TO PARTY, OR NOT TO PARTY?

The nightlife illuminati weighs in

To party, or not to party? As we tip into the accursed third year of our lord COVID-19, everyone’s wrestling with this infernal question again. Last year, the answer was obvious—I spent it in bed, chasing oblivion on a heroic dose of shrooms—but this time around, sussing out the right move has never felt more disorienting. Nightlife in a pandemic is a game of risk calculus—weighing the scales of pleasure vs safety in your sinful heart like Themis before deciding to roll the dice. But with Omicron, the ground has shifted so swiftly the feeling is like a carpet yanked from our feet, and we’re flailing in air. (Side note, New York ravers: remember the kinky Carpet Man who’d roll himself inside a rug to get stepped on at parties? Wonder what he’s doing this weekend…) 

Here’s the situation: countries all over the world have shut down nightlife or imposed curfews, but here in the blessed land of the free, the authorities have decided to let it rip: nightclubs and music venues are mostly operating without restrictions, other than indoor mask mandates, which—let’s face it!—barely anyone follows once the molly hits. Yet even without an official mandate, America is entering a soft lockdown, and my feed over the past weeks has been an endless scroll of party cancellations. What’s striking though, is how dramatically different the scene’s conversation around partying is now compared to previous COVID waves: rather than shaming and blaming, the discourse is on the labor market, personal responsibility, and safety-as-marketing. (I’ll get into this ~vibe shift~ more in a paid post)

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I still don’t know what my move is going to be, so I hit up the rave illuminati in New York, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh to figure out what’s tea. Below, a breakdown of each cities’ NYE situations, with insights from the folks behind parties like Honcho, Discakes, Por Detroit, Junkyard Jouvert, The Bunker, and others. Subscribe to read, because mama has been working hard and would really appreciate a tip (these designer K95s don’t come cheap, honey!)