DJ TARA (Tara Duvivier) walks us through NYC’s Meatpacking Disctrict, once home to beloved nightclubs like APT and Cielo, and now the site of luxury retail stores, high-end restaurants, and a Tesla showroom.

Tara shares her observations on how NYC club culture has shifted since the late ‘90s, drawing from experience as a partygoer, DJ, event curator, and urban planner. She also talks about gentrification, displacement, and policing as drivers of a changing nightlife scene, for Black & Brown communities in particular, highlighting the rapid disappearance and forced closures of music/dance/gathering spaces.

Watch/ read our interview with DJ Tara below! Also, check out her project This Used to be a Club.

Keep up with DJ Tara: @djtaranyc (IG) | DJ Tara (SoundCloud)  


Tara: 

My name is Tara. I'm a DJ, I'm an urban planner, I am an (almost) lifelong New Yorker. I started my entry into music out of college. I came from Long Island after leaving Brooklyn many years ago, came back to New York to go to college. I went to school downtown, and the first thing I did I remember when I went to my little pre-semester prep is go to Fat Beats and just start buying up music. After that, just starting to feel things out, seeing what kind of clubs [are out there], realizing that The Village Voice would be my bible, and just being out and about and meeting people.

As I started to get through my college career, I was meeting other people, starting to go out to bars and clubs, even though I wasn't quite of age, getting in with no ID, thankfully. I really met some lifelong friends, just going out to different shows. That was really my entryway into going out and being in New York.

Lucas: How did you get into contributing to this scene in the way that you do now, through DJing and things like that?


Tara:

Alright, so how I got into my own contribution is my homies. So we had a group, it was my friend Kristy Wright, Derreck Johnson, Eric Raphael. We were going out all the time, so this must have been our early 20s. We had a really great time, we knew so many dope DJs. We were coming up against things that were just barriers to going out and really enjoying ourselves. We would go to really cool spots like APT, but then sometimes we would just find ourselves in more bougie establishments with a dress code and a long line, and it was like, well dang, can we find more stuff that's like APT? And wanting to contribute to that; realizing, hey, what kind of events would we want to throw for ourselves? So we decided we were going to form a little group called Rare Form, set up our LLC, and that we were going to just basically try our hand at parties. We knew DJs, we were like, let's just try to figure it out.

We ended up linking with a bunch of different people that were in the marketing space and the nightclub space. People would recommend us spots, and then we would just pop in and see what we could do. We would go talk to the owner — I mean, this was a different time, so you could just roll up to a club and just say, “hey, we do these parties,” or “hey, we have this DJ, we want to do a party here.” They probably would just throw you a shitty night of the week, but they would throw it to you and be like, “OK,” you get a few weeks, you might even get a month or even more to just try to prove yourself. So we decided we wanted to give it a go.

The first party we did — and for the longest time, we used to joke that that was like the most money we ever made doing parties — we actually had Questlove, and we did it at Greenhouse, but it was called something else before Greenhouse: Flow. That was our first party. It was over by Varick, I think, if I'm remembering properly.

So that was our first party that we did. I remember we got a really great bar deal. I think we got a beer sponsor, we just packed the place, and it was a really good time. So we were like, ok, this is going to be our thing. All of us had day jobs, so we weren't trying to quit our day jobs. It was like, this is something we want to do on the side. Since we're already out and about anyway, let's just try to do some cool shit with DJs that we know. So we just did that.

I don't know how, because we all had day jobs, but we were young, we were still going out every night of the week, damn near, except on the weekends. Going to some kind of open bar, some kind of listening party, some kind of amazing thing that was happening that you got lists for. 



Petrossian Caviar NYC, a boutique caviar shop at 419 West 13th St where APT was located.


Isa: What did it feel like to go out in that time, what did the general nightlife scene feel like?


Tara:

It just felt good. We were just going out. It was seriously like, what can we get into? It was really like that. What's going on?

There was always something. So-and-so worked at a magazine. They're doing a party because the new issue's dropping. So then you go and you get the free magazine. So-and-so got a new fashion line. And this is all, this is by no means trying to make it look like we were posh and being super fancy. This is just regular ass shit. It wasn't Vogue, it was Fader, it was stuff like that. So we would just go, we would just find something. There was a whole website, myopenbar.com.

I had a friend Derreck, who was a part of Rare Form. He was our graphic designer. At one point, he was working for Club Planet, so he would always have the in on certain spots, and a lot of what they did were club listings. Promoters would reach out to him directly to make sure that the events got listed, and that way, we also got on the list for these events because he's like, “hey, come through.” So we would just come.

