SCENE REPORT: OMICRON RAVES

The void is closing in

Every so often Rave New World is picked up in “the media,” and I swallow my surprise that anyone who is not a druggie deviant even cares about this thing and try to say something smart about what it’s like to party for a living. This week I spoke to Off The Record about how the paywall makes it easier to write about illegal/underground worlds; the vulnerability of capturing people at their most uninhibited; why nightlife journalism is even worth doing. I posted some highlights on IG, but tbh you should subscribe to Off The Record, especially if you’re into smart media analysis (or just wanna know what journalists are gossiping about!) 

I also want to direct your spare change to the GoFundMe for Bushwick’s OG techno pit Bossa Nova Civic Club, which is indefinitely closed after a building fire earlier this week (!) OBVIOUSLY, you should also subscribe to Rave New World, which InsideHook recently shouted out in their list of best newsletters (thanks babes!) 

Btw I also added some homies to the subscription guestlist because this newsletter needed a VIP section. Rave New World depends on paid members and word-of-mouth recommendations to keep popping off—so if you’re fucking with this intel, please like + sub + share <3

This week’s scene report is about nightlife in the Omicron wave, when the risk calculus seems to be skewing towards… fuck it? Ethical lines are being redrawn in realtime, and everything feels so fucking confusing, so I’ve been calling friends who throw underground raves like Discakes, Honcho, and The Bunker to figure out what the fuck is going on—below, we’ll dive into how the nightlife discourse is shifting, along with spooky tales of wildfires shutting down renegade raves, Gen Zs forging rapid tests on the dancefloor, New York’s “post”-Omicron party scene, and the cringeyness of talking about COVID at the rave. 

Clearly, we are entering the most absurd era of the pandemic, where ravers are actively trying to catch the virus, the scarcity of COVID testing is a joke, and the President himself is tweeting “LMFAO IDK just Google it.” As the void closes in, the question lingers: is there any use resisting the nihilism of this moment? Or do you just cross the goddamn Rubicon, and jump into the gabber rave mosh pit?