The Introduction to My Book: The Art of Nightlife
Disclaimer
This book introduction is completely raw and unedited. If you catch salmonella from consuming it, don’t say I didn’t warn you. On the other hand, if you absolutely love it and are like, “OMG he’s really writing that!” Then I’d love to count on your support when I launch my crowdfunding campaign. Email me at hello[at]philsantos.net or sign up for my newsletter to stay connected.
Without further ado…
There exists a garden in a quickly gentrifying corner of New York that holds the secret to a brighter future. To the left of the garden is a bodega, potholes line the street, and an old junkyard mechanic is a few doors down.
But in this garden, a magical utopia gets erected every Sunday.
As you walk in, you’re greeted by an enthusiastic high five, “Hey that was nice.” — You wander in past the entrance to be greeted by a buzzing world of activity. Humans everywhere, kind people around your age and older... even some younger ones... and they seem so damn... happy? What’s going on here?
Why do these folks all seem to be bouncing around socializing... is this some kind of Christian summer camp or early 30s well-adjusted cute people meetup? A sharply dressed older man smiles at you as you wander in. You see groups of guys and girls playful, flirting, laughing, and... that’s weird – making eye contact... but they’re just... oh, I guess they’re just being nice.
As you walk further into the garden, you notice people gathering around a sonic thump. You start to feel it in your chest. A few hundred of the most friendly-looking people you’ve ever seen are dancing their hearts out to a thump thump thump. kick - hi-hat... oh this is house music... but where are the ravers.. the glow sticks... nobody seems to be off their knobber on drugs...
No this is wholesome good-natured fun... *bump* a stranger lightly knocks into you... they are so warm, apologetic, kind... is this a nice decent human beings meetup...?
What kind of kool-aid is this because with these palm trees and the gentle sun and the soul in this groove... you’re feeling about ready to jump in.
This ain’t no cult. It’s Brooklyn, baby. Welcome to Mr Sunday, a wholesome, family-friendly Sunday afternoon gathering that brings together a multi-genre, multi-racial, and multi-generational crowd that’s not too fashion-forward but smiles easily.
They’re not there to get drunk, get laid, or worship the profit Xenu. These kind, approachable strangers and friends are gathering on a Sunday afternoon to live their best lives in community.
They’re there to dance a bit. Chat a bit. Maybe go deep into a trance state on the dancefloor. Make new friends. See old ones. And feel a part of something bigger than their online social bubble.
And that relational aspect couldn’t be any more important.
The verdict is in: our social health matters. [research] Western societies (and by colonial extension, the world) have largely stepped away from the organized religions of yesterday. [research ]
We’ve even left the bowling groups, neighborhood clubs, and other social organizations that used to root us in a sense of local community.
And when we do happen to make a real damn friend in the post-college work-life-unbalanced haze, it’s usually not a very good one. [research]
Studies show that building a vibrant social life is as healthy as a smoker giving up smoking 15 cigarettes a day, or an obese person becoming fit... yeah, you read that right. [research]
And though that hot new VC-funded tech startup might claim to foster community and connection, I’m skeptical of any innovation that claims to connect us but monetizes itself by gluing our eyeballs to screens and selling our attention to advertisers.
Technology is not the solution when the introduction of technologies that claim to “connect us” have the average gen z’er spending 4 hours a day looking at a screen. [research]
So the answer has to come from the IRL solutions.
We need to meet more people. Have more authentic conversations with those people. See those acquaintances around enough for them to develop into friendships. Participate in meaningful activities that develop those friendships into best friends and a core group. Integrate those friend groups with larger values-aligned communities – and then maybe we’ll have a chance at peak relational health. Maybe then we’ll gain back the modern equivalent of the tight egalitarian groups that our brains evolved to thrive in.
Easy task right? We just need to create safe and engaging events that people repeatedly attend and experience meaningful moments among peers who share similar values... so obviously dance parties, right?
Well if you're like most people, you probably think that a party, a dance floor, a concert or god forbid, a bar, is NOT the place to find any of that good wholesome fun and connection.
And hey in many cases you’d be right. Parties can be toxic cesspools of masculine bravado, showboating, binge drinking, creepiness, and shitty line dance music.
And even many underground parties, which typically have more musical and aesthetic integrity, are not really guaranteed to meet our needs in healthy sustainable ways. They can promote excessive drug use, staying up so late you fuck up your morning, and in many places, being too cool (read: anxious) to smile at someone you don’t know.
In my years as a DJ and promoter, every one of the dozens of bar owners I’ve worked with has paid lip service to the values of community, connection, and authenticity – and often in the very next moment asked me how many people my party can bring out and how many drink$ they’ll order.
iI’s no wonder that so many people have given up on nightlife. Well-intentioned as they might be (many are), the very creators at the helm of major bars, clubs, and parties are not really engaging with a key tenet of a great night out: the problem of connection.
