scene has changed drastically in the last few years due to clubs closing down and music trends changing.   NYC makes clubs have a dance permit so if you are in a bar without this permit you will not be allowed to dance.  Talk about freedom of speech or expression for that matter!

Thursdays you will find college night which has now been a NYC tradition for several years now even though the venue keeps changing.  Thursday night information can be found at GayCollegeParty.com.

Friday Nights in NYC

Splash on Friday nights was fun until happy hour ended then it was back to the hotel to relax.  We went back to Splash about 11 and it was $20 cover.  Around 11:30pm we went over to Mr. Blacks which had a line outside we waited in a good thirty minutes.  We walked into Mr. Blacks and it was not even real how many people were crammed into this dungeon-like room.  This club is a basement with a few mirror balls and the oldest cash registers you have ever seen.  Mr. Blacks had good music if you could stand to move or breathe – much less dance.  I was already beginning to feel that people in NYC have to sway instead of dance at some of these popular nightclubs.  Mr. Blacks is on Broadway and Bleeker.  It is next to a Café and I did not see a sign for the club but the line outside tells you’re at the right place.

We left Mr. Blacks (I have no idea what that name means) to go over to Opaline which is a younger crowd with a few hotties.  Opaline had great music and pretty strong drinks (from what I can actually remember).  Opaline is on Varick below Houston like 2 blocks.  You will see all the boys outside smoking.

Saturday Nights in NYC

Element (Houston and Avenue A) is a nice space with good music $10 before 12:30 and it is in-between the circuit daddies and the hip hop teens with cute boys between 21-35.  Element is a fun and popular spot on Saturdays but we had to go to Roxy to see DJ Offer Nissim from Tel Aviv.  This was a John Blair event at Roxy and was a semi-circuity event but the music was amazing.  I will have to put DJ Nissim in my favorite ten dj’s.  Roxy, of course is the club that has been around for years and featured live performances from celebrities like Madonna who performed earlier in 2006, while promoting her new album.

You will hear a lot of the locals in NYC complain that Roxy is too much money to get in since it was $35 unless you had a John Blair card at $25 (save $10), or you could save money with a printed flyer from JBlair.com.

Roxy also has a reputation as one local New-Yorker said it has “lots of drugs and muscle boys usually 30+ with their shirts off…. at least the 2 times I was there in the last four years it was like that.”  I found it to be a mix of mostly the circuit crowd with some younger guys 18+ here and there too.  There were a lot of coupled people at this club.

Roxy is huge and has lots of stages and boxes to dance on.  It also has a room upstairs room that plays pop, hip hop, and house music.

Club Heaven used to be the place to be on Saturdays for the 18+ Crowd but it was mostly dead the weekend we visited NYC.    We found that most of the 18+ Saturday night crowd stayed in for Sunday night or went to Roxy.

Sundays

First the bad news.  Club Avalon was seized for not paying taxes or drugs or something.  All I know is there are signs all over the building with big red “SEIZED”.  There are also signs that asked if “anyone had seen illegal activity” on this property.  Club Avalon is the old Church building was featured in the movie Party Monster and has had many great dj’s spin there including DJ Irene who I saw there awhile back.  This is sad news because I loved going to Avalon it is a true NYC experience.

John Blair moved his crowd over to the Roxy on Sunday nights but that did not work out too well because there were people leaving disappointed that it cost so much and it was not very busy.  They were charging over $20 to enter on a Sunday night so that is expensive for a Sunday even in New York.

Club Spirit, a 18+ club, was also closed down.  It was located next to some straight clubs on 27^th between 10^th and 11^th.

Club Hiro turned out to the best place to go on Sundays in NYC.  Hiro is located inside the Maritime Hotel at 16^th and 19^th Avenue.  Hiro is normally a straight club turned gay/mixed on Sundays.  There was a line outside around 11:30pm to get in this club.  There was no admission but the drinks were more expensive that most of the other NYC clubs we had been to.  The music was very lounge sounding and did not get better until later in the night and it finally picked up.  Hiro had a great sound system but the lounge-type music they were playing early in the night made me want to scream.

Hiro had huge muscle dancers on the boxes early in the night then let everyone get up on the stages and dance.  It was funny watching them dance to this lounge beat.  I don’t know how anyone could possible do more than sway around to this music.  I always like a club that lets people dance on the box instead of having to stare at their dancers all night long.

Hiro inside was a light show that looked more like flashing pumpkins instead of club lights.  They had all these urban outfitters looking lights hanging from the ceiling that flashed in orange all night long.  It was a very low-lighted club (which is a good thing most the time) and took a long time to walk from one side of the building to another.  They had an upstairs lounge but it had bad acoustics and was something similar to a house party.  Overall Hiro was fun but I would hate for it to be the only choice for the queens to go on Sundays in NYC.