Some of them weren't that great, but it was still a good time. It's A, we're on the list, it's free. Sometimes we got free bottles, it was a good time. There was always just something. Like if we knew a DJ that we really liked and we knew, and it wasn't going to be crazy at the door, we would just like, try to slide through.

At certain points in time, we would have access to a car, so that would make it super easy. Just to go to like different parts of Manhattan, because that was really where we would party. Manhattan was really the main hub. I know that's not really what the case is today. You know, now we're in Brooklyn, but when we were younger, it was really like anything like below 23rd Street. Like there were so many different spots to go to.

Aida: In your experience, what do you think is the importance of having a healthy, vibrant nightlife scene like you're talking about? And what role does that play, more broadly, in having more healthy communities?


Tara:

I think having a healthy nightlife scene is important for a few reasons.

I mean, the main reason is definitely for marginalized groups; that's really where folks are able to get together, congregate, enjoy music, and feel safe. I mean, not always, but that's at least been my experience.

My friends and I, we like hip hop. We would go see shows all the time. They were pretty accessible, weren't very expensive. We would go to Nuyorican because they would have open mic nights. We would go to Tramps, which wasn’t too far from here either, on 21st Street. It wouldn't just even be, you know, I guess what we think is typically nightlife, like going to the club — Some of it was just going to a bar and hearing a really great DJ or going to an open mic or live show.

Back then we had a lot more options, and because there were so many more options, it was just more affordable. Because it's like you can't really charge $60 when, you know, every other option in the vicinity is $5 to $10.

Also, I think it's just good to have a good, healthy nightlife scene because if this is supposed to be a 24-hour city, part of that is nightlife, but then there are other things that happen at night as well. People work overnight. People are cleaning office buildings, they're restocking shelves, they're delivering items. They're working overnight factory shifts. And when you have a really vibrant nightlife scene, that can help feed into an economy that supports all of those other things.

Nowadays, especially post-pandemic lockdown, a lot of people don't have a bodega that's open 24-7 by them anymore. For me, I'd have to walk a ways, while I used to have a few options in my area that were open late. So if there's nobody out in the streets around 4 or 5 in the morning, then, you know, they're not going to stay open. But at the same time, somebody who has to be at their shift at 4 or 5 in the morning or 6 in the morning, they don't have access to something to eat. We used to have multiple options for post club, we had multiple options; now there's so few options for that.

I think that it impacts other types of infrastructure and other types of just like amenities within a community, even transportation. I mean, we used to take the subway home, because yellow cabs were not taking you to Brooklyn and they weren't cheap. If we were mobbed up, if we had enough people, we were all going to get on the subway as a group at 3 in the morning and wait 40 minutes for the next train.

And then when you, you know, when we're starting to think about a city that doesn't have that vibrancy overnight, that means there's going to be fewer train service, you know, fewer bus service. And I know people don't want to think about it like that. [These days], I feel like we all just Uber, we just cab it, but that can be expensive and prohibitive to people. And I feel like it wasn't so much the case.

Also, things are a little bit more spread out now. Like if I were to be at Le Bain, I'm not going to go to Nowadays from here, but it used to be that, okay, we might be at APT and we might go around the corner to Cielo or some other place or, you know, walk or we would just, you know, walk or do something. And now there's not this closeness of nightlife spaces — which also has an impact on how people enjoy and experience it.



Lucas: Are there any other shifts you noticed in the nightlife scene?


Tara:

I mean, we're at the High Line, which wasn’t this, you know, beautiful park that we're sitting in today. And when I start to think about how this area was when we first started coming here, when it really was truly meatpacking, it was dirty because, you know, they're packing meat onto trucks and there's like water and it kind of smells like meat, you know, kind of like seeing that kind of use, but then also like being, like having this like ability to just go pop into like a club and it just looks like beautiful and it's amazing and it's a vibe. It was really great.

To me, I loved it because it's like this mixed, multi-use situation where in the daytime it is functioning as industry, there’s jobs, people are coming in, doing their work. Then they're leaving, and there's like another shift of people that are coming in, to just come and have a good time. Now we have a situation where property values are increasing and through new land use policy, a lot of rezonings have made it more friendly to build residential housing in this area, which is like a developer's dream because they can make...

Lucas: What's the zoning mechanism for that?


Tara:

Well, I have no idea what the zoning is here now, but before, it was zoned to be more industrial. And then what we saw here, what we saw in parts of Brooklyn, what I'm worried about, what we're probably going to see in Bushwick eventually, is that they’re going to do or apply for a change that will result in the zoning being more mixed use or just straight up residential. I mean, per square foot, the most that you can command rent-wise is residential. And then after that, commercial, so like retail. And then at the very bottom is industrial. And this area used to be industrial. So, you know, it's a field day.

