maybe the current economic model of “the club” is reaching the end of its life cycle,
but the need for a shared community communal space will continue. people are already making this, beyond existing frameworks and outside of the current business templates.
notice how its mainly 50+ people asking if clubs are dead? = “why is our unsustainable thing not beneficial to us anymore?”
clubs are alive and well with those who are excluded for the current business model.
i don’t see the kids clubbing as a lifestyle anymore - all the reasons mentioned above but a few others too.
for young women, clubbing can be dangerous, everyone has a story of spiked drinks or terrible drugs or handsy scumbags or general creeps. even in the safer spaces, it happens.
i feel like people my age lived through an era where there were so many musical changes thanks to technology - there was always a new scene that was fun and exciting, records you could only heard if you were in the clubs. there really isn’t that anymore. sure there’s new subgenres, but it seems like everything goes through the same production methods or plug-ins, no matter what it is. it’s rare that i hear something and think “oh, well that’s certainly different”.
when i first moved to seattle, i spent a full year out six nights a week. i had an entire culture of friends that i could count on seeing in different spaces, a few times a week. now i see them in the grocery store, or we shoot each other texts - we’re older and we’re out of rotation. the younger folks have different ways of staying connected, they don’t need to go out repeatedly to see pals.
it also feels like that here in the cities, we’ve just run out of spaces that are affordable, centralized and malleable. rents are out of control, and ubers to-and-from what’s available cost half of a good night out.
anyway, i wish it wasn’t this way. i wonder all the time what my kid is going to do between in that early adulthood - will they be able to afford a night out? will they have to live in the far flung suburbs or nearly-forgotton cities just to be able to build their own scene?
and here’s another problem - it doesn’t feel like anyone is interested in doing anything that doesn’t scale. every last endeavor seems like everyone anticipates growing into something mega. everything is monetized - or could/should be. everything has a dollar value. some days it feels like every last activity i’ve ever loved has someone chasing the financial reward from it, and that part is all anyone wants to talk about.
those two dudes who tried to buy the USB are calculating that two hunski is cheap as hell considering the time investment to find the tracks, or to develop something they really love. a cheap shortcut to a bigger payout.
it feels like a long ways from renting a disused restaurant, painting everything black, cobbling together a frankenstein sound system and charging $5 a head to get a bunch of folks to listen to music they couldn’t hear anywhere else.
I think the only way clubs come back is if AI takes over all menial jobs, there is some kind of universal basic income, and people find themselves needing/wanting to spend their time with other people again, for fun. The human experience. The DJ might be a robot, but that’s another story.
I don’t think that’s aimed at me in any way but I only posed the question as I thought it was an interesting topic and everyone will have a pov.
oh of course not aimed at anyone particular, and it’s a fascinating topic! I think the death of clubs could be a metric in this phase of capitalism, include death of theatre, ballet, cinema… Big tech has removed alot of need/want, to go out and experience these things irl😔
*I’ve been getting better at writing, I hope🥴and not writing the most random stuff that first comes to mind
My 18 year old son has been having a great time at Lost in the old Odeon cinema on Shaftesbury Ave. Him and his mates don’t seem to think clubs are dead.
I’m struggling to remember the last actual ‘club’ I went to.
That said, against all better judgement, we are going as a family to Ibiza for a week in July (I know…), which I’m absolutely dreading tbh, but dad duty comes first, right? The thought of getting dragged into some of these places is actually terrifying - but they want to experience Hii and probably Amnesia. Cosmo and Una are playing at 528 one of the nights we are there - does anyone that’s been know if they allow young’uns in, or is it the same policy as Pikes?
I saw that Jean Michel Jarre is playing Amnesia in July, which I found pretty bizarre
We’ve seen venues close over the last 10/15 years here in the UK so understandably clubbing isnt what it was. In London we had the End, Turnmills, Plastic People, countless places in dalston and now its a fraction of what it was.
On the other hand I’ve been living in Bristol for 3 years now and clubbing here doesn’t feel dead. I do think it’s helped by a large student population. I hardly go out but when I’ve been to Love Inn or Strange Brew, they’re busy and kids having fun.
This was an article on the BBC website only yesterday.
‘Club vibes without the hangover’: The twenty-somethings going out - in the gym Forget nightclubs. Us twenty-somethings are going out - to the gym - BBC News
I asked my friend’s son who is 23 if clubs were dead. He said no and proceeded to list about 10 places of which I’d heard of none. Went on Instagram, they’re all thriving. The underground isn’t dead even in New England.
Main stream clubs seem to be dying. Obviously a lot are closing but the good ones should survive and thrive . But the underground and comitted teams you spoke of, its so good right now, the DiY club scene, audiophile clubs and bars are possibly as good as ever. More and more DJs seem to be playing more varied sets, I feel the future is very bright.
Just because us old duffers haven’t heard of them, doesn’t mean there aren’t current thriving spaces. The kids don’t want us there, and rightly so.
When I was 18/19/20s, the idea that people older than my Dad’s age at that time would be in the same club as me would have been very strange. Also that the DJ would be old enough to be my grandad in some cases, totally weird.
It would have been weird if there were lots of older folk at clubs. And there weren’t, but the one time I really remember seeing older folk they looked really interesting and it was a great vibe they brought. They stood out in a good way.
As to whether clubs are dead more generally, there seem to be some smaller shindigs displaying signs of rude health. My mates keep telling me about amazing Sunday nights in Edinburgh at Sneaky Pete’s. Vlad Ivk was off the charts and Roman Flugel was a joy. So long as there’s people getting buzzed by the music and each other’s company, there’s hope.
Yes very true, anyone who was much older was instantly fascinating (and often a bit mad).
really tis the end of an era. so true that you usually can divide clubs up into those held together by gaffer tape and those that are not 
I think in the 70s/80s the only older folk in clubs would’ve been elite bohemians, Warhols, Jaggers and anyone seduced by the KU or 54 glamour. That may well have inspired the acid house generation to follow suit (esp with fewer people having kids)