[vrosas]

> What 20-something can afford to do that with any regularity?

Practically every 20-something (and just as many 30+ somethings) I know in NYC DO do this very regularly, especially if they already live in wburg/bushwick. If they're not there, they're mixing it up at nowadays.

[mtalantikite]

I guess the 20-somethings I know (and knew when I was also 20-something) are broke artists and models. They don't have $200 to spend on a night out every weekend. Nowadays certainly is affordable and there are others of course. People make it work.

There were definitely expensive clubs that kids with money went to when I was young -- a friend ran sound at The Box and that was always wildly priced. But there was no shortage of illegal parties in warehouses with cheap drinks and no cover on the williamsburg waterfront and out in Bushwick in the early 2000s for the weirdos. Even met my wife at one.

[zonotope]

I think a lot of those illegal warehouse parties died with the DeBlasio administration. At least, that's when I stopped hearing about them so I am open to the possibility that I'm no longer plugged in to the right scene.

The DeBlasio administration was the first to add a "night mayor", and they made it easier to open legit venues in the same neighborhoods that used to host the illegal warehouse parties, like that triangle just west of Flushing avenue centered around the Morgan L train stop, where Elsewhere and The Brooklyn Mirage among a few other big, high priced venues are now.

In exchange for making it easier to open more venues and have more legal dance parties, they cracked down on the illegal parties pretty hard. This had the effect of pushing the prices up, changing the scene and crowd, and introducing more regulations. Before, you had to be a little more plugged in to know when and where the parties were because they were "underground" (but only a little). You could also reliably dance until 6 or 7am and buy all the alcohol you wanted whenever.

Now, these parties are way more mainstream so people who are less enthusiastic about dancing show up because it's something accessible to do, and everything must legally shut down at 4.

I remember being excited that things were going legit because I thought it would make the parties that I frequented better, but now with the benefit of hindsight over the past 8 or so years, I think it's had a negative impact on the scene, along with all the other issues related to the ubiquity of cell phones and the changing gen z tastes.

I still long fondly for Bushwick circa 2012, but it might just be more "Back in my day..." nostalgia.

[sbarre]

I think pervasive (invasive?) social media and the "always-potentially-on-camera" reality, paired with cancel culture, has also killed a lot of "underground" scenes (and counter-culture in general but that's a whole other topic).

[thefaux]

If you haven't read it, you might like Emily Witt's recent book Health & Safety. She writes about her experiences raving in Brooklyn (and Berlin) from roughly 2015 to present day and many of the changes that have occurred (as well as dropping in her own personal story which may or may not be interesting to you).

[CPLX]

Those underground parties still exist for the most part. I've aged way out of all this, like you have, but I'm aware of their existence through many friends in the music scene in NYC. If you're enterprising and skilled at navigating Instagram and similar platforms as they rise and fall you wouldn't have too much trouble figuring out where they are.

[vrosas]

Fair, my circles were a lot more the tech/finance/rich parents type. But yeah there's obviously a market for it.