[The high line] is a good example, I think a lot of private money was raised in order to build this. But as a result, I believe of some of the zoning changes that were happening to allow for more residential [development], there was an option where developers could either build or pay into a fund to build affordable housing, or they could pay into supporting the park.

And they all chose this [park] because they didn't want to deal with the affordability element of it. Like, of course, because this [park] is more attractive. The fancier you make this, you know, it's going to be more appealing to people, they can charge more rent.

Nightlife is attractive, but nobody wants to be up under it. So there was always going to be a shift once things started to change in this area, so that nightlife would have to eventually leave. It's like, oh, it's, it's loud. It's dangerous. You know, somebody puked on my stoop and, you know, I get these things. These are inconveniences. They're not the best quality of life situations, but you also moved to this area.

There's always going to be a priority or prioritization of people who can pay the money to live in these areas. And if they don't want clubs in their neighborhood, clubs will not be in their neighborhood.

Aida: You're kind of touching on it already, but could you speak more to your work as an urban planner and how that is connected to the work you do in the nightlife space?


Tara:

Okay, so it wasn't always. When I started working and when I went to school for urban planning and I graduated, I was really focused on affordable housing because it was really my thing. I mean, I'd lived here all my life and I would always have these questions about why, what's happening here? Why is this getting built? What's going on? And I never understood that there was an actual like whole field behind it. I literally found out about urban planning by accident. And then when I discovered it, I was like, okay, this is what I want to get into, because this is where I'm going to get all my questions answered.

I really started in affordable housing because I was hitting a point in my life where a lot of my friends were leaving New York. It was starting to get really expensive. It was really challenging.

A lot of [my friends] were creative. So it's like, I can't, you know, I came here to be able to live here and create and I can't do that. I have to pay my rent. I got to pay, I got to work this job, this soul-sucking ass job. I don't have the time to do what I want to do, what I came here to do. So a lot of folks ended up leaving. Thankfully, they ended up going, you know, leaving and doing really well for themselves. But it also, it always annoyed me and saddened me that they couldn't stay here and do it here.

It was like the mid-aughts, yeah, mid-aughts. A lot of my folks started to leave. Especially when you're thinking about New York in the eighties, you know, how all of these artists, musicians were able to live here and they were living in probably not even, you know, the shittiest apartment, but paying $150 a month. And, you know, “yeah, I was working, I was waiting tables, but I was still, you know, doing these things.” When you think about how Patti Smith, David Byrne, like all of these folks talk about how they were living here and still managing to scrape by. That story was no longer existing or it was becoming like a less, less of a story, less of a thing. People were really like, dang, it's expensive here. Like I can't, I can't do the things. You know, my rent is not $150. My rent is over a thousand and now it's two, $3,000, which is to me insane.

I could have never. I have a rent stabilized apartment; if I lost that apartment, I don't know where I would live. I don't know if I could afford to live in the city.

So that's really what started me off, and I did affordable housing for a while. And then I think I just got a little burnt out and I realized that there were other things. I was like, okay, you know, I'm seeing how things work in affordable housing, and this is really important, but I still had other questions. I had questions around clubs, like why I'm starting to see places that I like close, you know, and which was a common experience when I was really going out to clubs when I was younger, but we would see places just be replaced by another spot. Like, okay, this club closed, but you know, another club's opening up in its place. [As I grew older], I started to see a lot less of that and instead seeing places just completely closing down, buildings getting torn down, it becoming something completely different.

I had questions around that, like what's going on there or even just restaurants that I like. Things that I enjoyed were closing and it was being replaced with things that were just no longer accessible to me. So it was like, dang, as big as the city is, it was starting to feel really small.

That's when I started wanting to not do affordable housing anymore and really try to be in a position to get an understanding of how all of these processes happen. How can a developer go and put in their application to get a zoning change, to build what they want to build? What do these decision makers think about when they're considering these applications? So I ended up going over to the city for a bit and working for an elected official who did have a role in the land use process. So I saw a lot of land use applications.

Actually, this [the high line] was part of the area that I was working, everything below 14th street. So I would see a little bit of this. I think by the time I started there in 2018, a lot of the rezoning and stuff had been done. And this [the high line], if not open, was about to open.

So it was already too late over here, but I was thinking about the Lower East Side and seeing a lot of changes happening there at the time — the Lower East Side when I was younger was not really like a place to to party too much, (a little bit, but not too, too much). Then it became more and more of a party area around Delancey, Essex. That started to change too, because people didn't want all that in their area, and the demographics of the area started to change. So it was just interesting, and I really just wanted to get a sense of how all of that happened. And yeah, I learned a lot, honestly. It made me a little more pessimistic than I was, but at least I got an understanding of why things are the way they are.