I think we can do better. Nightlife, as it exists, is often a great way to blow off steam for a night, see some great music, and maybe find a drunken hookup. That’s all totally fine and necessary.
But what if nightlife could actually be a strategically powerful lever to solve the loneliness crisis?
What if these fun, sexy, celebratory spaces that so many people ALREADY like going to could be optimized to give us the medicine we need: more friendships, deeper conversations, and the inter-connected communities we lost when we stepped away from religion.
I know that I've needed things to be better.
Growing up, I was, by and large, a lonely kid. Some called me shy, others thought I might have Asperger’s syndrome; my mother even laughs telling the story of the time she brought me to “the talking doctor” because I would barely respond to her when she spoke to me.
As a child, I remember thinking a lot, noticing deeply, and living with a rich interior world. I was an introvert with dangerously low emotional intelligence, and in the absence of friends, I learned to keep myself company.
Things started to shift when I got to High School. I was still awkward as hell, but I made a few friends. I started to enter into a scene. Living in Western Massachusetts, the music of the land was hardcore punk. Upon my first concert (which I went to completely alone) — I had a transformation on the dancefloor. Timid at first, I took a few steps, swung my arms in a daring windmill fashion (oh god), and found something I could do – a way of being that allowed me to contribute my energy instead of just taking up space in the corner, watching the social territory like an outsider on safari.
The Massachusetts hardcore scene helped me make some of my first friends ever. Hug someone for the first time. And it all clicked when some more popular kids in local bands decided that I was cool enough to host a concert at my house. They called it “Lurk Fest” based on my cringey habit of walking up on people from behind and tapping their shoulders to say hello. I was a lurk, and whether it was endearment or ridicule, I was their lurk. I cringe thinking about it all now.
But the shift happened. I found community and belonging through music culture. And that lesson stayed with me into my college years.
In 2012, I was in my dark Orlando room reeling from my first breakup. Deep in my heartbreak, I began to DJ and feverishly research nightlife culture. I found hope in that pit of sadness and self-obsession. I was going to start a damn dance party. Something big and important. Something with integrity. That was the birth of Body//Talk.
And I didn’t realize it at the time, but my definition of a great party was one where you made a new friend. So yes, we had great music. An awesome dance floor. A cool aesthetic and all that — but in our post-event debriefings the conversation always centered on community:
How many friends did people make?
How deep were the interactions?
How can we foster those relationships into a strong community outside of the main event?
We used games, nametags, facepaint, introvert areas, activity stations, online roommate threads, potlucks, beach trips, and book clubs to connect members of our community to each other.
And in the five years when Body//Talk thrived, I had never felt such a strong sense of community. I was deeply enmeshed in a multi-layered tapestry of belonging. I had hundreds of close friends, casual friends, friends of friends, and acquaintances all connected through this one thing. We all tuned into the same metaphysical radio station.
Body//Talk never took over the world, like I imagined it would, but it did sear a high watermark for the true feeling of being connected to a community in the context of a city, and it transformed the lives of countless others.
And though Body//Talk sprouted in Orlando, community nightlife scenes are growing in very special corners of Brooklyn, San Francisco, LA, Berlin, and other major cities, too.
Researching this book has led me to interview over a hundred nightlife professionals and normal people alike. My conversations have brought me to explore the worlds of: non-aclocholic bars, ecstatic dance, cacao ceremonies, the authentic relating movement, the professional DJ circuit, roving dance parties, queer events, somatic healing therapies, collaborative art gatherings, cuddle parties, members only bars and the lives of regular people with transformative and frustrating experiences going out.
What all these spaces have in common is that they are an evolution of the nightlife concepts of yesterday. They remix the basic party format in order to fulfill our deepest needs.
There's a revolution underway, and I want to tell the story.
This book is about transforming the way that night spaces are designed. I believe that we can create containers that engender positive values, healthy body habits, deeper connection, and a larger emergent property of congregational community — not the overused social media buzzword communities -- the deeper networks of trust and belonging that satisfy our souls.
This one’s for the gatherers: the community builders, event hosts, bar owners, DJs, party promoters, public health officials and social architects. Many approaches to solving loneliness focus on the individual. We write guides with titles like, “Seven ways to make more friends.” But I propose we focus just as much effort on designing experiences that make new connections seamless and inevitable.
Creating spaces for celebration takes so much generosity and courage, for little or no pay. Nightlife entrepreneurs, even the stagnant ones, are often leading from the heart. Inspired by their own stories of revelry and transformation. If you’re creating these nightlife spaces, I thank you for your efforts to give people the night of their lives time and time again.
But, I have a simple question for you: could it be better? Could these night spaces be more connective, authentic, communal, transcendent, fun and as a result – profitable?
Thanks for reading.
If you liked what you read, then I’d love to count on your support when I launch my crowdfunding campaign. Email me at hello[at]philsantos.net, follow me on Instagram, or sign up for my newsletter to stay connected.
