Is Nightlife Doomed? Aren’t We Too Old To Be Asking That Question?

Elite Daily (a site I had no idea existed until this article but is actually pretty good) posted a story called An Oversaturated Market Will Doom Nightlife In New York. I had been tagged in/tweeted at about the article a few times so I decided to check it out.

Now everyone pretty much agrees with this article, but I’m surprised at how many people had such strong reactions to it. When I first started seriously clubbing (3+ nights per week) I was 17 years old. I worked at The Hotel Gansevoort and made a ton of money but gave it all up to be a promoter, which I sucked at. I made friends with all the right people (shout out to Steve Lewis and Matt Levine among many others). I started this blog because I was a journalism major and this blog BLEW up. Some people thought I was brilliant, some thought I was a complete a nobody, but everyone wanted the free press. Even Jeremiah Silva who recently cursed me out in my Facebook inbox after I haven’t been posting his Youtube videos and going to his music video shoots.

Fast forward almost 10 years and I’m shaking my head in disgust. So many people, a lot of them my nightlife friends, are still doing the SAME thing we all were doing a decade ago. I’m sorry but unless you own a venue, are building a brand, or are on your way to DJ /Photographer superstardom, going out 5+ nights per week and getting blackout wasted is NOT cool when you’re 30+.

Everyone is giving me a hard time that ChiChi212 isn’t what it used to be and it needs to come back as a true nightlife blog. You guys can think that but it’s a little ridiculous. Just like New Kids On The Block and Backstreet Boys forming a super group and singing the same damn songs ridiculous. Look around you. The #1 person in nightlife is an anonymous source… on Twitter. Rachelle from Guest of a Guest is married and had a baby. Scott Solish’s posts no longer start huge debates filled with secrets and name calling. Me? I grew up, I went to law school, I dropped out, I started a business, I got engaged and I’m planning a wedding, a family, and a house outside of New York City where my kids can have a yard and I can join the PTA.

I’m not knocking you if you’re still in the game doing these things because that’s the way NYC is. Everyone is 23 until they’re 40. But thousands of people wake up one day and realize they want to get married and have a family and they go back to where they came from. And at then end of the day that promoter/DJ is not going to marry you and some of my girlfriends STILL haven’t gotten that through their heads.

I went to Bounce over the weekend to see my friend Cole Bernard and Bounce was on fire. But I only stayed for 2 drinks because that scene isn’t for me anymore. I’d rather watch movies with my fiance than dance on tables and I’m ok with that. I’ll be 27 this year and if my Facebook photos were still of me getting champagne poured down my throat, my real friends and family would have pulled an intervention.

So really the problem isn’t only that there are too many clubs, it’s that people are still running things with old mentality. Not a single industry can prosper doing the exact same thing it was doing 10 years ago but nightlife seems to think it’s different. Pink Elephant and Bungalow 8 can reopen all they want, but it won’t be the same and all people will do is compare it to how it was in the old days.

It’s hard to go forward when people are still holding onto the past. Things are different ya’ll and the only successful people are the ones who are changing things up. The brunch parties, the mid-evening parties, the dinner parties, these are the people who will survive.

I’ll never stop writing my blog because a) people still read it and b) I didn’t start it to go out (I was already doing that way too much), I started it because I liked writing and wanted to have something that was my own. Just like an artist that writes her own songs, this blog will change as I change. And anyone who can’t accept that can stay on the hamster wheel all they want, but I’m getting off.

If you turn to your left and you turn to your right and all you see are underage FIT girls, it’s not them. It’s you.

Photo via Guest of a Guest