While the city is so attractive and people want to move here, people also want to make money. There's always going to be this push and desire to build, build, build more housing, but we're not thinking about building more affordable housing, just build more housing in general.

Everyone is thinking it's like a supply and demand thing. It's not that simple. You know, there are a lot of vacancies for apartments that are super, super expensive. So if it was a supply and demand thing, we'd still have a housing shortage, but I don't think it would be as critical as it is today because rents are still really, really high.

And then I ended up moving to where I am now. We work with a lot of community groups, they come to us and say, “hey, the city wants to do something, a developer is going to do something. We want to get a better understanding about what's happening and what we can do to advocate for our communities because we have concerns about this project.”

That really gave me a good opening to do more research and policy work. And in that, and while still going out and still seeing stuff that was going on in the clubs, I'm like, this is connected, I know it's connected — I just don't know how to connect it. I guess I was just kind of like dealing with them separately. So when I would see things close, I'm thinking about what might've resulted in its closing. You know, especially if it's an apartment building today, it's very clear that that's what it was — you know, they wanted to close it down and make it an apartment building, but sometimes they close it down and they make it a retail shop, or a high end restaurant and it's just not the same kind of use.

So I started to really think about that and about places that I go to now, which are largely in Brooklyn, where I'm starting to see the same thing. I live in central Brooklyn, which is very like historically Black, you know, Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene. There has been quite a shift there. Thinking about the nightlife when I started, this is the early aughts when I started to stay in Brooklyn to go party, that's where we would be. We'd be in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, on DeKalb there was like Madiba; bars, restaurants that kind of flip into like a club scene late at night. When I think about DeKalb today, it doesn't look like that. There's still a couple of bars that are still left, but for the most part. I just remember it'd be like one or two in the morning on a warm night, and there would just be people walking up and down the street, like just going from spot to spot. You know, such and such place had a DJ and, you know, you're just kind of enjoying yourself, and yeah, it was like a little strip. It doesn't look like, you know, Wyckoff or Bushwick, but it was a little lively.

I started to see [changes] happening — as I'm starting to see neighborhood shift, as property values are going up, as people are being displaced, as we're seeing more areas gentrified and we're seeing people now starting to demonize the spaces that were once attractive to them. which I think, you know, to me is a mind fuck. It’s like, even if you didn't partake of it, it seems weird that you don't even want it to exist. We’ve even seen the past couple of years with the Black-owned spaces like Bed-Vyne Brew, Ode to Babel, places that I really thought were going to be long-standing, just having a lot of issues with policing, community neighborhood complaints. It just started really making me think about like, dang, like what can we do about this? Like there has to be something here that I think people aren't aware of. I think people just think like, well, that's just how, that's just the nature of this city. And I'm like, it's not, it wasn't always.


Bed-Vyne Brew, opened in 2013 and closed permanently in June 2025.

Isa: I have a question, which I think you just started to get into, but what would you...how do we protect these, the spaces and the scenes that are left?


Tara:

So what I was saying in terms of people are moving to areas, you know, presumably being somewhat attracted to the vibe, the energy of the area. And then all of a sudden they are turning on what maybe attracted them to the area or, “Oh, I didn't realize there was a club here!” You know, we have clubs, neighborhoods have clubs.

It wasn't unusual for us to just, again, like bop around a different neighborhood, especially when we were in Manhattan to go out, especially over the course of a night. Like, yeah, you, we would just, I'm like, we would end up all over. I mean, still pretty much downtown, but you might, we would start out over here and then we might end up on the, the lower, you know, the Lower East Side somewhere. It wasn't a thing. Now it's less so now I feel like you just kind of have to pick your area and stay there because there's not really an option for you to move around, or if you can, it's going to cost you because the places have covers. Thinking about around Wyckoff, Flushing, there's mad spots, but you can't necessarily bop around cause every spot you got to pay a cover, you got to pay a ticket. Whereas before, we used to just be able to go around and it's like, okay, we're either on the list or if you're not on the list, we're just going to go somewhere else. And we're going to pay $5 or we're going to pay nothing.

Now it's just way more cost prohibitive and way more limited because [Bushwick] that's the one area I feel like in New York right now that you can go to and see a variety of scenes, at least a place that I'd want to go to. Here [Meatpacking District], depending on the night, I'll, you know, I might want to go to Le Bain and check out a DJ that's playing, but otherwise, if you told me like, what's there to do here in the Meatpacking on a random night, you know, I'd be like, okay, have you checked out Le Baine? Depending on the DJ, if it's a Wednesday, absolutely. You know, but that's one. Meanwhile, it used to be that, it used to be Cielo, used to be Lotus. There used to be a few options within this area. And if it wasn't that, then it's like, okay, well then you can just go further down 14th and go to another spot. So it doesn't exist today.

In terms of thinking about how we want to protect it, I think that's kind of the challenge. When I started to really try to incorporate this into my work, one of the things that stood out to me the most was Council Member Rafael Espinal’s charge on getting the cabaret law repealed and starting the Office of Nightlife.

After he left, we were interviewing him and he's like, “listen, there's a conflict because a lot of people see nightlife as a business, but it's also culture.” So you have this push and pull where, you know, and it's already bad enough that we don't value culture enough in this city, which is wild because this is what we're supposed to be known for. While there are resources for artists, it's really challenging to stay here and be an artist and earn a living wage. I think it's always been the case, but it's even more challenging now. So you have that.

On top of that because you've got community pushback. One of the things that I saw quite a bit when I was working for the city, a lot of community boards are, they have some power when it comes to issuing liquor licenses. And a lot of them don't want to issue liquor licenses because it's like, “we don't want some kind of bar that sounds like noise. That sounds like somebody is going to be drunk. That sounds like crime. That sounds like danger. That doesn't sound safe.”

They’re not realizing that, you know, maybe the flip side to that could be the fact that like a bar on your corner might mean that if you're walking home late at night there's, you know, there's some light, there's some eyes on the street. I have a bar now two blocks away from my house, so if I do find myself taking the subway home late at night, I love that I'm passing a 24-hour market, and then another half a block there's the [bar]. That's two blocks that I don't have to worry about there being any danger, or if there is danger, I can just jump into these stores.

People don't really think about it in that way — they just think that it's going to be loud, drunk, and disorderly. But then that's where DJs can earn a living, where people can get together that don't normally get together, somebody can go have a good night out and enjoy themselves. It’s frustrating because I think a lot of folks know that, but they've forgotten it. Some folks are older and they've aged out and that's another reason why I'm really about supporting or figuring out how we get more intergenerationality with our night life, because I don't see myself aging out of wanting to dance and listen to music and be outside, but I do think there is this stigma, even among young people today; where it's like, “I don't want to be the old head in the club,” and it's like, well, why wouldn't you be? Like, what's wrong with being the old head in the club if you're having a good time?

I just want to listen to music and dance. Shouts to Bjork when she's like, “I'm gonna be 90 and in the rave.” I'm like, hell yeah, why not? But I do think people feel like that's like a young person's thing and they, they kind of don't want to be that, but even if that were the case and you feel like you're too old to do that, why would you want to deny it for the next generation?

When you talk to these artists who were here in the 80’s, they talk about how much of a great time they had living in this city and they're like, it's not the same now. I think they feel it's like a lost cause, and I don't think it's a lost cause, I just think that there needs to be more policy intervention, there needs to be more direct support to artists, more direct support to everyone, honestly.

I know that people are talking about doing artist housing now. I don't think artists are any more special than, you know, like a custodian, I think there just needs to be affordable housing in general that anybody who is in need of it can afford. If people want, you know, if people want to earn a living cleaning office buildings, they can do that, if they want to earn a living, you know, doing videography during the day, they can do that too. I think when we start to kind of separate out the artists and I think we're going to start like turning on artists. I don't want to do that, I think we just need to make the city affordable across the board and that's going to have the intended results that we want, where it's an affordable place for everyone.

I also think we don't do that too much here in New York and in the United States in general. Overseas they do support their nightlife scenes with government funding, I think we might have to figure out how to identify spaces that will remain spaces that will support arts and culture, specifically nightlife. I don't necessarily want to say like a government owned club, but if there is an older building that they could support financing for and put it in a community land trust that the community can control, so it can have multiple uses.

I think there are a lot of different creative solutions that we haven't looked into yet and I think we're at a point now where we're so focused on trying to build more housing that we're not thinking about what kind of housing we're building and we're not thinking about the other parts of what makes the city great and that is arts, culture, and nightlife.


Aida: A minute ago I feel like you started talking about specifically Black-owned spaces in Brooklyn closing down, could you expand on that?


Tara:

Yeah, I mentioned Ode to Babel, I mentioned Bed-Vyne Brew, I mean they both closed for various reasons, but I also know that they were not without complaints from neighbors. I think a lot of that has to do with those spaces being in areas that were changing with changing demographics and the demographics knowing that they're paying more money for rent wanting quiet. Maybe a lot of them aren't from New York so they're coming from areas where it was quiet at night, and they want it to be quiet at night, but I'm also like you live in New York fucking City. That doesn't mean I think you should have to listen to like pounding techno at two in the morning on a Tuesday, but it's a Friday night and you hear folks having a smoke outside and you live on a major street, you live right across the street from a spot, I don't know what to tell you, you know.

Maybe you shouldn't have picked that spot. Maybe you could talk to people too and figure out ways to mitigate. I think we should be entitled to quiet at reasonable hours, but in a city like New York, those what we would consider reasonable hours are gonna vary, especially when it comes to weekends, you know, warm nights.

Culturally, you know, where I grew up, if it's a hot summer night, we're going to be outside, so I'm going to put a little boom box on the stoop and we're going to listen to music. And that's been demonized, that's been over-policed, because people aren't used to that. You came here, this is what we do. Historically, in this city and across the world, people of color, specifically Black people, have been over-policed, targeted way more, so I don't think it's a surprise or a shock or untrue to say that those spaces were targeted because they were frequented by Black people. We see it all the time, people used to get stop and frisked for being Black, so the, you know, to take the extra step to say, yeah, these places were probably over-policed or over-scrutinized because their clientele were largely Black people is not incendiary, it's not. I know I'm not wrong.

I think it's even more offensive, it's more violent, as people are starting to see their neighborhoods change, when it comes to their neighbors, when it comes to their own selves, then to lose the amenities of the area. A place like that was an amenity, I lived in that area before it was Brew, and when Brew opened, it was so great to have a space that was open to just have a drink in my own neighborhood. Then I started DJing there, and that was even better, because now this is a place where I can kind of develop myself as a DJ, earn some money, because we all need to earn some money, and be around the homies. It was great, like if I wasn't DJing there, I was just there with my brother or my friends, just having some drinks. We would do book club stuff in there. It wouldn't even be like a raging party, we'd just go in there to meet, let's have a drink, let's chat, let's catch up. So those places are important, because there are limited spaces for us to do that in a way that feels comfortable in a place that feels safe.

Where I live now, there are places I walk in, and I'm like, dang, I'm the only Black person, and this used to be a Black neighborhood. I grew up in Flatbush, so it's still kind of still Black there, but where I live now, like two blocks from where Biggie came up, and there are spaces where I can be the only Black person. Even just walking down the street at any point in time, some of the folks that grew up with him are still around, but a lot of them are no longer there; they either have just moved on, or a lot of them were pushed out. How messed up is that? We have all these Biggie murals and iconography on Fulton and St. James, you've got the street naming, but then you know, the apartment that he grew up in is a condo that's millions of dollars. It's a little bit of a mindfuck, and it's messed up, because it's like, what, you know, what remains? I mean, we have a new bar now, but it’s pretty quiet, for the most part, coming home. I didn't grow up there, so I don't know what it was like in the 90s, but from what I've learned from older neighbors, it just was more of a community, for better or for worse.

I think a lot of folks who move here and aren't familiar with that, they don't place a value for it, they just think that it's a nuisance, or this isn't my thing, this is not how I grew up, that's not my kind of community, I don't like that because it's loud, or because, you know, it's Black people. They're just not used to it, and instead of just being like, “that's not for me,” and just letting people live and mind their own business, it's like, no, I need to change that, because I don't feel safe.

Feeling safe and being safe are two different things, but feeling safe supersedes anything when it comes to how people operate in this world. A lot of times it has these really bad consequences, and displacement is one of them, death is another. You know, people, people die when others don't feel safe. They want to call the police, I don't feel safe, I'm gonna call the police, and then you're calling police on, on a group of people who have historically been lynched by police. Because that's not their experience, they can't even think past their own experience, so it's really fucked up.

Isa: When you were talking about the noise complaint, the idea of calling the police rather than just going talking to the people who were on the spot. I feel like you mentioned old neighbors leaving as well, the relationships that are lost, and the personal intimacy or grace that is part of a community that is lost. I was wondering if you could, like, speak on some of that.


Tara:

I think when I go clubbing in different places around here [the Meatpacking District], I think it was a little bit different, because it wasn't very residential. So maybe there were noise complaints, but a lot of places around here were clubs. I think when the population was a little bit more used to that kind of thing, people would be more apt to roll up on an owner, and say, “hey, what up, I live upstairs, you know, can we work something out.” 311 thankfully has made it a little bit better, because it's not just an immediate police response, but you are still logging noise complaints, which do eventually go to the police. They [used to] use that as a means to raid spaces, which is something that only within the past few years was banned. Getting all of these different agencies together, going into a spot and shutting it down, you know, because, “oh, we got a noise complaint,” or, you know, “somebody's bag got stolen here,” any arbitrary reason, and the club owners wouldn't even be told the reason, you would just have, like, Department of Buildings, Department of Environmental Protection, (because of the noise), the Fire Department, the NYPD, and the State Liquor Authority. All of these agencies would literally mob into a space and raid it. So you saw a lot of that, and that's supposedly an activity that is not supposed to happen anymore, but I think it just happens in different ways now.

I don't want to romanticize it, you know, like everyone was neighborly, but I think when you are coming from a place where you can be apart from the things that bother you, when you can just call someone to handle it for you, people, I think, are more inclined to do that here. These newer populations, because it's, like, just call the police, the police will handle it, I don't need to handle it, New York's a scary place, I don't want to get into a fight. I'm also, like, again, why did you move here? You're gonna have to talk to your neighbors. I live in a building, and I have new neighbors, and I'm like, “hey, hello,” and it's crickets. We live here, you know. I might see you struggling with your bag at the door, and if I say hello, I see your face, I might be able to help you out. I'm not gonna, like, rob you, I'm not gonna come knocking on your door asking for twenty dollars. Shit, my neighbors do, and I don't mind doing that. You know, it's just very strange that people have this idea that they come here, and they therefore have to kind of keep to themselves. I think you should just be able to knock on your neighbor's door, or leave a note, you know, and actually sign that shit, don't just leave an anonymous note. Put your apartment; “hey, if you want to talk about this, you know, I'm here,” but I think people are just afraid, and they think it's dangerous to do that. I’m like, again, why would you move here? That's why I think people are more inclined to just call the cops, because they don't want to deal, yeah.

Lucas: I know that you don't just DJ, but also throw events. I'm kind of curious what you think about the significance of having recurring events. Also, if you've had any challenges, whether they're structural, or just in general, with putting on events in clubs or outside.


Tara:

I don't do as many events as I used to, but for us, always, money is an issue. Also, there has been a shift in how nightlife takes place in New York. Parties used to be more weekly, so when we were doing parties, it would be weekly, and we all had day jobs, and we would have a party on a Tuesday night, or Wednesday, or Thursday, like, a night where the next day, we'd have to wake up the next day, and go to work. Sometimes, that was a little bit of a challenge, but it was cool, because at least you have the consistency there. Things started to shift. It's a little bit of the owners wanting more of a switch up, and also, the DJs, like, oh my God, like, doing this every week is, is not the most ideal, so I think, at first, I kind of welcomed a little bit of a shift.

When you start to move to a monthly model, I think it's harder to keep a momentum with parties. I'm sure that's probably a challenge for a lot of people who are doing parties nowadays. You know, this month might have been great because there weren't, like, eight other parties going on, but next month, you know, there's four other parties happening that might be one-offs, so people are more inclined to go to the one-off, because they can just go to your party next month. This used to happen back in the day, too, but you just had to wait a week; you might have a good week, a bad week, a good, you know? Then a bunch of good weeks, and then maybe one bad week. Now, when you're stretching it out over the month, if that one day in the month doesn't do well, you may not be back the next month, which makes me sad. That makes it really hard for people to put on events and have them be sustainable.

It’s always been an issue, trying to figure out money. Depending on the spot you'd go to, you'd have to have a bar guarantee, so if the bar guarantee at the end of the night was five Gs, you only made three, you’ve got to come up with that two, and you’ve got to pay the DJ. Thankfully, it wasn't that much, but there would be nights where we were all hitting the ATM because we didn't meet the minimum, and we got to pay out. It wasn't two Gs, thankfully, it might have been a few hundred dollars, and we all had day jobs, so that helped. It wasn't too devastating economically for us. But I do think that's one of the biggest things — a lot of places now, they put a lot of onus on the DJs and or promoters, in terms of, not only do I need a bar guarantee, I'm also renting you the venue, so now there's an additional fee.

My thing is, why is there a bar guarantee and a venue rental? It's either one or the other. If I'm covering your expenses for the night, and you're making all of the bar, like, that's your profit, because I just covered all your expenses through this rental fee. Or the same thing with the bar minimum. If your bar minimum should be commensurate with what it would cost for you to operate, it could be whatever, so it's interesting when I'm hearing stories from other folks talking about, you know, “I had to pay a rental fee, and then I had a bar guarantee,” and I'm, like, well, then how do you make your money? I think it's extractive, it's extortion, low-key. They're guaranteeing their money on the front end. All of the onus is on the DJs and the promoters to put on, and then you have that expectation — you need a certain number of people at the door paying full price for tickets, so everyone's getting squeezed. Not to say that the venue owners aren't getting squeezed, because they have their rent and insurance, too, but at the same time, [the venues are] also getting paid two ways, and that income's guaranteed, whereas the DJ's income is not guaranteed. We have stories where we didn't get paid because of a bad night, which is fucked up. Then when we have fewer spaces, that's fewer opportunities for people to just do cool shit, to do nightlife stuff.

The longest lasting event that my friends and I do is Donuts Are Forever, and it's got a fundraising element to it. Every year, it's a challenge to do that event, and we just did our 20th. 19 years later, to still have to like, okay, how are we gonna do this event, you know, what can, what favors can we call in, you know, how much money can we put together, you know? This year, by some miracle, we actually got some sponsors. We actually got enough money to put this event on without it costing a huge ton of money, after doing it 19 times, you know? So, you know, I’m thinking about folks who are trying to start out to do parties and they don't have those resources, and here we are, 19 years later, still having those same challenges.



Donuts Are Forever 3 (2009). Public Assembly in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  Photo by Mel D. Cole
It's also a challenge trying to find a space that is affordable, doing this as a fundraiser. [We’re] coming across certain venues wanting really high fees, we're like, well, “this is a fundraiser,” you know, and our crowd does drink, you're gonna make some money. A lot of folks, they don't want to hear it, they don't care, they want to see their money up front, they don't want to trust it. I can give you 19 years of photos showing you how successful this event was, and people will still want to say no.

I think, funny enough, we only had venue issues in recent years. When we first started out, it was easier, because there were more spaces, right? It was, like, if this place isn't available, I would try this [other] one. One year we did it at Bell House, and I remember, I was, like, nobody's gonna come to Gowanus, but people came — it was cold as hell that night, but we had a great night. The person who was managing over at Bell House moved over to Santos, and next year, he was like, you want to do this party here? I was, like, damn, we didn't even have to ask, like, somebody came to us and wants, and wants us to do our party there? Wow, this has never happened before. I know that that was the case because there were so many different options. I think people just wanted to have good stuff in their space, you know? A place like Santos had all different kinds of shit going on in there, so for somebody to reach out, like, wow, “I know what your event's like, it's gonna be a good night, do you want to come do this?” And all we had to do was show up and do what we do, and it was a great night, it was so refreshing. It's a little trickier, it's a little tougher now, because everyone's got more of a bottom line.

A lot of folks, they may not necessarily know what we do, because we're a party that only happens once a year, you know, we don't get a lot of press. I mean, people who know, know. But it's not something that draws a lot of attention, so it makes it even more challenging. Now we have this rise of social media, where a lot of what you do or how people are willing to support you or let you into their space, depends on what your social media numbers are. I didn't come up in that era, so, but that doesn't mean we can't bring people to the spot. I mean, we just did Donuts, and we sold out. I think our Instagram following is not even 10,000 people. I think if we just called or emailed a venue and said, “hey, this is an event that we do,” and I showed them the socials, they're [going to say] no. Meanwhile, we had a hugely successful event. I think that's another thing that's challenging, why we also kind of have a shift now, for better or for worse. I think people can use content for good, to educate folks, to keep people aware, to connect people. A lot of folks are just trying to build a brand so they can build their careers, which is good and bad. When it comes to DJing, to me, I just feel like, because you're not necessarily leveraging it to get people to listen to your mixes — you're just kind of leveraging your appearance, or like the one cool blend that you were able to get off. Meanwhile, you know, we have to think about the course of a night, you have to think about hours in which you're playing. Like, no nightlife experience is one snippet; we have our moments, but, you know, for me, it's a whole thing. So I think that's another challenge that exists today, that didn't quite exist back then.

At the end of the day, we just have to keep imagining and figuring it out, because that's what they were doing back in the day, that's what we were doing when we were doing our parties, just trying to figure it out. We did a party once where we served soup. It was great, oh my God, it was so good. DJ Scribe had somebody that made soup, and we did this in the winter, it was in the Lower East Side (this place does not exist anymore), and we had the crockpot in the corner, and people could serve themselves some soup. I remember one time, that person couldn't make soup, so then Kristy and I made like, a black bean soup. Her apartment smelled like cumin for, like, a week. It was just like, “fuck it let's just do something different,” like, we just wanted to do different shit. And it's really cool to see a lot of parties that are going on today, where people are just doing different stuff, like, they've incorporated fundraising, incorporated mutual aid, like, every night they do this event, there's a mutual aid element, or every night they are featuring or centering people that aren't normally featured or centered. So I love that, but I do think it's tougher when there are fewer spaces, and tougher when people are a little less discerning, and really are relying on things that are not so authentic, like social media. Not really because they're not in the scene, they're just relying on the social media to inform them, but, you know, they're not really out in the streets, so, yeah.


 

 
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